. . . who got it from Moonbattery:
Just Lower Our Taxes
At Moonbattery, “Meanwhile, Back at the Joe Biden ‘Recovery Summer’ Tour,” and Gateway Pundit, “Eat Up… Joe Biden Gets Gets Custard in Face When Business Owner Tells Him: “Lower Our Taxes”” (via Memeorandum):
Joe “Bite-Me” Biden traveled to Wisconsin yesterday to campaign with far left Progressive Russ Feingold (D-WI). Smokin Joe ordered a custard at a popular custard stand in Glendale during one of their stops. When Biden asked Kopp’s Frozen Custard stand owner how much he owed him, the owner responded,
“Nothing, just lower our taxes.”
Dr Douglas missed the next part: Vice President Biden responded that the store manager who asked for lowered taxes — something Senators Obama and Biden promised while running for office — a “smartass:”
But let’s be realistic: to lower our taxes, we need to also lower our government spending. Our deficit is huge, and our national debt is, if not quite at the problem level Greece saw, headed in that direction. DRJ wrote:
Bankrupting America
The Financial Times reports the real reason Budget Director Peter Orzag left the Obama Administration:
“Mr Orszag, whom Mr Obama has dubbed a “propeller-head” because of his brilliant facility with projections and spreadsheets, has tried but failed to convince his colleagues to “step up the action”, according to one insider.
In particular, he has collided with the political team, led by Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s chief of staff, over Mr Obama’s 2008 election pledge not to raise taxes on any households earning less than $250,000 a year – a category that covers more than 98 per cent of Americans.
Economists say that would put all the fiscal emphasis on draconian – and highly unrealistic – spending cuts, or else pushing the marginal tax rates on the very rich to confiscatory levels. “Peter feels strongly that this is a pledge that has to be broken if the President is to take a lead on America’s fiscal crisis,” says an administration official not authorised to speak on the matter.”
Tyler Durden has the bottom line:
“As we speculated previously, the sudden and unprecedented departure of Peter Orszag, the day prior to the US Budget’s formalization (which incidentally never happened as now the US will likely not have a 2010 budget at all, for fear of disclosing to most Americans just how broke the country is ahead of mid-terms) was due to Orszag’s disagreement with the administration’s, and particularly Larry Summer’s, inability to fathom that reckless spending is a recipe for bankruptcy. As the FT reports: “Peter Orszag, Barack Obama’s budget director, resigned this week partly in frustration over his lack of success in persuading the Obama administration to tackle the fiscal deficit more aggressively, according to sources inside and outside the White House.” And so, as any remaining voices of reason realize they are dealing with a group of deranged Keynesians, soon there will be nobody left in the administration who dares to oppose the destructive course upon which this country has so resolutely embarked, which ends in one of two ways: debt repudiation, or war. And with the only remaining economic “advisers” being the trio of Summers, Romer and Geithner, you know America will somehow hit both of these mutually exclusive targets.”
Obama’s Army of Keynesians is bankrupting America.
Does this mean “We are all Keynesians now“?
Well, I can think of one of us who isn’t a Keynesian!
From yesterday’s 
:
Democrats mull making jobless aid a separate bill
WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic officials said the House may try to revive the long-stalled jobless-aid bill next week as a stand-alone measure shorn of controversial tax and spending provisions that prompted Senate Republicans to filibuster it on Thursday.
But the Senate may not have enough time to clear the measure for President Obama’s desk before leaving Washington for the Fourth of July recess. The impasse has meant that more than 1.2 million people have lost unemployment benefits averaging $300 a week.
Much more at the link; the Associated Press does not permit quotation beyond the “fair use” guidelines, and there’s a lot of information in the article I couldn’t quote.
The problem seems complex, but it can really be broken down into simple points:
- President Obama has promised lower taxes, and the public both want and voted for lower taxes.
- President Obama wants to increase government spending.
- While some major government expenditures have eventual end dates — the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the government programs favored by the Obama Administration are wholly open-ended.
- The public want lower government spending, though they always seem to want someone else’s programs cut, not their own.
- Unless the annual government deficit is significantly reduced, our national debt will quickly grow to an unsustainable level.
- Reducing but not eliminating the deficit will only slow down the speed at which the national debt becomes unsustainable.
One thing is certain: we cannot keep going the way we have been going. The easiest answer is contained in point number four: since most people want to see government spending cut, just not their particular programs cut, the first thing to do is not pass any new spending programs. It’s much harder to eliminate a program in which people already have a vested interest than it is to simply not start a program in the first place. The President won’t like that, but it has to be done. And the first place to start is to eliminate the huge, well-intentioned ObamaCare program: it has been passed, but it hasn’t come into effect yet, so it can be eliminated. Right now, the only thing the Republicans can do is block new enabling laws and appropriations; in the longer term, we have to defeat President Obama in 2012.
We’re going to see some natural spending cuts in the military: the war in Iraq has pretty much been won, and we’ll see natural drawdowns in troops and expenses there. The war in Afghanistan has never seen the levels of expenditure as in Iraq, and we’ll see increases there, but once we do something really radical like win that war, our expenses there will come down and eventually end. But this means that the President will have to put into place policies which can actually win that war.
The Republicans have to put before the public the stark choices we face: if we want our taxes lowered — and every election confirms that we do — then the Republicans have to be honest with the people and tell them that some of their programs will get cut, too, not just stuff for the other guy. I believe that if the voters are presented with that choice, the voters will vote Republican, and the Congress can have the backbone to do just that: actually cut programs.
Our good friend Perry continually complains that the Republicans aren’t working with the Democrats to pass the Democrats’ agenda, simply with some “compromises” to make things more palatable to Republicans — though I’m not sure what it would take to make a feces fajita taste better. John Hinderaker came up with the real answer:
Everyone involved laughed it off, but a serious point lingered. A simple way to think about the Democratic Party is, you’re the human being, they’re the tapeworm. Yet they claim a weird sort of parasite’s moral superiority over you: if you point out that they have their hand in your pocket, you’re a “smartass.” The Democratic Party needs to be torn, root and branch, from our public life.
The problem with the Democrats is that they have a fundamental belief that ever-expanding government involvement in our lives and our economy is a good thing, that it will lead to a happier people enjoying greater levels of public service. The trouble is that such is proving to be unsustainable: we have reached the point, and have actually passed the point, at which government can be fully funded and the people retain enough of their money to live decently. Governor Ed Rendell wants Pennsylvania state legislators to “man up” and pass higher taxes, because, as a Democrat, he sees the good in ever expanding services, without ever realizing that eventually you reach the point that the people cannot pay any more in taxes.
excellent analogy.
Translation: Obama will continue his spending insanity that will guarantee more debt and government dependency. Across the board tax increases on everyone, (including the fragile middle class) will become a the only reasonable answer for deficit reduction. With the federal government’s insistence on putting the oil moratorium in place, we can expect gasoline to be in the $4-$5 dollar range further depleting the consumer’s ability to purchase goods and services, (no cement slabs for that RV). The results will be massive reductions in revenues needed to sustain this entitlement-minded agenda driven by Obama and the liberals who will insist on opening up the floods gates of the Federal Treasury to prevent a national bankruptcy. It’s a vicious cycle of economic doom only a southside community organizer could envision. Or embrace.
Nice emendations here, and I’m sure you’ll be posting Helen Mirren nude for your Rule 5 Sunday! (Yep, it’s true — she’s topless in New York Mag.)
I would have charged Bite-Me $2500 for the Custard.
Obama’s Army of Keynesians is bankrupting America.
This being the opinion of Tyler Durdan, not the person quoted.
The facts say otherwise.
How about (a) raising taxes to the level they were when Reagan took office and (b) slashing “defense” spending by half. What exactly would that do to the US budget?
(And the first person to whine about soldiers losing jobs forfeits any right to complain about welfare spending ever again.)
It really is difficult for you guys to make sense, isn’t it?
1. Spending is outta control, so no more new programs! And so you fail to suggest any real cuts.
2. No more new programs, so kill Obamacare! Sorry, but Obamacare is the first step towards containing health care costs, the first one truly made by anybody, Republican or Democrat. Killing it means killing any hope of containing health care costs. Plus it won’t impact the deficit, and there is nothing about it that says it must.
3. Taxes are killing us! The hell they are. They’re historically low, low compared to other Western democracies, and our tax cuts are responsible for a good chunk of our deficit problems. You rule out taxes as if it were simply understood that doing such were out of the question (before you goons took over the GOP it was always understood as a financially responsible choice when bills were getting too high. See every president before Jesus W. Bush got elected). It’s simply amazing that you have successfully created a fully functioning fantasy world in which we’d all be alright EXCEPT FOR THOSE DARN TAXES!
What killed us is Republican deregulation philosophies, which blew the economy into shredded underwear in 2008 and currently blacken Gulf waters.
We need to start being responsible and be willing to pay for the services we want. That’s Democrats being responsible.
You, Dana, on the other hand, seem to understand that people are ultimately in favor of lots of services AND low taxes. You should easily identify this as childish and irresponsible, but instead, since it’s all about electing Republicans anyway, you promote childish and irresponsible policies and politicians. Somehow, we’re going to just stop all new spending, cut taxes even more, and the budget will magically balance itself. Of course, we’ve got to WIN that war in Afghanistan, whatever that means. Afghans consider it a hobby breaking the bank of giant nations that attempt to control it, but you ain’t worried. I’m sure if we just started torturing Afghans to find out where those fifty Al Queda guys who haven’t fled to Pakistan are, we could wrap that war right up, eh?
All there is here is a sheen of dispassionate analytical thinking. Scratch it with a nail and you don’t sound anymore coherent than Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman after five drinks.
Awesomeness, Henry!
A great quote I saw recently: “If your biggest problem is paying taxes, then you haven’t got any problems.”
Here, I’ve got a fix for taxes, and the deficit. You deficit hawks ought to love it: http://republicbroadcasting.org/?p=8188
More detail: http://www.michaeljournal.org/schealthy.htm
What killed us is Republican deregulation philosophies, which blew the economy into shredded underwear in 2008 and currently blacken Gulf waters.
Gee, how can you say that? Deregulation let BP save $5 million dollars drilling the leaky oil well. That’s $5 whole million dollars, baby! The genius of the Unregulated Free Market at work.
i see the “whistler” is wistleing past the graveyard…. lol
isnt that amazing irony?
*crickets*
The fact that that piddly non-comment was the only response tells me a bit more.
The fact that that piddly non-comment was the only response tells me a bit more.
Mmm – they have a habit of doing that, don’t they?
It always boils down to name-calling.
Well said, Henry!
Let me pick up on this portion:
The opposite, of course, is what we should be doing: Increasing taxes to cut the growth of the deficit, focusing on the higher incomes, that is, a more progressive tax structure. And, we need to further stimulate the economy, more than to date, to stimulate job growth. Otherwise we will be repeating FDR’s mistake in 1937, when he panicked, cut the stimulus programs, the result being a double dip depression, rescued by WWII.
Economist Paul Krugmen deals with this subject right here , well worth the short read that it is.
Thus, the intuitive drive to balance budgets is exactly what we do not need right now. Let us not make FDR’s mistake. Counterintuitively, we need to increase spending on job growth stimulus, and institute a more progressive tax policy. That said, I fear that is exactly what is not going to happen, so folks, prepare for the double dip; and it is not going to be very pretty!
PS: We might also consider vacating Afghanistan and obtaining the added benefit of saving on war spending.
Krugman: “…learned from history…”
When I was young I assumed that learning from history simply necessitated learning from history. In fact, people see history, understand why it went wrong, see the connection between then and now… and screw things up in exactly the same way again.
Perry, they will fight more stimulus. They’re already digging in. Look at these lies: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/38020
As if the unemployed take their unemployment checks and just deposit them…
Right, Nangleator. Problem is, the right-wing media and politicos have been clever and successful in drowning out voices of reason and accuracy, otherwise we would not be where we are right now, on the edge. This is not just Bush-43, it is three decades in the making, from Reagan on, in my view!
I nominate Hoagie for comment of the month. Unless someone tops him today or tomorrow he get my vote for his brief and pointed comment:
Hoagie:
Pho, did you actually call ME a coward while being 15,000 miles from me? That’s brave. Hell, I’ve shot better men than you. (Actually they were your ideological equals, but that was war).
24 June 2010, 8:37 pm
That’s one heck of a comment. My compliments to the author.
Here we go again. Right wing mind control. The effects of Reagan as if Democrats have been so devoid of power the last 30-some years.
Larry Kudlow counters Krugman, not to mention at the G-20, the heads of Germany and Canada have advocated the opposite of what Obama (and Krugman) want more of.
Fiscal austerity? Think it’s working well?
http://eb-misfit.blogspot.com/2010/06/jumping-right-off-fiscal-cliff.html
Nice ad hominem at the end of Nang’s link: But that is what conservatives love to do, they get their rocks off by making the people on the bottom 4/5th of the economic ladder suffer.
Gee.
OTOH Nang, I wonder what the Greek’s think about Ireland’s predicament.
Hube: “Larry Kudlow counters Krugman, “
Right, and Dean Baker rebuts Larry Kudlow in your cite, so it’s 2-1 we win!
Moreover, a strong dollar versus other currencies is not good for our exports, and a weak dollar versus gold is a reflection of our weak economy and longer range, our increasing foreign oil dependence of a diminishing resource, meaning rising oil prices, a dollar outflow, and higher interest rates. Is this what you folks on the right want for our future and our future generations?
Krugman is using historic reference to bolster his case, and Baker here uses common sense, ignored in Kudlow’s long and failed record of right-wing politicization of everything. In fewer words, Kudlow is nothing more than a right wing shill.
Is that one of your hated ad hominems, Perry? See what I mean about hypocrisy? And Krugman used to be an advisor to Enron. I wonder what you’d say if I’d brought that up to discredit his views.
Hube: “Krugman used to be an advisor to Enron”
Jeez, how far you going to smear that guilt? To the receptionists, too?
Went right over that pointed head of yours, Nang …
Oops, yes it did!
That’s one heck of a comment. My compliments to the author.
Yes, ropelight, we all know you hate me for demonstrating to everyone what a racist you are.
Good boy. Have a cookie and settle down – teh adults are talking.
Oh, and by the way – the concern with deficit spending is that it leads to inflation. If the teabagger concerns are right, the smart money will be assuming that the US is in for a period of massive inflation.
Guess what? 10 year Treasury yields are down to 3%…
Henry Whistles in the dark:
Well, that’s certainly what the Democrats said it would do when they
forced it down our throatsmanaged to pass it, but I don’t believe that for the first second. When has the federal government ever made anything cheaper?Haven’t you noticed, Mr Whistler: our politicians run on lower taxes, and that’s part of the reason for which people vote for them. In 2000, both candidates were running on large tax cuts, though George Bush’s was the larger cut proposal. In 2008, the guy your fellow denizens at the Iowa Liberal voted for ran on cutting taxes for everybody except the top 1%, and you can still find the Obama Tax Cut Calculator on the President’s campaign website, complete with the comparison with Senator McCain’s proposed cuts.
Of course, we did have a guy run for President promising to raise taxes; how many states did Walter Mondale carry? And when the elder President Bush broke his “no new taxes” pledge, he helped himself into an early retirement, while his opponent ran on a “middle class tax cut” promise.
Perhaps you’ll recall what happened in Jeromy Brown’s adopted home state of California. When the Pyrite State was facing a huge budget deficit, and the Governator and the state legislature put a “temporary” tax increase before the voters in a special election in May of 2009, the same voters who had 6½ months earlier given 61% of their votes to Barack Obama defeated the tax increase by almost a two-to-one margin, despite the horror stories of the draconian cuts in state spending they’d face.
It doesn’t really matter if you think that we aren’t taxed enough; when it comes to actual elections, the voters seem to think we are taxed way too much! In the end, our representatives are responsible to the wishes of the voters.
Of course, you could always run for Congress yourself, promising to raise taxes, because we just aren’t taxed enough. You’d certainly get some attention, ’cause you’d be the only one doing it.
Let me know how that works out for you.
Dana: “Well, that’s certainly what the Democrats said it would do when they forced it down our throats managed to pass it, but I don’t believe that for the first second.”
Wrong, Dana, not the Dems but the CBO said that the cost curve would be bent downward. You have never presented evidence for your claim, so your statement is less credible than the CBO!
Wrong again. Conservatives/Repubs run on low taxes, primarily for the wealthy, while being unwilling to run on any meaningful/realistic spending cuts. That’s why most people do not find you folks credible. All you folks do is make a lot of meaningless racket!
Cutting taxes without significant spending cuts adds to the deficits and debt, as GW Bush taught us quite well, raising the national debt by almost $5T dollars, and you folks backed W to the hilt. Now you change your tune, a little late, aren’t you?
Of course no one likes taxes, we all know that. However, a sense of responsibility has to set in in time of crisis, in CA, in our USA. Therefore, a more progressive tax system, focused on the wealthy, is certainly called for at this time, along with significant spending cuts. However, as Krugman and other economists point out, to boost GDP growth, we need to stimulate job growth, otherwise weak growth, or even a decline, will make matters worse, in my view.
It takes leadership to turn our ship of state, qualities that I have not seen to date among you tea partiers, as all you do is make a lot of useless noise, in my view.
When has the federal government ever made anything cheaper?
Roading, water supply, fire fighting, policing, food inspections…
Phoney, I don’t hate you, you’re too insignificant to provoke such strong emotion. You’re more of a rude nuisance, an annoying squeaky sound that disturbs the peace.
You display the symptoms of several developmental disorders which manifest themselves most obviously in your constant attention seeking and the attendant willingness to make yourself disgusting. So great is your need for attention, you’d rather be despised than be ignored.
You’re sick in the head, Phoney, you’re eating yourself up, and you deserve every bit of the pain and suffering you inflict on yourself.
Uh-huh.
ANYway, moving away from ropelight’s whining at being called out for what he is, here’s a look at what’s ,b>really behind the calls for “austerity”, being echoed by the good little wingnut sheep on this blog:
Dana: So Republicans will say whatever it takes to get the vote, regardless of what destruction it wreaks upon the country.
Tell me something I don’t know!
In my estimation, Obama did pander to our childishness as a nation by pretending that 95% of us could escape the burden of our collective stupidity, but at least he did promise to raise taxes on those who could best afford it. I think the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire entirely, and that a politician should be willing to lead on the issue of what real fiscal wisdom is really about.
Obviously we won’t be getting any of that from Republicans this fall, or any time soon thereafter.
And electing them is the surest way to shut them up about deficits. See: Dana Pico’s hero, Dick “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” Cheney, who you would have gleefully elected in 2008. There is some concern in the nation about deficits, although not nearly as much as there is about jobs, but it wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar if you guys would have won in ’08.
This is, of course, about politics. There’s a Democrat in the WH, so you guys have to say something, even if it means tarring him with the deficits you ran up!
Ropelight: “You’re more of a rude nuisance, an annoying squeaky sound that disturbs the peace.”
Fella, you let me know when the day comes that you have a comment that ever rises above that level.
This is, of course, about politics. There’s a Democrat in the WH, so you guys have to say something, even if it means tarring him with the deficits you ran up!
Nah, it’s not just about that. Naomi Klein had it right in “Disaster Economics”; the use of a crisis to mask policy which enriches the elites at the expense of everyone else is a tried and true tactic. It’s just now coming home to the USA.
When the wingnuts bleat about “cutting spending”, they’re just acting as useful idiots for those people in the US who really and truly believe in class warfare – the rich.
Perry wrote:
Do I need to link the Obama Tax Cut Calculator for you again, the one in which he told prospective voters that, unless they were in the top 1%, they’d have lower federal income taxes under his Administration than under John McCain?
Of course, Senator Obama had promised something like $200 billion in additional federal programs, exclusive of whatever he did to health care, and that was before the economic problems in the fall of 2008, yet he was still running on tax cuts. You don’t have to believe me: his campaign website is still up, and here’s what he said he’d do concerning taxes.
I wrote:
Which Mr Whistler somehow thought translated into:
Did you somehow miss the part about Democrats running on tax cuts, too? Remember Bill Clinton’s “middle class tax cut?” Well, you might not, since he was lying all along, and never had any intention of such a thing, but that was what he campaigned on in 1992. Remember Al Gore’s “me, too!” tax cut promise, just not quite as big as George Bush’s? And I’ve already pointed out to you that our current President campaigned on tax cuts.
Well, at least you remembered Mr Obama’s!
Well, go for it! If you believe that we are taxed too little, then run for Congress or support someone who calls for higher taxes. I’d be interested to see how well y’all fare on that.
If the public want lower taxes, and keep expressing such desires at the ballot box, then that’s what their elected representatives should give them, along with much lower spending; that would be real fiscal wisdom!
indeed, it informs most of us that liberals dont understand irony. they only live it, and that condition exposes them, (unbeknownst to themselves). that is not really very piddly actually.
go read some plato or cicero.
assovertincups: feel free to share the rest of the conversation you’re having in your head with me, because as is, I’m not yet convinced you know what irony is.
Dana: You kind of underscore my point…Democrats may promise some tax cuts, and Obama certainly delivered some, but you admit that in practice they will raise taxes when necessary, and that Obama actually campaigned on raising taxes for the rich.
So your grounds for equivalence are getting pretty scarce. Bush’s disastrous tax cuts, which are responsible for a large portion of our deficits today, actually happened. And so far, not only is there no repentance, but the GOP has gone absolutely batshit insane, organizing tax protests after Obama designed the stimulus bill to be almost half tax cuts.
If it was dangerous to run on a tax increase before, your party has made it positively radioactive.
As for my career in politics, please. No patience or tolerance for the option, and it was long ago precluded by my rock n’roll lifestyle;) Besides, I have a right to be a citizen with an opinion without running for office. This really has nothing to do with me being some elected savior, this is about our country collectively waking up.
So if you’d politely do your part and knock off the cheap anti-tax theatrics and start brewing up some ideas that might actually help this country, that would be massively appreciated! And feel free to steer your fellow “conservatives” towards something actually resembling fiscal conservatism, instead of pushing this ruse that taxes are the source of our current fiscal problems.
Those inconvenient facts again…
Oh, and some more inconvenient facts. You know how the wingnuts are screaming about “socialism” and saying that there’s no such thing as class warfare and the recession is hurting everyone?
Well…
Are the wingnuts going to man up and defend their hysteria over “socialism”, or are they going to slink away like the little pussies we all know they are and attempt to ignore reality? Again.
oh no, how can we defend ourselves? these liberals are accosting us with their “current version of truth”.
no defense needed. you dont defend against something that is imaginary.
besides it drives them nuts when they are not the center of attention.
Phoenician: “…the use of a crisis to mask policy which enriches the elites at the expense of everyone else is a tried and true tactic. It’s just now coming home to the USA.”
‘Just now’ doesn’t seem right to me. We had this thing we called a Cold War, where the people were on alert about the impending disaster… For about forty years.
You know what it’s really called when you aren’t in a hot war? Peace.
When the Berlin Wall came down, there were a few years of relaxation before they figured out a new enemy to scare us with. (al Quaeda was an invention of the CIA. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10Z3Kt9tgGw) Hell, I’d be right there believing with blu, but the ostensible story of 9/11 is too believable. It was such an amazing boon to Bush and Cheney and the MIC, I could easily believe they’d create something like it, if it hadn’t happened.
But now, they’ve realized they can extort us with ‘too big to fail’ and are completely unwilling to protect us from ‘too big to fail.’ Get ready for round two of the global financial collapse.
nangs theory looks suspiciously similar in nature to the ones he proports are the oppositions conspiracies…
right on cue. they dont miss a beat.
they tell you who they are.
I’m always willing to entertain a conspiracy theory, briefly. It’s in my nature. But they’ve got to be more than believable.
Do you deny Phoenician’s statement? “the use of a crisis to mask policy which enriches the elites at the expense of everyone else is a tried and true tactic.”
Do you think the financial reform was designed to protect the average citizen?
What a laugh. Yeah — these same “geniuses” that pulled off 9/11 somehow couldn’t have the CIA or whoever plant WMDs in Iraq so that they wouldn’t come off looking like the bungling fools that they did when WMDs ultimately didn’t turn up.
Nice try, ‘tho.
Hube, I don’t actually believe they set up 9/11, and I don’t believe they would have created something like that, themselves. I’m just saying, it played into their hands so well. If the truthers had decent evidence, I might believe. But I don’t.
PiaToR: “Are the wingnuts going to man up and defend their hysteria over “socialism”, or are they going to slink away like the little pussies we all know they are and attempt to ignore reality? “
Are you kidding? They are slinking away, as they always do when facts are posted that interfere with their ideological perceptions. I have yet to see any of them give Obama credit for anything. In fact, I note that one of them said the other day on here that Bush was a much better Prez You know who your are, and your first name begins with a “D”.
If the truthers had decent evidence, I might believe. But I don’t. said Nang.
What would it take to make you see it, Nang?
I realize that being called names and accepting that our US government isn’t as benevolent as you’d like to think is difficult though. So, it surprises me how few people keep intact their objectivity and integrity, when those things are facing them. So, you want evidence, assuming you have sufficient integrity and objectivity, I could easily show you evidence. More than just the many professionals of every relevant sort that disputes the government version, but ample evidence, if you have the character to be honest with yourself, and me. Mostly cowardice is what I encounter, even among many I’d give more credit to prior to the discussion of 9-11-01.
blu, I believe airliners filled with fuel can create fires in a building hot enough to soften structural members. I believe that once several floors of such a building slump down a dozen feet, the momentum is enough to collapse the next set of structural members, and so on, over and over. I believe I saw exactly that, twice.
I believe fundamentalist morons figured they could hijack planes with box cutters. I believe at least a few of them were interested in kamikaze attacks, and were capable of pulling it off. I believe our security wasn’t sufficient to stop such an attack. I’m happily surprised they only managed to scrape together enough madmen to only destroy four airplanes.
I don’t believe the destroyed buildings were prepared for demolition without any of the tens of thousands of people that worked there noticing. I don’t believe it would be necessary to set up such a complex phony attack, with remote-controlled airplanes (one of which had a friend of mine in it,) timed to hit buildings that were previously set for demolition. I also don’t believe buildings were prepped for demolition at the same time fundamentalist madmen were planning to fly airplanes into them.
I don’t believe such a large and crazy conspiracy could be set up without believable testimony and evidence escaping. I haven’t seen any such, anyway. I’ve heard lots of names and job titles of people who believe, and seen amateur analysis of video clips and pictures. None of that was convincing.
I do believe something I heard recently, about the Philadelphia airplane being shot down by our military. It doesn’t shake me up, too much, because it doesn’t really matter who did it; it was the terrorists’ fault, and those passengers were doomed from the beginning.
I could, in an idle afternoon, come up with much simpler and better terrorist attacks, which would kill as many or more people, and be easily blamed on foreign terrorists. 9/11 seems easily explained by the popular story of 19 madmen, and wildly improbable as a conspiracy.
[released from moderation - pH]
I’m heading off for work right now, so if you respond, I won’t be able to get back to you for quite a few hours yet.
Whistler, my comments here go back quite a while. Read them if you wish, or continue on your present course, your opinions hold little interest for me.
I’ve read the most recent few and I find them boring and uninformative. Nor do I wish to engage in more useless back and forth. Go find someone else to annoy.
Gotcha. Sorry if I misinterpreted.
blu: I’ll point out to you what I for Nang earlier. Please explain that for us.
Maybe the truthers ought look around, connect the dots. Start asking if Barack Obama planned the Gulf oil disaster in advance.
There’s quiet a bit of evidence for that notion just waiting for some bright group of investigators to put it together with all the others and prove the US government is behind a whole series of atrocities, from Ruby Ridge, to Waco, to Oklahoma City, to 9/11, to the Gusher in the Gulf. Just sayin’
When the Berlin Wall came down, there were a few years of relaxation before they figured out a new enemy to scare us with. (al Quaeda was an invention of the CIA. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10Z3Kt9tgGw) Hell, I’d be right there believing with blu, but the ostensible story of 9/11 is too believable. It was such an amazing boon to Bush and Cheney and the MIC, I could easily believe they’d create something like it, if it hadn’t happened.
True. Again, the “Flat Earth News” book I’ve been suggesting has a section showing how the Government and the media inflated Zarqawi from some obscure punk to the “second in command of Al Qaeda” by sheer propaganda – to the point where bin Laden had to offer him the actual job! at one stage they were putting forward the story that he’d lost a leg in the fighting, followed by claiming he was the guy on video caught cutting off heads – without noticing that said headcutter was standing on two feet…
assinoveryourhead:
“no defense needed. you dont defend against something that is imaginary.”
that’s an assertion you’re choosing to not back up.
so all you’re really establishing is that you’re a fool who just sits around making snarky comments without the goods to back it up.
such a wonderful contribution to society you’re making there, when we have so many real problems to address. this, however, is probably how you cope with voting for the people who ran the country into the ground.
Are you kidding? They are slinking away, as they always do when facts are posted that interfere with their ideological perceptions.
Hell, even the business magazines are reporting the truth about America (finally) – and the wingnuts simply still can’t face up to it. Pusillanimous prattling pussies, the lot of them.
Nang, how many floors were the buildings? How many times can you clap in 10 seconds? That is how fast the steel and concrete building descended. Each building went down in that approximate time. The buildings were pulverized. When you see the videos, in descent, what you see spewing outwards is not smoke. It is pulverized building.
AND WTC 7 was not even hit by a plane, and it went down in a perfect symmetrical implosion. It did not even damage surrounding building significantly. I will bring you that very short clip.
And for the record, the contractor of the buildings is on video saying that the structures were built in a new way that was much tougher than others in the past. I will bring it next comment. Laws of physics will tell us that when fire is ample, as it was, in volume, not temperature, the jet fuel will burn up in a very short amount of time. Look it up.
Here is a short clip, Nang, and incidentally, I appreciate your engaging me in this conversation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ9BofDUXv0
Next point, Nang, please recognize that NORAD, a multi-billion dollar defense system worked scores of times successfully countering planes off course before 9-11-01. How is it that it failed numerous times that one day? Hundreds of pilots have spoken up, including NORAD people. I suggest you pay attention to their words, the professionals of the skies. Here are a couple of sources for you to start taking an honest look at the facts of this highly sophisticated system that did not work on this day of 9-11-01 multiple times.
http://pilotsfor911truth.org/
Meander around here also, Nang…
http://pilotsfor911truth.org/
Also, remember that there are a lot of professionals that need government jobs, so many are unwilling to speak out.
Example, I know of one pilot, a friend of mine who has no doubt I’m right, and after studying the plethora of documentation, videos, and testimonies, as well as his own professional knowledge and common sense, but he won’t speak out.
I need to go to bed right now. It’s outrageously late and I have to work tomorrow, not too early but I still need to be up to speed, so I will address more of your questions tomorrow. Good questions by the way. No doubt others have questions and I invite them as well. When I give you the sources for reviewing, I trust you will honestly scrutinize the sources. You should scrutinize them. But please be honest with yourself. With me too. Thanks.
I also have two friends that re engineers, and even though, they know, have said they Know I am right, don’t want to jeopardize their opportunities for being hired by our government, since the government is a huge employer of both engineers and pilots.
ooooops!!!
Ha, it’s late, I’m tired, the correct 2nd link (instead of the repeat) is…
http://patriotsquestion911.com/pilots.html
Tomorrow, I will also explain and bring evidence of the proof explosives were present in the buildings. MULTIPLE pieces of evidence for the statement, outrageous as it may seem, By the way, the largest elevator renovation ever was taking place there, that started in January 2001.
I’ll review this stuff when I have time, blu. Sometime today or tonight.
blu: I’ll point out to you what I for Nang earlier. Please explain that for us.
Wow. What the hell is going on here? I go to New York for a few days and the entire CSPT site is taken over by moonbats. You have ropelight, Hube and assovertincups doing battle with a group of conspiracy nuts, leftist loons and some Whistler guy. I don’t know who Whistler is but he sounds like Pho on steroids. Perhaps Dana Pico should change the name of the site to “I hate America and anyone who is a rich guy”.
I’m having my morning coffee and after reading these posts by the moonbats I thought I was on Huffpo. Are there really that many people in this nation who both hate America and themselves that much? Enough to side with Pho? I suppose it’s true that if you are born in a nation which allows through it’s freedom for all to succeed and fail of their own efforts, those who fail will blame those who succeed for their failures. The greed, envy and moral vacuum that is “the left” is really sad to see.
I just spent seven days with a congressman from Korea and what I came away with was “Why is your (our) country diving into communism head first when you have the freedom to be the best”? I could not answer him in a reasonable way. He thinks we are going crazy. When a fucking foreigner cares more and knows more about Liberty than my fellow Americans, I really fear for our future.
Next Wednesday I’m going to Columbia, SC to visit my buddy. His restaurants are being hit hard in this economy and we will decide if it is worth it for him to continue. I’ve penciled in six days with him to observe, consult and review his books and try to help him turn around the downward spiral he now finds himself in. You know what is the defining straw as to whether he stays in business is? Taxes. He’s been hit so hard that the taxes are literally taking all the profit from his work. This kid (kid, he’s 42) put’s 12 to 16 hours a day into running a New York pizza joint and an ajoining tavern. Yet between the taxes and the associated accounting and regulatory fees, he can’t pull out 100 grand a year. That’s pathetic. But Whistler thinks guys like him should be taxed more. Currently my friend employs 44 people. Perhaps they’d be better suited working in government jobs. Or not working at all.
Most of you moonbats here have no realization of the financial risk, hard work and totally committed effort which goes in to building a business. You also fail to see how financialy and personaly devistating failure can be. I know, I’ve been there. You sit there and pontificate about how “those rich guys” should pay more and more in taxes never suggesting that perhaps the rest of you spend too fucking much of other people’s money. You always seem to have a new program or a new crisis which needs to be funded by the efforts of someone other than yourselves. It’s disgusting. It’s the antithesis(?) of freedom and the work ethic. You know, I don’t care if you are morally corrupt. However, I do care when you moral corruption spills into the running of the economy and my personal wallet and wealth. Read the attitudes and beliefs of moonbats like Pho and Whistler and you see the moral void and total disregard of their fellow man. They are true believers that “What is mine, is mine. What is yours is half mine.” Never the builders, the inventors, the creators but always the takers. Envy, my favorite sin.
Hoagie, you’re right about “Envy.” It’s the primary underlying force behind Marxism in all its various guises.
Leftists suffer acute envy when they lack the achievements, or possessions, of others and either covet those accomplishments for themselves, or alternately seek to deny others the opportunity to excel.
Envy derives from a sense of low self-esteem that occurs from a comparison threatening the self image of the leftist. When others have something leftists consider important the aroused envy can be intensely motivating. However the effort and energy is not directed toward individual productivity, but toward destructive ends. Envy is thus one of the most potent causes of personal and collective unhappiness.
Hoagie, why do you hate America so much? And all sorts of other generalizations about you.
And if your friend’s business fails, I think most Republicans would say it’s because he’s lazy.
I thought you were in Disneyland, Hoagie. If you were in NYC, you might have gotten some perspective, because regarding the subject matter you abhor, MOST of NYC is on board, without you of course, your mind in the land of the talking mouse.
Nang, if you want more info, this video clip is the Secretary of Transportation, Norm Mineta, regarding the failure of NORAD, and VP Cheney’s control of it at that time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGI5BmNd7AE&feature=related
I just spent seven days with a congressman from Korea and what I came away with was “Why is your (our) country diving into communism head first when you have the freedom to be the best”? I could not answer him in a reasonable way. He thinks we are going crazy. When a fucking foreigner cares more and knows more about Liberty than my fellow Americans, I really fear for our future.
Well, I just spent seven days designing a moon landing programme for a large Asian country that will remain nameless. During this, the leader of that country came to me personally and said “these foolish Americans – why have they become so stupid that they are unable to get back into space?”.
You’ll just have to accept my word for that, of course.
Leftists suffer acute envy when they lack the achievements, or possessions, of others and either covet those accomplishments for themselves, or alternately seek to deny others the opportunity to excel.
Rightists eat babies. I know this for a fact via the same argument ad anus ropelight employs.
By the way, ropelight, you still haven’t explained exactly why a black American-born Democrat President is an “usurper”…
This physics journal published the article, only after extreme scrutinizing peer review, of the nano-thermite found in multiple examples of the pulverized debris, several inches deep throughout the city. The article can be downloaded from the opening page, of which this link I offer, will bring you.
Nano-thermite is a military grades explosives material. The comprehension of that is staggering, I know. It seems impossible that our government could be involved with such a thing. But I will address that later, bring you documentation of false flag operations (I’ll explain what that means later) and proposals from within our government, the Pentagon actually.
A false flag operation is an act of violence, created by a government, unto it’s own people to blame on a country it chooses to start a war against. It recurs throughout history in many countries, our own included. As I said, there is documentation of it happening in our own country. I will bring it later. I don’t want to give you information overload. All this can become daunting.
This is the peer-reviewed article, opening page to start download of the nano-thermite evidence, of which there was an ample amount of.
http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM
Nangleator, I take it you don’t like generalizations. Yet you generalize on what “most Republicans would say”. Quaint. Now my generalizations are based on my observations interacting with the people I associate with in life. Therefore, they are just my opinions, that’s all. However, those associates are mostly businessmen and professionals. They are not slackers, complainers or lazy. They are the doers, not the cryers. They employ hundreds of our fellow citizens and between them pay millions in taxes. Yet the leftists on this blog and others portray them as some sort of evil, blood-sucking capitalist pigs. I gotta, tell ya, I’m getting sick of the paracites bad-mouthing the hosts.
Just look at the comment by blubonnet: “I thought you were in Disneyland, Hoagie. If you were in NYC, you might have gotten some perspective, because regarding the subject matter you abhor, MOST of NYC is on board, without you of course, your mind in the land of the talking mouse.” What the hell does that mean? What is a “talking mouse”. What subject matter do I “abhor” that “MOST of NYC is on board” with? The people I was with in NYC were mostly Koreans or Korean-Americans and I assure you they are not “on board” with any leftist shit. They know all too well from the North Koreans, exactly what leftism creates and it ain’t pretty. They are concerned that America is loosing its will to lead, to say “Yes, we can”, to repudiate the Marxist/socialist cancer which is infecting Europe and Asia. In short, these foreigners still see America as the beacon of rugged individualism and personal rewards. Too bad the leftists here don’t.
Just so you know, Nangleator, there are a million reasons why a businessman could fail, but I’ve never seen one fail out of lazyness.
Another thing, explosives have specific characteristics. Fire has specific characteristics. To study it all from an engineers point of view, I offer this link. On the right hand side of the screen you can click onto the points of evidence, observe the video documentation for yourself.
Also, I admire your capacity for study, intellectual scrutiny!!! Others offer childish name calling, or cower and ignore. Kudos to you sir!
http://www.ae911truth.org/
However, those associates are mostly businessmen and professionals. They are not slackers, complainers or lazy. They are the doers, not the cryers. They employ hundreds of our fellow citizens and between them pay millions in taxes. Yet the leftists on this blog and others portray them as some sort of evil, blood-sucking capitalist pigs.
Go back and read the facts again.
I gotta, tell ya, I’m getting sick of the paracites bad-mouthing the hosts.
Riiiiight – so the trust fund babies like Paris Hilton are the “hosts”, and the people who put it 40 to 60 hour weeks working for a pay check are the “parasites”. Got it.
Note especially slide 5 from that link, Hoagie.
You really are just a useful idiot for the top 1%, aren’t you?
Pho, your chart could be applied to any country on earth, even communist countries. Do you think there is less of a gap between the wealth of Castro and a peon in a field in Cuba then there is between Bill Gates and a lettuce picker here? I don’t. Whether you like it or not in every society, capitalist, communist, socialist or whatever, there are a few “at the top” with great wealth. You didn’t see Kruschev standing in line for toilet paper, did you? You seem to have a problem with exactly WHO has the wealth. The wealth will always be there you would just rather see it in the hands of some communist thug who stole it while I’d rather see it in the hands of those who created it.
I never said a word about “trust fund babies like Paris Hilton”, did I? And I never characterized “people who put it 40 to 60 hour weeks” as paracites, did I? But to you if a person puts in that 60 hours and becomes successful, he then becomes the enemy. As long as they work those 40 to 60 hours a week and remain living paycheck to paycheck, they are the Nobel Working Man, however, the moment he excells he becomes a blood-sucking greedy pig, right? I spent most of my life working 60 or more hours a week. It is the curse of the profession I chose. Now I am retired and enjoy a good lifestyle an a degree of wealth. I earned it, not you, not some guy in a ghetto, not some single mom, nor some well connected friend of a politician. Neither you nor your proxy government thugs have a right to take my accomplishments away. To believe such is to believe in despotic Marxism.
Pho, your chart could be applied to any country on earth, even communist countries.
Nope. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
More to the point, you’re simply not grasping what is going on.
Do you think there is less of a gap between the wealth of Castro and a peon in a field in Cuba then there is between Bill Gates and a lettuce picker here?
Yes. Further – I can prove it – Forbes estimated Castro as being worth $900 million. That’s less than a 50th of Bill Gate’s worth. Cuba has about a fifth of the US’s GDP per capita – it is likely that the disparity between median household wealth (around $60,000 for the US) is less than this.
Spanked again, Hoagie.
Further, we are not talking about one man – dictator vs uber-capitalist.
There’s a book you need to read – “Economics for everyone : a short guide to the economics of capitalism” by Jim Stanford. He points out that around 50% of workers are wage labourers, 40% are unpaid in households or the community, around 10% are proprieters of small businesses and farms, and around 2% are capitalists and top executives. You’re getting in a huff because you identify with that 10% – which means you’re simply a useful idiot for the 2% who depend on no-one questioning how things are running.
You’re simply a tool to them.
You don’t live in the country you think you live in – go and read the book, Hoagie.
“You really are just a useful idiot for the top 1%, aren’t you?”
You really need to concern yourself withyourself and spend less time worrying about the top 1%, or 10% or whatever percent your jealousy and hatered kick in at. I’d be interested to know how you would “level the playing field”. Would you tax away 100% of a persons earning over say, $50,000 per year? $100,000? Would you confiscate their property, cars, homes, IRA’s? Who would determine the “right” people to then redistribute this wealth to? Or would you rather just make it illegal to earn more than you, own more than you, drive a nicer car than you?
How has all this wonderful redistribution worked elswhere? I know it did well in the old Soviet Russia. All the people there had equal share in great wealth, business boomed, they all drove Bentley’s. Oh wait, that was just the top Party guys who got that, wasn’t it? Along with Sable coats and Dacha’s for their mistresses while those hard workin’ folk got all the vodka they could drink to numb their brains.
“Do you think there is less of a gap between the wealth of Castro and a peon in a field in Cuba then there is between Bill Gates and a lettuce picker here?
Yes. Further – I can prove it – Forbes estimated Castro as being worth $900 million. That’s less than a 50th of Bill Gate’s worth. Cuba has about a fifth of the US’s GDP per capita – it is likely that the disparity between median household wealth (around $60,000 for the US) is less than this.”
You’re not getting my point here Pho. It dosen’t matter if both Castro and Gates are worth a Trillion each, the “wealth gap” if you will, is still enormous between the top 1% and the rest. And as far as proving a point goes, how did Castro, a communist, amass 900 million? Castro is, I assume, at the top 1% in Cuba, is he not? I’m not talking dollars, I’m talking percentages. If everyone in America made $1000 and I made $1001, I’d be the top 1%.
You already referred Economics for Everyone to me (all of us here) and as it happens a friend of mine is reading it and will pass it to me when he’s finished.
blu: I’ll point out to you what I did for Nang earlier. Please explain that for us:
Yeah — these same “geniuses” that pulled off 9/11 somehow couldn’t have the CIA or whoever plant WMDs in Iraq so that they wouldn’t come off looking like the bungling fools that they did when WMDs ultimately didn’t turn up.
” You’re getting in a huff because you identify with that 10% – which means you’re simply a useful idiot for the 2% who depend on no-one questioning how things are running.”
Pho, I’m not in “a huff”. I’m also in the 40% unpaid not the 10%. But can I assume since you believe Stanford’s numbers, you would seize the assets of the 2% and the 10% ? And do what with them? I’ll tell you one thing. If you gave 1000 people $1000 each, within one year, 40% would be broke, 50% would still have some money left and 10% would be worth several thousand each. That’s just how it is.
Gotta go.
Hube, they knew there were no WMDs. Research “Downing Street memo” Also research “Iraq weapons inspectors”. I am only deal with one discussion at a time. I applaud you for taking an interest in this though.
Incidentally, Hube, they really haven’t pulled it off, because the population, the planet as a matter of fact is catching on at this point. One of the first videos made “Loose Change, Second Edition” has been translated into scores of languages.
However, our media, believe it or not, or RESEARCH it, is actually being manipulated by Pentagon affiliates. Research O.F.F. I’ll bring an article to you that has 94 source references to research further, if you so desire. Be right back.
You’re not getting my point here Pho. It dosen’t matter if both Castro and Gates are worth a Trillion each, the “wealth gap” if you will, is still enormous between the top 1% and the rest.
YOU don’t get it. Firstly, you were factually wrong in your understanding of your own country – Gates is richer than Castro is in relation to their own country. Secondly, you are ignoring the trend lines – in the US, the rich are getting richer and richer, and the rest of you are remainign static.
You really need to concern yourself withyourself and spend less time worrying about the top 1%, or 10% or whatever percent your jealousy and hatered kick in at. I’d be interested to know how you would “level the playing field”.
Gee, now let’s see? Is there some happy medium between allowing the rich to buttf**k* the rest of society and the strawman totalilitarianism you falsely ascribe to me? something like raising taxes to the level they were before Reagan?
Idiot.
Thanks for asking, Hube. Here is an article that will explain, as stated, with many references, the way media is manipulated…
http://www.ae911truth.org/news/41-articles/313-the-news-media-at-war.html
I hope you also click onto the references I have already provided to Nang.
Hube, looks like Google won’t touch the OFF program, but it is in the above article though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
This is an example of false flag terrorism, although not executed by Kennedy. He was not willing to.
Wow indeed.
when they think they have an edge or a little control they bring out the big guns.
and proceed to shoot their own feet off.
….
far be it from me to interrupt their efforts.
Hube, they knew there were no WMDs. Research “Downing Street memo” Also research “Iraq weapons inspectors”. I am only deal with one discussion at a time. I applaud you for taking an interest in this though.
Thanks for making my point, blu. I know all about the Downing Street Memo and the weapons inspectors. They’re irrelevant to the point. So…
… Bushco KNEW there were no WMDs in Iraq, but they SOLD the invasion mostly on that very theme! But, somehow, they were able to pull off something as intricate as 9/11 in around NINE MONTHS. They manage to pull off 9/11 to further their imperialist aims — Iraq being one of them — yet knowing that there were no WMDs there (as you state, blu), they do NOT simply plant them there to even FURTHER their goals. The planting of WMDs, which would have been magnitudes EASIER than pulling off 9/11. Especially since the failure of WMDs to turn up seriously wounded Bush’s presidency and overall goals.
This makes about as much sense as Perry’s logic, blu. IOW, it’s pure nuttery. You’re claiming Bushco are simultaneously geniuses and total dopes.
Thanks for the laugh, ‘tho, pal.
Perry wrote:
That’s certainly not true: I’ve given President Obama credit for many things! I’ve given him credit for ruining our health care system, I’ve given him credit for balloning our deficits, I’ve given him credit for mushrooming our national debt, and I’ve even given him credit for revilalizing the Republican Party!
… Bushco KNEW there were no WMDs in Iraq, but they SOLD the invasion mostly on that very theme! But, somehow, they were able to pull off something as intricate as 9/11 in around NINE MONTHS. They manage to pull off 9/11 to further their imperialist aims — Iraq being one of them — yet knowing that there were no WMDs there (as you state, blu), they do NOT simply plant them there to even FURTHER their goals. The planting of WMDs, which would have been magnitudes EASIER than pulling off 9/11. Especially since the failure of WMDs to turn up seriously wounded Bush’s presidency and overall goals.
Pretty obviously, planting WMDs is beyond the realms of the possible – too many people would know, too many people would talk. Stovepiping information, twisting it to support a false case for war, and flat out lying about non-existent links between Al Qaeda and Iraq, however, is perfectly possible – and people have talked about it. Bush lied.
Blu’s case is also unbelievable. Her alternative requires a major logistical exercise to be carried out in public, yet remain secret, whereas the standard version explains the facts to my satisfaction without stretching disbelief. Planes hit towers, towers burn, steel melts, towers collapse.
Hoagie wrote:
There’s another rather significant difference. Bill Gates could order the firing of anyone who worked at Microsoft; Fidel Castro could order the killing of anyone in Cuba. Whether the wealth percentage differences favor President Castro or Mr Gates is only part of the story; the power differential clearly favors the dictator.
Hoagie: Wow is the word, for sure. For you the suggestion of letting Bush tax cuts expire = ZOMG ITS LIKE SOVIET RUSSIA ALL OVER AGAIN!
I mean, really, there’s so many assumptions built into your shtick, and not much real content. Yes, the rich are glorious hardworking Americans who employ lots of people, so if you object to anything that you think unfairly impacts ordinary working folks, you hate America!
I mean, you really know how to work the subtlety, don’t you?
America’s upper class has certainly learned how to earn billions for themselves, except in recent years they’ve done it less and less often by employing Americans and making things, but by creating opaque financial tricks to pretend things have much more value than they do. That’s the house of cards we saw fall down in September 2008, one I see nothing from you about addressing.
It must feel lovely to say the right things and be patted on the head by those in power, and to have assovertincups and ropelight enthusiastically fellate you for saying the most boorish and asinine things, but where in all of this is there any semblance of a person genuinely approaching this country’s problems and trying to solve them? Instead, we get a big emotional cry of pity for the rich.
In fact, I haven’t heard much from any of you guys by the way of facts, or rebuttals that really address much.
I guess blubonnet is just easy pickin’s, eh?
BTW, blubonnet, why don’t you stop throwing these guys life preservers with your goddamned stupid 9/11 conspiracy theories?
Yeah, right. A LOT less “beyond” than masterminding 9/11, that’s for sure.
Miss Bush yet? Can we fix all the problems he caused before we let him back in to screw everything up again?
Dana, your guy got out just as everything finally imploded, and is responsible for most of our deficit spending. Yet I think you know it, and just don’t care anymore. Discuss!
Hey, Whistler, lay off blu, she may be nutty, but she’s earned a level of respect around here which entitles her to present her case. Read her comments or not, you don’t have to respond, it’s entirely up to you.
You don’t have to accept her nostrums, no one does, and she doesn’t count against your lot. She’s in a category of her own, blu has a special dispensation at CSPT, and over the years I’ve grown to kinda, sorta, like her, and admire her persistence. So I try to look out for her, she’s my favorite moonbat.
I know you’re a left-wing bomb thrower and you’re working to establish a robust persona, but think it over and maybe you can see your way to cut her a little slack. Just sayin’
Hey, Whistler, lay off blu, she may be nutty, but she’s earned a level of respect around here which entitles her to present her case.
She, for one, doesn’t go around referring to black Presidents as “usurpers”.
Mr. Henry Whistler, I don’t have a “shtick”. I have a belief foundation based on individual freedom. That means the right of every human being to earn and keep that what he produces. If you find that somehow repugnant, I’m sorry.
America’s upper class is no way better nor worse than any other country’s. You are working the angle that because America has (basically) free markets somehow our upper class is damaged or perhaps worse than the upper class of Cuba, North Korea, China or freeking France. I say “bullshit”. In a free market the upper class earns their money. Under Marxism, they steal it from others. If you don’t like the truth, change parties.
Also I would like to ask why it is necessary to revert to such nonsense as “fellate” and “boorish and asinine” ? You can’t have an argument without this kind of crap?
You then assert ” but where in all of this is there any semblance of a person genuinely approaching this country’s problems and trying to solve them?” Cute try buddy but I know your kind. If you want to solve our country’s problems, you won’t do it through communism. It always fails. We can do it with free people, free markets and freedom to produce and keep that which we produce. We can do it with fiscal responsibility, reduced spending and not wanting “something for nothing”. Kinda like you would run your own house or business. Call me crazy, but I like to be sound fiscally. That’s why I’m well off.
Furthermore those “opaque financial tricks” were just not the doing of a business or many businesses, but the collusion of business with government. Without government aquesence (?), none of that would be possible.
As a side note, since you are new to CSPT, I want you to be aware I have dyslexia and often my spelling is a tad mixed up. Pho accuses me of being drunk, but I’m not. I just see a tad differently than you do. Sorry.
Mr. Henry Whistler, I don’t have a “shtick”. I have a belief foundation based on individual freedom.
Except, of course, when it comes to Muslims, in which case killing them, torturing them or imprisoning them without trial is a good thing.
America’s upper class is no way better nor worse than any other country’s.
Meanwhile, back in reality…
In a free market the upper class earns their money.
Tell us again how Paris Hilton is such an asset to society.
We can do it with free people, free markets and freedom to produce and keep that which we produce. We can do it with fiscal responsibility, reduced spending and not wanting “something for nothing”.
Ideology rather than actual fact. If you want actual fact, go read Joseph Stiglitz’s “Freefall”, where he points out the reasons for the current economic problems and what Obama did wrong in trying to fix them. I recommend chapter 3.
Pho accuses me of being drunk, but I’m not.
Dyslexia doesn’t explain why your spelling and grammar varies, why every now and again you pump out incoherent rants with no logic and markedly more mistakes. i don’t have any problem with you posting drunk – it just gives me more opportunity to mock you.
BTW, blubonnet, why don’t you stop throwing these guys life preservers with your goddamned stupid 9/11 conspiracy ?theories says Phoe
Phoe, despite your knowledge on all else, your cowardice and ignorance on this topic is staggering. It is willful ignorance, based most likely on pride. What a disappointment you are. You have NOT looked at the evidence which keeps amassing. You have NOT looked at the violation of laws of physics and common sense which comes from the government. You do NOT understand how common a theme, false flag terrorism is throughout history. In this case, you have proven yourself, sadly, because I liked you otherwise, you’ve proven yourself to be an idiot. A fearful idiot. If you have the balls to match your arrogance, you’d take an honest look. You don’t have it in you. What have you looked at which I’ve brought here? Nothing. You are in the category of IGNORant, because you IGNORe. Idiot! That bums me out to say that. Darn, I liked you. Now, I have to lose respect for one on my side. Damn it.
Blu’s case is also unbelievable. Her alternative requires a major logistical exercise to be carried out in public, yet remain secret, whereas the standard version explains the facts to my satisfaction without stretching disbelief. Planes hit towers, towers burn, steel melts, towers collapse. says Phoe.
No, you all who ignore it, are the ones that keep the oblivion intact. It is beyond your capacity to fathom, therefore, in your little mind(s) it isn’t true. For God’s sake, Phoe, talk is cheap, look at the evidence I provide.
oops, that was Whistler who insulted me. I am exhausted. Damn, I don’t care. Phoe, I still am hanging on to a thread of hope for his intelligent pursuit of knowledge regarding the subject all Americans need to acknowledge. Not that Phoe cares per se, but I would like to respect him.
Hey, you all that are so sure that burning fuel melts steel, how are you planning to handle that as barbecues are lit everywhere around the country?
blubonnet: My intelligent pursuit of knowledge is exactly what crossed you out in my book, right along with dipsticks like Hoagie and the gang. The only thing worse about you is that you reflect on the left, although I take ropelight’s assurances with some degree of relief.
The different with lefties is that we tend to disregard and sideline our nuts. Republicans, on the other hand, can’t wait to elect them. You’re on the wrong team. Switch to some birther shite and these guys will be declaring you fit for a governorship.
HOAGIE: Good grief, you’re a ball of slogans slapped together with stupid glue. Let’s try dismantling some of your incoherent babble-
1. I ain’t new to CPST, and old-timey posters here probably recognize me by now. There was a fork in the road, and I split into two:) But I promise no games and back-and-forth sock puppet behavior.
2. “That means the right of every human being to earn and keep that what he produces. If you find that somehow repugnant, I’m sorry.” Well, besides being knee-jerk libertarian junk food, it’s also unconstitutional, considering that we have an income tax. You have a right to your earnings, but you likely didn’t earn all of it by yourself. You benefited from the American system, created and maintained by many before you, to be passed on to others after your selfish being is long gone. In return, you get a vote, and spending that our elected representatives decide on needs to be paid for. So instead of being a greedy infant pretending your paycheck is “all mine!!!”, try recognizing that you’re a bit of a cog in a much greater wheel, and that you don’t get to just pillage and run off with your goodies. You’ve got to give some back to the system you flourished in.
3. “America’s upper class is no way better nor worse than any other country’s.” Well, besides this being a near logical impossibility, as some must be better than others, it’s also a straw man, having little to do with anything I’ve said.
4. “You can’t have an argument without this kind of crap?” Obviously I have plenty of argument, besides that. What, you can’t argue without grabbing your knee and whining because I saided a swear? Really, you are an infant.
5. “If you want to solve our country’s problems, you won’t do it through communism.” See, it’s things like that that tell me you’re not very bright. I didn’t suggest communism. You’re like a child convinced that there’s only ice and fog, with nothing in between, except not even a child could be so dim. Again, raising taxes, especially to previously acceptable levels that allowed massive wealth to be gained (see: the 90′s), isn’t communism. And I really don’t like being lectured to by people too uneducated to tell the difference.
6. “We can do it with fiscal responsibility, reduced spending and not wanting “something for nothing”.” This is mostly what I just finished telling Dana! Wanting something for nothing is our nation’s problem…we want massive defense spending and a good social safety net, but we don’t want to pay for them! Fortunately, our nation may be developing some sanity on defense spending, but I say that very cautiously. Cutting our Pentagon bill in half would still leave us the world leader in military spending, but it would send most of your buddies here into tailspins of rampant paranoia. Since I don’t know you well enough, and since you spout such generic libertarian claptrap, I leave open the possibility that you might be one of those who actually does favor defense cuts. Feel free to answer.
7. “Call me crazy, but I like to be sound fiscally. That’s why I’m well off.” Many liberals could say the same thing. Tell me, what did you think of the Bush credit card years, when our massive deficits were built up? Have you ever paid off a massive credit card? Tell me, did you do it by paying the minimum payment, or did you actually sacrifice a bit and pony up higher payments each month to bring the balance down? If so, then how come this is so difficult for you to recognize that the American public must do the same if it expects to manage its financial obligations?
8. “Furthermore those “opaque financial tricks” were just not the doing of a business or many businesses, but the collusion of business with government. Without government aquesence (?), none of that would be possible.”
Without government relaxing regulation, it wouldn’t have been possible. Or are you the history-rewriting type?
Really, this is the problem: you just running off at the mouth without understanding much of anything outside your own skull and personal experience. I’ll let you know now that I was cracking the thin-shelled skulls of wet libertarians, the kind who scream about government tyranny yet gladly usher in private tyranny, ten years ago. Your philosophy is cheap and shallow, and doesn’t extend much further than whimpering when you see a chunk taken out of your paycheck and never bothering to understand why.
Such ways will never heal this country.
I’m listening to science, not you. Any intelligent person that has compared the two perspectives, sees that which is obvious. You don’t. Therefore you are an idiot. You buy the Bushit. Your mind is in the kiddie pool. My friends are scientists. They know I’m right. Go play in the kiddie pool, where your mind is. I’ve been studying this thing for years. It is nothing I came to lightly. You however have dismissed it lightly, as well as your own capacity for objectivity. It isn’t worth sharing a conversation with such a simple mind as yours. Bye.
AND, Winston, what have you looked at which I have provided. The evidence is massive. Fool!
You have NOT looked at the violation of laws of physics and common sense which comes from the government. You do NOT understand how common a theme, false flag terrorism is throughout history. In this case, you have proven yourself, sadly, because I liked you otherwise, you’ve proven yourself to be an idiot. A fearful idiot. If you have the balls to match your arrogance, you’d take an honest look.
Uh-huh.
I gave up on you, blu, when you admitted that there was nothing that could falsify your theory to you. That’s the sure sign of pseudo-science and conspiracy theory paranoia.
blubonnet: I honestly don’t care what junk-science peddlers say. Again, it’s all the same reason I violently stick a fork in junk-science peddling rightwingers. I don’t care when you babble about “facts” and “evidence” because your head is too broken to actually consider what those things mean and what could falsify your assertions.
I’m down with real science, period. Real journals, real research, real methodology. You’ve got your conclusion and you’ll stick whatever it takes in the gap to fill it. No wonder ropelight likes you, you’ve got the same disabled sense of objectivity as well as making an easy foil. You’ve got anosognosia, the anti-thesis of wisdom…your actual scientific understanding is so limited, you’re not even capable of understanding how limited it is. You don’t approach your own beliefs with any skepticism, and thus everything that follows is corrupt.
Of course, by my own reasoning, I must accept that I could be wrong about this as well, but you’ve never given the goods, and neither has any bullshit “Truther.” And I used to date a truther, who just shut down and stomped off angry when I picked apart her shoddy crap. And here you are, reduced to claiming I, of all people, could swallow something the Bush administration told me. I don’t swallow *anything* they told me, because they were constantly lying and I understood that quite well. But that doesn’t mean that you and your gang of steadily diminishing dishonest twats should gain credibility. If you told me Dick Cheney had an evil alien parasite controlling his brain, I might find the theory capable of explaining a few of his decisions, but refusing to believe such an accusation would not indicate any degree of allegiance or reduced skepticism towards Cheney.
This is the truth. Let’s watch it bounce right off your thick skull!
Republican financial advice: http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2010/06/ask-the-economist.html
blu, starting to process your info today…
blu, that first link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ9BofDUXv0) has a lot of nonsense in it, such as the owner of the building taking out terrorism insurance… The towers had been attacked already, and were a well-known target for terrorism. That means nothing.
But it’s the first time I saw Building 7 fall. I knew about it, and assumed it was from fire, but it was plainly a demolition. Hard to believe it could have been set up within hours of the other disasters. Impossible, maybe. It would take a full evacuation of the workers in the building, the arrival of dozens of demo experts with tons of equipment and tens of tons of explosive. Possible, I guess.
As for Guliani not using his protected office there, well the building was on fire.
The fact that lots of SEC records were lost is far more compelling. If I’d believe in a conspiracy, I’d believe it was controlled by people that wanted the wars we have. And I’d believe that the missing billions that Rumsfeld was going to have to explain were a part of it.
Yeah, I guess I have to look further. Building 7 had a couple piddling little fires. Not the multi-floor roast the towers had.
As for this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGI5BmNd7AE&feature=related
I think the story being highlighted here is, did the Pentagon flight succeed in its attack, or was it shot down. I think. I don’t think it really matters whether or not an order was given, and whether or not we shot it down. The terrorists forced the issue.
I’d actually be surprised if the top of the Pentagon and the White House weren’t bristling with Phalanx gun systems, and perhaps a Patriot launcher. I’d also be surprised if they ever publicly admitted to something like that.
The pilots link is very deep. I’ll browse some more. The measured speed of the twin tower aircraft is interesting, because it seems to suggest that the aircraft were impossible to fly at that speed. But it’s pretty clear two airplanes hit the towers. It’s like arguing the JFK assassination and debating whether it’s possible bullets could enter his body, and where they entered. Plainly, that happened.
I think it’s more than likely the speed estimates were off. Amateurs would be sure to fly such airplanes incorrectly, and I believe they could have accidentally ripped the wings off or missed their targets… but they didn’t. It’s on film. People saw it happen.
I could spend a couple hours with anybody and a good flight simulator and teach them to fly a plane into a specific, large ground target. I don’t think that part is unbelievable.
The black box data that suggested Flight 93′s flight deck door was never opened in flight is intriguing. I’ll have to dig more.
Obama’s Fraud in the Gulf:
The following is from AJ Strata’s The Strata-Sphere
July 1, 2010
“Congressional Report On Obama’s Gulf Oil Incompetence”
“More later as I digest all this, but Darrell Issa has released a congressional report on the Gulf oil disaster(without the Dems who are shuddering at facing the incompetence of their ‘hope & change’ leader). It is very damning. It discusses a fraudulent hoax being played on the American people:
The White House blog details a number of assets deployed in the region to combat the spill. This includes vessels, boom, and dispersant. The number of assets claimed, however, does not appear to match what is actually in the field. Parish officials maintain that the thousands of vessels cited in the blog are non-existent. One senior official refers to them as “phantom assets.” When asked to elaborate, he explained that when he asks the federal government to provide the location of the assets, it either refuses or cannot do so. Daily helicopter search grids performed by the Parish sheriff’s department confirm to him that very few of the assets claimed are deployed.
This is corroborated by Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, who shared a similar story with investigators. BP and Coast Guard provided Mr. Nungesser with a map of the Gulf allegedly pinpointing the exact locations of 140 skimmers cleaning up oil. Sensing that the chart may have been somewhat inaccurate, Mr. Nungesser requested a flyover of the assets for verification. After three cancelled trips, officials admitted to Mr. Nungesser that only 31 of the 140 skimmers were ever deployed. The rest were sitting at the docks. According to Mr. Nungesser, the chart appeared to have been fabricated.
Not coincidentally, the liberal news outlet PBS is also complaining about a media blackout by the Obama administration on the containment and clean up efforts…”
“We need to start being responsible and be willing to pay for the services we want. That’s Democrats being responsible. ”
No the Demo version as they admit, and just ask Perry – is getting others to pay for the services you want, as in prospectively lowered health insurance premiums based on coercing young people to underwrite the health care costs of fat, liberal, type two diabetics.
DNW, you do know that young, healthy people eventually turn into old, unhealthy people, right? And that when they do, they’d like to not be set adrift on an ice floe?
Which one is DNW? http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/06/a_taxonomy_of_libertarians.php
I suggest it’s More Libertarian than Thou. Or The Island.
Naggy, liberals turn into old, fat, unhealthy, greedy geezers looking to pass the wages of sin off on the healthy young and the responsible elderly who’ve gotten right with the Lord, taken care of themselves, maintained a positive attitude, avoided excess, and prepared for their golden years.
Liberals are a liability on the Republic, while conservatives form the solid foundation of good government. They take personal responsibility for themselves and their families, they promote the common good, and they uphold the rule of law. They also keep their hands out of other peoples’ pockets.
If liberals would get off their fat, lazy, self-indulgent, short-sighted, and greedy rear ends and earn their daily bread, instead of organizing to steal the bread of others, they too might one day become happy and prosperous, self-actualizing, and productive citizens, instead of two-faced liars, racists, bigots, insufferable boors, and grasping parasites.
Any intelligent person can see you’re so full of shit based on how you answered the answered the question of why Bushco didn’t plant WMDs in Iraq to make their invasion justified! Planting a few WMDs would have been magnitudes easier … and look at your complete non-answer above.
Fact: You’re nuts.
hey blu,
we melt steel everyday at our company. with a spark from a brass wire in a tank of water. no kidding.
steel is governed by the rules in nature and those laws are static. this is not unlike the “natural moral laws” that are in place for human beings in that they dont vary from day to day, culture to culture or whim to whim. we might not percieve these correctly in any given time but the laws exist solidly nevertheless.
marxism is a good example of citing “scientific” reasons in relativistic ways. *oxymoronic*
you see, this explains why blu (and liberals) can believe what they do. liberal ideology feels free to change any law they want, anytime, to support their own ideas. be it the laws of nature or the laws of divine sovereignty.
it looks a lot like ignorance wrapped up in arrogance.
Your point being what, that young healthy republicans are the cause of the youthful oral (and other) incontinence and intemperance of your political peers, and that the young and healthy are therefore responsible for hauling your water in old age as you descend into self-induced fleshy debility?
Sometime ago, you, or one of your collectivist clones here, wrote that they didn’t believe that people should be “punished” [I bracket the term here in order to establish the liberal sense of the word and not to offer it as a direct quote] for the effects of their “bad” choices.
Now if you are talking about someone who took a degree in mechanical engineering, eventually losing their work to an off shore producer, then I think most people would rightly have some sympathy with the man.
But when it comes to people who are behaviorally self-destructive, or seriously neurotic like the fish boy or the NZ troll, its quite another matter: though modern liberals don’t actually think so.
Why go to all that trouble for an old lefty? Or are you speaking metaphorically about all old people? If so, you are off on another topic.
Let’s cut to the chase Nan: I would much rather let you die from the results of your own bad behavior than become a slave to your dysfunctions. In fact, your attempt to turn me, or anyone else into one, places you quite beyond the moral pale.
The liberal’s notion of a good society: you on a dialysis machine eating donuts while assovertincups is peddling a generator night and day in order to keep it going.
You are viewing the matter through an obsolete moral lens, as if people were self-responsible moral agents and individuals, rather than elements of a greater whole destined to be directed through time by the expert ministrations of the bureaucrat class.
Hey, Whistler, care to “..violently stick a fork in some junk-science peddling” left-wing academic posers?
Here’s your opportunity. You say you’re “…down with real science, period. Real journals, real research, real methodology.”
Well, you’ve already talked the talk, now have a look at the reasoning behind the decision to clear Michael Mann of wrongdoing, and we’ll see for ourselves if you willing to walk the walk.
———–
“Penn State Clears Hockey-Stick Mann” (edited for emphasis)
“A little whitewash and the Pennsylvania taxpayer connection to Climategate has disappeared. At least that’s what the Penn State University administrators are hoping.
Penn State, which uses state appropriations for about 10 percent of its $2.5 billion budget, cleared Dr. Michael Mann of any scientific misconduct relating to the scandal.
Mann heads the university’s Earth System Science Center.
Climategate occurred when emails were leaked last November from the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climatic Research Centre in the United Kingdom that showed leading climate researchers to have played tricks with data and conspired to stifle dissenters regarding the global warming catastrophe story.
Mann was one of those tricksters most notably by leaving out data points in his infamous “hockey stick” graph which was widely claimed to have proved that earth temperatures were drastically increasing. The graph is something that has been scaring children, Oprah viewers and Democrats for a decade.
Anyway, Penn State, touching up the spots it missed in February , HAS FOUND MANN DID NOTHING WRONG.
The reasons it cited for coming to this conclusion were — what you are about to read is not a joke remember –
*** “This level of success in proposing research, and obtaining funding to conduct it, clearly places Mann among the most respected scientists in his field” and “Had Dr. Mann’s conduct been outside the range of accepted practices, it would have been impossible for him to receive so many awards”***
(The article appears on The Blog at billlawrenceonline.com)
Folks, over 15,000 scientists had signed a petition against Bush because of his twisting of science. “Science” from Bush is crap. NIST, the organization that did the study has been called out in public on inconsistencies with actual science and has had to concede.
The science required to access what took place on that day regarding structure are architects and engineers. At this point the present number is 1200+. There would be more but it takes scrutinizing to make sure that those who claim the title are valid, so it isn’t growing as fast as those that are awakening. And repeating myself, as I often have to, many for fear of losing a job opportunity of the government are fearful of signing.
Phoe, I tried to see validity in the government version of that day, and to be honest, it seemed too odd, and any intelligent person, that is HONESTLY OBJECTIVE has no choice but to raise their eyebrows. Frankly, I’d thought you were the most intelligent one around here. Maybe it’s that you are too busy to look at both sides. I have. The government conspiracy theory does not hold weight. Either, you believe in the laws of physics or you believe the government. It’s laughable. You, Phoe have offered NIST’s perspective. I consider that unacceptable. So, you can’t accuse me of being unwilling to consider another perspective. Besides that the scores of other aspects of it are even more convincing the government is lying.
HOW ABOUT THE FACT THAT MOST OF THE 911 COMMISSION SAID IT WAS A WHITE WASH? They were lied to over and over, denied information they asked for, also told “don’t go there” when real research was attempted. Zeilikow (not sure if I spelled that right) oversaw the process, and by the way, Phoe, he was a PNAC signatory.
For those that don’t know it, maybe Phoe knows, a statement in the Project for the New American Century, the plan to take over the middle east, a statement in it said: “What is needed to get the public to go along with this war is a new Pearl Harbor”. Who around here have actually researched FALSE FLAG OPERATION and that which has happened in US history?
The firefighters’ words! They have called the final report garbage, those that were there. There are pictures from satellites showing the debris pile, clear into DECEMBER of it still red hot. THIS is an exotic material. The Pentagon’s nano-thermite was irrefutably present all over the city. EVERY characteristic of explosives existed in those with the proper educational background to access it.
There was a firefighters magazine that also reported, “The official explanation is bunk”. I’ve brought the link before, but like the dozens of links with evidence, most here ignore them. Firefighters know about fires. I would hope that this peaks your interest. I’d like you to hear a firefighter that started FIREFIGHTERS FOR 911 TRUTH. I will bring his short speech. He has stated, that he knows that there are many many more firefighters that disbelieve the government, but for fear of job loss, they keep their mouth shut.
DNW: “I would much rather let you die from the results of your own bad behavior…”
You hate the idea of insurance, or welfare, or nationalized health care because it doesn’t give you the opportunity to gloat as the losers in your game fall. You’re furious that you don’t get to judge who does and doesn’t receive another crust of bread or critical treatment. You want to point and laugh and feel good about yourself that you were so wise and clever to be born into a privileged class in a privileged country. Without the serfs begging and dying at your door, how else can you feel like a lord?
You’re a murderer, at heart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uor8NhUr_90
Listen to a firefighter’s explanation of protocol on fire investigation. Guess what? NIST did not even test for explosives when every characteristic of explosives was present.
The Bush administration went out of their way to NOT have any investigation.
Yeah, DNW, I resemble that. I remember back when it was generally considered shameful to take a government check. But, that’s long ago and far behind us now.
Ironically, I’m the guy who once argued that bureaucracy was the touchstone of civilization. My committee directors thought I was nuts, and suggested I focus my attention on a less controversial topic. Yet, I can still make a pretty good case, maybe not entirely persuasive, but enough of one to get my foot in the door.
blu just cannot decide if Bush is an Einsteinian genius, or a Forrest Gumpish dolt.
Like, I have done, looked into both versions, you all owe it to yourself, and humanity to be informed on both perspectives. Here is a documentary that WILL hold your attention if you have an open and discerning mind. PLEASE watch it. I have come to feel a bond with those here, despite my anger, frustration and occasional foul words, and would so love for you all to see this, what I’ve come to know.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2296490368603788739#
This is long, but an in depth presentation.
http://www2.ae911truth.org/flashmov12.htm
Now that the 10 percent tax on all tanning salons has gone into effect, I expect most of the tanning salons will lose income and many of them will go out of business as they become unprofitable. More unemployment and destruction of small business as a direct result of Democrat meddling.
“Not a dime more tax for the bottom 95 percent” didn’t actually mean that, obviously.
Oh, and that new 10 percent tax on top of all other taxes is part of the ObamaCare package.
Isn’t a tax on tanning salons a racist tax?
Colored people don’t use tanning salons as far as I’m aware, certainly not for cosmetic reasons. My perception is that the clients of tanning salons are overwhelmingly white.
I don’t know about the possible therapeutic uses, but wouldn’t that be exempt from taxation as a medical expense?
ropelight: Your first mistake was in listing two carefully selected quotes as the only reasons Mann was cleared, and omitting the fact that there has been no evidence found of wrongdoing. Your third was laying down the gauntlet in a manner so that I am measured by whether or not I produce the “correct” answer that you’ve already decided upon.
This should help clear up the problem for anybody reading who does actually care about scientific inquiry.
So once again, from the right, we have lecturing about standards from those who have none. The only place Mann has been indicted is in the sphere of Fox News and the right-o-sphere, two places where the facts never, ever matter. Just like blubonnet, you have your conclusion, and nothing, absolutely nothing, will ameliorate your assertions. Those of us who actually do place science first in our pursuit of what can be objectively known don’t take you seriously because you aren’t serious.
What you are is a party hack, one from a party that depends on large sums of cash from industries that pollute our earth, a party essentially paid to say whatever it takes to try to keep the bottom line healthy for those who mar our environment. What a godsend to them that they can get morons like you to do it for free.
The truth is, you don’t care what was in that report because it didn’t reach the conclusion you wanted. And you obviously don’t care about the health of the earth you presumably intend to leave for future generations. In the end, you’re a cancer cell, trying to replicate your malignance with no regard for the fact that you’re killing the host.
Michael Mann is innocent, his science is good. You’re guilty and your science blows.
Asosognosia. How I wish that word were shorter and catchier. Clearly you, like blu, are too dim to even begin to understand how limited your understanding is. I, on the other hand, respect my limits, and know full well that Michael Mann is smarter than either of us, and that people even smarter than him have reviewed his work and found it to be sound, via standards that themselves are so rigorous that they are beyond the ability of most laypeople to appreciate.
Objectively, the case is closed until evidence of wrongdoing is produced. Like blu, you’re so sure things couldn’t be one way, but you’ve got no real case of your own to present. You’re trying to find some chink in the armor of others, but if the tables were turned on you, you’d melt into goo.
That’s truth. Now let’s watch that bounce off your thick skull, and we can play a game of imbecile tennis between you and blu!
Henry whistler thinks he is smarter than 15000 scientists. Those are scientists calling BS on Bush “science”.
Michael Mann’s “science” which eliminated all sorts of known data and depended on a single tree to produce his scientifically disproven hockey stick is good? Are you kidding me?
You seem to have missed the point, Whistler.
I asked you to “…have a look at the reasoning behind the decision to clear Michael Mann of wrongdoing…” Only that and nothing more.
Are you capable of addressing the point, or are you going to throw up another smokescreen?
So, far you haven’t quite measured up, but you might be confused, so I’ll give you another chance,
Mr “I’m down with real science, period. Real journals, real research, real methodology.”
[released from moderation - pH]
Michael Mann’s “science” which eliminated all sorts of known data and depended on a single tree to produce his scientifically disproven hockey stick is good?
PB is lying. Yet again.
Scientific American:
The National Acadamy of Science endorses Mann’s science. It has since been confrimed with other analyses, using different methods.
Spanked again, liar.
You’re nuts in the head. I hate insurance? No. I hate paying for yours so you can lounge and revel in your dysfunction. It’s apparently the only “freedom” you lefties understand.
No, let me clear this up for you further, comrade.
This ain’t about you and your loser status and its making me feel good by comparison. I don’t even notice when another atheist loon curses God and propels itself backwards off of some bell tower into eternal nothingness.
What it is about, is not being dragged ever deeper into a bad secular political bargain with self-destructive nihilist assholes like you.
I’d just rather, on average and opting for liberty for all, let you crash yourself headlong into a brick wall, than waste my life trying to persuade you to sober up; especially when I have more important things to do than sit on a curbstone with you, holding your hand and begging you to stop as you dose yourself into welcome oblivion.
It makes you feel so good you just gotta do it no matter what the eventual cost? Then go right ahead. Kiss the fish. Just don’t expect me to underwrite it.
If you are not fit for the free life, and you apparently admit that you and your kind are not, then go to or start an institution where you can voluntarily receive the kind of direction and freedom from responsibility you want.
I have other things to do, other people to care about and support. It fills my time pretty well. But they are also people you wish to steal from by using the power of the state to forcibly re-direct the benefits of my private efforts from them, to you, by transforming the entire world into a locked hothouse set just right for yourself.
Whatever else that bizarre taste of yours makes you, it makes you the thief and murderer chump; and an enemy of liberty and of free men and women everywhere, to boot.
i love how they discredit the past, except when they want to manipulate the future with their own version of it.
how “scientific” of them. lol
ropelight: wow, you just didn’t bother to read anything I wrote, did you? Just repeat yourself and pat yourself on the back, eh?
You took two selective quotes, you didn’t offer “the reasoning” behind the decision. Yes, Mann’s sterling career was taken into account…which means that his record was looked at, and found, time and time again, to meet the highest standards by the best scientists in his field, repeatedly.
And you excluded the other fact, that there was no evidence of your charges, that Mann created bunk data.
So if you’re just going to blow off everything I write and do the same stupid thing twice, you’re just indicating that you’re another broken-headed junk science junkie from the right, just like the rest. Like I said, you’re too stupid to even recognize how stupid you are. You have no barometer by which to measure your success or failure, except to the degree that it pleases your rightwing friends.
Feel free to move the conversation forward, but I know you’re not capable.
Whistler, you accuse me of your own shortcomings.
I did read your comment and the information at the link you provided. It’s you who haven’t bothered to read my initial comment, or to grasp that the quotes you accuse me of selecting weren’t selected by me at all, but by the author of the article.
If you’d look before you make a fool of yourself again, you’d see the reasons given for exonerating Michael Man are within the article, inside the extended quotation marks. Actually, they’re quotes from Penn State, quoted by the author, Bill Lawrence, and included in my comment. I didn’t select them.
Now, it was you who bragged about your “…intelligent pursuit of knowledge,” and your intention to “…violently stick a fork in junk-science peddling rightwingers.” Then you went so far as to claim you were, “…down with real science, period. Real journals, real research, real methodology.” Wow. You sure talk big.
I took your use of street slang and the “period” to indicate you really, really, do mean what you say, or want readers to think so, and so I offered you an opportunity to demonstrate that your commitment to “real science” extended to junk-science peddling left-wingers as well.
I wanted to find out if you were committed to science or to left wing idiocy. So I asked your opinion of the logic behind Penn State’s exoneration of Michael Mann.
Twice now, you’ve blustered and clucked, and hurled insults, but failed to address the issue head-on.
It’s not all that difficult: I wrote, “Well, you’ve already talked the talk, now have a look at the reasoning behind the decision to clear Michael Mann of wrongdoing, and we’ll see for ourselves if you(‘re) willing to walk the walk.”
You failed the first time, so I gave you another chance and you punted again, started called names and then threw in a few more insults to show what a tough guy you are.
So far, I’m not impressed, I’ve encountered loud mouth jerks before. So, if smokescreens, and bluster are the best you can do, well, then, you’ve identified yourself. But, don’t feel bad, for some strange reason Dana tolerates your ilk. You can be second banana to Phoney.
Or, are you actually capable of moving the conversation forward? Last chance.
You’re nuts in the head. I hate insurance? No. I hate paying for yours so you can lounge and revel in your dysfunction. It’s apparently the only “freedom” you lefties understand.
says DNW, yet the Southern states where Conservatism is highest, so is the unemplyment. Education is highest in the bluer states, D umb Nit Wit
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE57344D20090804
D stands for Dumb
N stands for Nit
W stands for Wit
Why are job losses so high in those Conservative Southern states? Because the idiot Republican Conservatives keep voting in favor of big business that so often hire those that are NOT Americans. Yet when we complain, we’re “unAmerican”.
DNW is very creative when it comes to verbose, elaborate, eloquent insults. Substance, usually zero. Oh, now he is going to call me nuts, because I believe in physics, and don’t believe the government version of 9-11-01. Here it comes. I don’t give a rat’s ass though. I don’t respect him enough to care.
ropelight: As I figured. Let’s prove you’re stuck with nothing left to do but lie.
“I did read your comment and the information at the link you provided.”
You’ve yet to say a single thing that would signify this.
“It’s you who haven’t bothered to read my initial comment, or to grasp that the quotes you accuse me of selecting weren’t selected by me at all, but by the author of the article.”
You cited a shitty rightwing rant with two quotes, and asked me what I thought of the reasoning behind the dismissal. If you didn’t intend those two selective quotes to be representative, then why did you post them?
“If you’d look before you make a fool of yourself again, you’d see the reasons given for exonerating Michael Man are within the article, inside the extended quotation marks. Actually, they’re quotes from Penn State, quoted by the author, Bill Lawrence, and included in my comment. I didn’t select them.”
At this point, you’re just babbling. None of this is even in dispute.
“…I offered you an opportunity to demonstrate that your commitment to “real science” extended to junk-science peddling left-wingers as well.”
No, you offered me a chance to agree with something really stupid that an idiot rightwinger wrote. If I failed, I no real scientific thinker!!!
But, of course, the piece you selected utilized very selective quotes and didn’t even attempt to portray the overall, plentiful quantity of reasons given to exonerate Mann.
I understand straw men allow you to persist in your delusions, but that doesn’t mean actual intelligent people need to pay attention to them.
Regarding the reasoning in the actual, selected quotes, no, they wouldn’t stand on their own…that’s why there’s much, much more to the report than you or the rightwing site you cite want to talk about.
“You failed the first time,”
You’ve yet to say a single thing to back this up. You just keep repeating your original question. Because, of course, you just can’t get it through your head that your citation isn’t self-evident.
“…so I gave you another chance”
Oh, thank you! I got it right the first time. Now we’re just dealing with your inability to recognize you’ve been dunked.
“…and you punted again, started called names and then threw in a few more insults to show what a tough guy you are.”
Of course, I pointed out you weren’t really responding to anything I said, and labeled you appropriately. If you don’t feel you’re an idiot, now would be the time to start proving it.
“So far, I’m not impressed, I’ve encountered loud mouth jerks before.”
I’ve encountered wingers who think they have a gotcha, get it shoved up their arse, and yet just keep babbling without ever admitting error before. It simply doesn’t matter how extensively I demonstrate you’re wrong and arguing dishonestly, you’re just going to keep doing it.
“So, if smokescreens, and bluster are the best you can do, well, then, you’ve identified yourself.”
Naturally, accuse me of what you’re doing. What did you say that was new or relevant? Nothing.
“Or, are you actually capable of moving the conversation forward? Last chance.”
Literally repeating the same things I say to you. Last chance? To agree with you, right? Or else what? You’ll take your toys and go home? You laid down a challenge and I blew it up. I don’t need reassurance from you to know this, and I know you won’t admit error. So what are your choices? Keep repeating yourself? Keep getting humiliated? Keep confronting the fact that you can’t handle anything but an echo chamber? Of course you’re about to leave the debate, because you’ve got nothing.
no argument there, DNW is KING.
physics? you believe in physics? i suggest you need a physic. coz your full of shit. (i had to folks , blu left herself wide open for that…):)
here it is folks, the part where they “dont care” , dont give rats asses, or are in any way botherered…..they dont care so much they have to go out of their way to make sure we know how much they dont care….
whistler,
ok dude. we get it. its you and al gore.
ahhhh, everyone just loves a smug liberal ideologue, don’t they?.
Since ropelight is incapable of intellectual honesty, here’s some more from the report:
assovertincups: If you have nothing to contribute but more idiotic pre-baked lines…wait, what am I saying “if” for? Of course you don’t.
assovertincups thinks he’s smarter than 15000scientists too. Maybe just ass is a better name for him.
The government never lies, does it?
I’ve been trying to post a response to Whistler for the last hour and a half. Is anyone else having problems tonight?
My short comment above posted, but when I tried to submit my response to Whistler I got the same old error message.
If this note posts correctly, I try the longer comment for the 5th or 6th time.
Whistler, don’t get so testy. You’re all over the place. I never said you were required to agree with the logic of Penn State’s published reasoning for their exoneration of Mann. That wouldn’t be fair or scientific. Heck, it wouldn’t even be very useful either.
I asked you specifically “…to have a look at the reasoning behind the decision to clear Michael Mann of wrongdoing…” and say what you think of the logical basis for that decision.
It’s really not all that difficult if you don’t let emotion get in the way. So, calm down and think it over. Read Penn State’s reasons and decide if you think their conclusion (exoneration) follows logically.
That ought to be a simple task for a bright guy like you who’s involved in the “…intelligent pursuit of knowledge.”
One who says he intends to “…violently stick a fork in junk-science peddling rightwingers.”
A guy who’s “…down with real science, period. Real journals, real research, real methodology.”
After all that braggadocio, you’ve now failed three times in succession to back it up with anything more than tap dance and double talk, plus the usual smokescreens, name calling, and the superfluous insults. Which doesn’t amount to much at all. Unimpressive, like I said.
PS: I did read your comment and the article at your link, the one by Joseph Romm. I even took notes in anticipation of your response.
If you want proof, here’s an excerpt from Romm’s article: When told that the first three allegations against Dr Mann were dismissed at the inquiry state of the RA-10 process, Dr Lindzen’s response was: “It’s throughly amazing. I mean these are issues that he stated in the emails. I’m wondering what’s going on.”
Henry Whistler, you cannot honestly call yourself a Progressive unless you have some respect for Project Censored, the organization that DOES cover what the propaganda machine, run by defense industry reps, won’t. This is the fellow that runs Project Censored.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTxOMWqrCJ4&feature=player_embedded#!
Same with Phoe!
ropelight: Your inability to read my simple answers is stunning. You just keep telling me I’m not answering the question. I’ve answered it already. I’ve said the two bits you select don’t merit enough evidence by themselves. But…
…listen carefully…
…they aren’t the sum of the case for Mann’s innocence.
Great, you took notes. Great, you cut and pasted a paragraph. When will you, ropelight, give in to the bald truth and admit you really don’t have a leg to stand on here. The report is thorough. Wide-ranging. And backed up with reams of data. You don’t have proof of anything.
Michael Mann is exonerated.
Two juicy lines you can misinterpret from a 19 page report don’t mean squat. Grow up and quit yapping, “ANSWER THE QUESTION WHISTLER!” I answered it, come back at me with some actual thought or do us all a favor and move on already.
blubonnet: You obviously know as much about progressivism as you do science: next to nothing.
Really, there’s a point where people are so willfully broken and stubborn that the facts simply don’t matter. You goons have 1001 ways that “IT JUST COULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED THE WAY THEY SAID IT DID!” But you never have any evidence for an actual case or sequence of events of your own that we can all shoot holes through. You never get to be proven wrong.
Really, everybody here who’s ever read Iowa Liberal knows that we’ve never spared the Bush administration the slightest. If I had the slightest suspicion that Bush and co. were guilty of something here, I’d be all over that shit.
The kind of operation “truthers” describe simply isn’t possible. The towers were not rigged with explosives. They were hit by something few had envisioned as a missile, the passenger plane.
The scientific community has been in accord on 9/11. Like with climate change or intelligent design, or any field of science that challenges our economic or religious incentives, you have a few loudmouth cranks who make the most of some outlier data and then bond together into a persecution club. “Oh, those evil scientists just don’t want to hear the truth!”
What’s missing from people like you and ropelight is that fundamental intellectual honesty, that ability to open your throat to the “enemy” and agree on some ground rules of argumentation. By agreeing to hew to the best data and the soundest logic, you allow for the possibility that you might be wrong.
I allow for the possibility I might be wrong. I’m very concerned about being foolish because to be distant from the truth is to be distant from ultimate salvation, wherever one finds it. I could not bear the thought that 9/11 was actually a conspiracy and I’d been fooled along, and that I could have figured it out if only I’d applied a little more effort into doing things right.
But I feel no such fear. The tipping point for the evidence hasn’t been reached. It’s not even close. And there’s too much evidence that you’re a gang of ax-grinders. The next “stunning fact” from you carries about much weight as what I read in the tabloids. And the people I truly respect for their great achievements in science surely aren’t wasting their time with second (and third) rate bullshit.
I guess you, Henry Whistler are smarter than 60 aeronautical engineers, many of whom are from NASA too. You imbecile. You have NOTHING to counter my arguments. Science on the matter keeps growing. You are an idiot, and an embarrassment to actual Progressives. Please crawl back under your rock!
Even my Conservative friends are now on the same page as I am. They try to pretend, although they argued with me for a long time, they try to pretend that they knew it all along, because, once you allow your mind to bypass the denial, the obviousness is shameful than anyone could deny it.
The evidence of demolition is screamingly apparent.
Like one of those fools in a crisis situation, you’d be one that would be crying hysterically, “NO-NO-NO” while sobbing in denial, denying that which is before your eyes. Worthless member of humanity, you are. Objectivity……..score….ZERO!!!!!!
You have no facts. NIST has been shown over and over to be lying. They have even been humiliated in a room full of physicists while trying to explain the unexplainable (except for explosives). All characteristics of explosives are present by engineers statements. It is even published, scrutinized by vigorous peer-review into a prestigious Physics journal. NIST did not even test for explosives. You Godforsaken asshole!
Henry Whistler has a stench of a fake Progressive and a shill.
Whistler, your pathetic argument is up against guys like the following, only there are hundreds of them. Don’t even try. Your blithering is all that can come of challenging the minds of folks like this…
Larry L. Erickson, BS Aeronautical Eng, MS Aeronautical Eng, PhD Eng Mechanics – Retired NASA Aerospace Engineer and Research Scientist. Conducted research in the fields of structural dynamics, aerodynamics, aeroelasticity and flutter. Recipient of NASA’s Aerodynamics Division Researcher-of-the-Year Award. 33-year NASA career. Member, American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics. Instructor, Physics and Aerospace Engineering, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo 1998 – present. Author and co-author of several scientific papers on aerodynamic analysis. Contributing author to Applied Computational Aerodynamics (1990).
* Statement in support of Architects and Engineers petition:
“Serious technical investigations by experts seem to be lacking from the official explanations.”
http://www.ae911truth.org
[released from moderation - pH]
And so you give me the same pre-baked cut-and-paste screed, like a Chatty Cathy doll. “ZOMG I HAS DEEZ SCIENTISTS YOU ARE IN DENIAL!!!”
If you won’t bother to actually grapple with what I said, you can go screw yourself. I’m not a sucker to be converted. You’re peddling your conspiracy theory, and the hallmark of a conspiracy theory is that there is no proof for the alternative you propose.
You’ll never have a piece of paper or a recording or a videotape of anything that would stand up as evidence in court or even lead to an indictment. I know of lots of legitimate stories that don’t make it to that level either that still have more independent verification than your assertion that the Bush WH was in any way connected.
You’re simply unreliable. If you tell me something about physics, you probably got it wrong. If you’re making a statement of fact, you’re probably basing it on bullshit grapevine nonsense. Like creationists and other junk science quacks, you’ve always got a steady stream of new claims somebody has to wade through and debunk, but it never ends. “Truthers” never concede error, and by the time they give up on one attack they’ve got another one they pivot over to. Argue with them long enough, and you’ll get back to the first argument again. It’s a never-ending loop of stupid.
So go have a drink with ropelight. He just knows Mann is guilty!
And here’s a counter-site for your junky bullshit site:
http://www.ae911truth.info/tiki-index.php
“The Top 10 Boneheaded Mistakes made by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth” is a good one. And that’s the core of it: some people, even really educated ones, are just plain boneheads with baggage. And when you can spot such obvious signs of intellectual dishonesty, you know you’re dealing with boobs.
My point, really, is that leftwingers generally already hold themselves to these standards, and spend most of our time trying to get rightwingers to do the same (it doesn’t much work, though). You are a tiny, crazy minority. And I slept very well last night.
[Rescued from the Spam queue @ 1610. -- DRP]
http://www.ae911truth.info/tiki-index.php?page=Top+10+Boneheaded+Mistakes
“TOP 10 BONEHEADED MISTAKES
The Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth have made lots and lots of mistakes. This page lists off their top 10 current boneheaded mistakes:
Covering Up An Admission of This Subject Being Outside Their Expertise
The Use of Discredited Sources
The Ever-Changing Features List
Selective Use of Authorities
Publishing Pictures of The Pancakes
Misunderstanding The ARA Contract
“Freefall” or “Near Freefall”
Illegitimate Comparison of Flame-Engulfed Buildings
Chandler Video Helps Prove NIST WTC 7 Model Valid
Dismissal of the Piledriver
Only 10 Boneheaded Mistakes?
The One Major Mistake
Great site!
Oh, only “Great site” was original writing from me, the rest was cut/pasted. Sorry for the improper citation.
Whistler, I can read reasonably well, and I can tell a hawk from a handsaw. Your evasions are obvious and your excuses are as silly as your phony commitment to the methods of scientific analysis.
While your improper citation is a simple minor error, easily recognized, and quickly understood, your continued refusal to face issues squarely isn’t. It’s intellectually cowardly.
You accuse me of intellectual dishonesty, yet you have repeatedly pretended to have already responded to phantom issues of your own manufacture.
Although you say you’ve already answered, ” I’ve said the two bits you select don’t merit enough evidence by themselves. But…
…listen carefully…
…they aren’t the sum of the case for Mann’s innocence.”
Well, I never said they were. Now, for the 3rd or 4th? time here’s the question again, “Well, you’ve already talked the talk, now have a look at the reasoning behind the decision to clear Michael Mann of wrongdoing, and we’ll see for ourselves if you willing to walk the walk.”
Even a quick reading of the question reveals no overt attempt to limit your response to the two quotes used in my comment. But, to be fair, someone with poor reading comprehension skills may have mistakenly assumed so from a cursory reading of my initial question. So, let’s just say that includes you so we don’t have to go down this dead-end road again.
But, no more dodging the issue.
Let’s try again from the top: start with Penn State’s exoneration, (linked in Romm’s article), then say what you think of the logical relationship between their stated reasoning and their conclusions. Capiche?
A self-proclaimed guy who’s “…“…down with real science, period. Real journals, real research, real methodology” shouldn’t have much trouble with such a simple and straight forward question of logic, unless he’s ignorent of the rules of reasoning, or manufacturing excuses to duck an inconvenient question.
So, I’ll repeat your own words back to you “…come back at me with some actual thought or do us all a favor…” and admit you’re an intellectual fraud and a foul mouth windbag pretending to knowledge and skills you don’t possess.
[recovered from moderation - pH]
Whistler, my response is in moderation. No telling when the authorities will see to it.
Whistler, the link you provided has no name, claiming it’s authorship. Also, it doesn’t debunk it. It takes little pieces and calls it “wrong” with no satisfactory countering of the hundreds of scientific analysis of the US BS on 9-11-01.
I’m going to drop an article by someone whose awareness of government propaganda (Paul Craig Roberts) far exceeds yours. I will probably be put into moderation, so you’ll have to read it later.
Why Propaganda Trumps Truth
Paul Craig Roberts
VDARE.com
Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:12 EDT
Propaganda
© Despair.com
An article in the journal, Sociological Inquiry, ["There Must Be a Reason": Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification, Vol. 79, No. 2. (2009), pp. 142-162. [PDF] casts light on the effectiveness of propaganda. Researchers examined why big lies succeed where little lies fail. Governments can get away with mass deceptions, but politicians cannot get away with sexual affairs.
The researchers explain why so many Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it has become obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with the event. Americans developed elaborate rationalizations based on Bush administration propaganda that alleged Iraqi involvement and became deeply attached to their beliefs. Their emotional involvement became wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality. They looked for information that supported their beliefs and avoided information that challenged them, regardless of the facts of the matter.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained the believability of the Big Lie as compared to the small lie:
In the simplicity of their minds, people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have such impudence. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and continue to think that there may be some other explanation.
Comment: No doubt psychopathic and pathological individuals are well aware of this knowledge about human psychology, which they use as a weapon against any data and facts that stand in their way of creating reality in the shape that will serve their nefarious interests.
What the sociologists and Hitler are telling us is that by the time facts become clear, people are emotionally wedded to the beliefs planted by the propaganda and find it a wrenching experience to free themselves. It is more comfortable, instead, to denounce the truth-tellers than the liars whom the truth-tellers expose.
The psychology of belief retention even when those beliefs are wrong is a pillar of social cohesion and stability. It explains why, once change is effected, even revolutionary governments become conservative. The downside of belief retention is its prevention of the recognition of facts. Belief retention in the Soviet Union made the system unable to adjust to economic reality, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Today in the United States millions find it easier to chant “USA, USA, USA” than to accept facts that indicate the need for change.
The staying power of the Big Lie is the barrier through which the 9/11 Truth Movement is finding it difficult to break. The assertion that the 9/11 Truth Movement consists of conspiracy theorists and crackpots is obviously untrue. The leaders of the movement are highly qualified professionals, such as demolition experts, physicists, structural architects, engineers, pilots, and former high officials in the government. Unlike their critics parroting the government’s line, they know what they are talking about.
Here is a link to a presentation by the architect, Richard Gage, to a Canadian university audience: The video of the presentation is two hours long and seems to have been edited to shorten it down to two hours. Gage is low-key, but not a dazzling personality or a very articulate presenter. Perhaps that is because he is speaking to a university audience and takes for granted their familiarity with terms and concepts.
Those who believe the official 9/11 story and dismiss skeptics as kooks can test the validity of the sociologists’ findings and Hitler’s observation by watching the video and experiencing their reaction to evidence that challenges their beliefs. Are you able to watch the presentation without scoffing at someone who knows far more about it than you do? What is your response when you find that you cannot defend your beliefs against the evidence presented? Scoff some more? Become enraged?
Another problem that the 9/11 Truth Movement faces is that few people have the education to follow the technical and scientific aspects. The side that they believe tells them one thing; the side that they don’t believe tells them another. Most Americans have no basis to judge the relative merits of the arguments.
For example, consider the case of the Lockerbie bomber. One piece of “evidence” that was used to convict Magrahi was a piece of circuit board from a device that allegedly contained the Semtex that exploded the airliner. None of the people, who have very firm beliefs in Magrahi’s and Libya’s guilt and in the offense of the Scottish authorities in releasing Magrahi on allegedly humanitarian grounds, know that circuit boards of those days have very low combustion temperatures and go up in flames easily. Semtex produces very high temperatures. There would be nothing whatsoever left of a device that contained Semtex. It is obvious to an expert that the piece of circuit board was planted after the event.
I have asked on several occasions and have never had an answer, which does not mean that there isn’t one, how millions of pieces of unburnt, uncharred paper can be floating over lower Manhattan from the destruction of the WTC towers when the official explanation of the destruction is fires so hot and evenly distributed that they caused the massive steel structures to weaken and fail simultaneously so that the buildings fell in free fall time just as they would if they had been brought down by controlled demolition.
What is the explanation of fires so hot that steel fails but paper does not combust?
People don’t even notice the contradictions. Recently, an international team of scientists, who studied for 18 months dust samples produced by the twin towers’ destruction collected from three separate sources, reported their finding of nano-thermite in the dust. The US government had scientists dependent on the US government to debunk the finding on the grounds that the authenticity of custody of the samples could not be verified. In other words, someone had tampered with the samples and added the nano-thermite. This is all it took to discredit the finding, despite the obvious fact that access to thermite is strictly controlled and NO ONE except the US military and possibly Israel has access to nano-thermite.
The physicist, Steven Jones, has produced overwhelming evidence that explosives were used to bring down the buildings. His evidence is not engaged, examined, tested, and refuted. It is simply ignored.
Dr. Jones’ experience reminds me of that of my Oxford professor, the distinguished physical chemist and philosopher, Michael Polanyi. Polanyi was one of the 20th century’s great scientists. At one time every section chairman of the Royal Society was a Polanyi student. Many of his students won Nobel Prizes for their scientific work, such as Eugene Wigner at Princeton and Melvin Calvin at UC, Berkeley, and his son, John Polanyi, at the University of Toronto.
As a young man in the early years of the 20th century, Michael Polanyi discovered the explanation for chemical adsorption. Scientific authority found the new theory too much of a challenge to existing beliefs and dismissed it. Even when Polanyi was one of the UK’s ranking scientists, he was unable to teach his theory. One half-century later his discovery was re-discovered by scientists at UC, Berkeley. The discovery was hailed, but then older scientists said that it was “Polanyi’s old error.” It turned out not to be an error. Polanyi was asked to address scientists on this half-century failure of science to recognize the truth. How had science, which is based on examining the evidence, gone so wrong. Polanyi’s answer was that science is a belief system just like everything else, and that his theory was outside the belief system.
That is what we observe all around us, not just about the perfidy of Muslims and 9/11.
As an economics scholar I had a very difficult time making my points about the Soviet economy, about Karl Marx’s theories, and about the supply-side impact of fiscal policy. Today I experience readers who become enraged just because I report on someone else’s work that is outside their belief system. Some readers think I should suppress work that is inconsistent with their beliefs and drive the author of the work into the ground. These readers never have any comprehension of the subject. They are simply emotionally offended.
What I find puzzling is the people I know who do not believe a word the government says about anything except 9/11. For reasons that escape me, they believe that the government that lies to them about everything else tells them the truth about 9/11. How can this be, I ask them. Did the government slip up once and tell the truth? My question does not cause them to rethink their belief in the government’s 9/11 story. Instead, they get angry with me for doubting their intelligence or their integrity or some such hallowed trait.
The problem faced by truth is the emotional needs of people. With 9/11 many Americans feel that they must believe their government so that they don’t feel like they are being unsupportive or unpatriotic, and they are very fearful of being called “terrorist sympathizers.” Others on the left-wing have emotional needs to believe that peoples oppressed by the US have delivered “blowbacks.” Some leftists think that America deserves these blowbacks and thus believe the government’s propaganda that Muslims attacked the US.
Naive people think that if the US government’s explanation of 9/11 was wrong, physicists and engineers would all speak up. Some have (see above). However, for most physicists and engineers this would be an act of suicide. Physicists owe their careers to government grants, and their departments are critically dependent on government funding. A physicist who speaks up essentially ends his university career. If he is a tenured professor, to appease Washington the university would buy out his tenure as BYU did in the case of the outspoken Steven Jones.
An engineering firm that spoke out would never again be awarded a government contract. In addition, its patriotic, flag-waving customers would regard the firm as a terrorist apologist and cease to do business with it.
In New York today there is an enormous push by 9/11 families for a real and independent investigation of the 9/11 events. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers have provided the necessary signatures on petitions that require the state to put the proposal for an independent commission up to vote. However, the state, so far, is not obeying the law.
Why are the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who are demanding a real investigation dismissed as conspiracy theorists? The 9/11 skeptics know far more about the events of that day than do the uninformed people who call them names. Most of the people I know who are content with the government’s official explanation have never examined the evidence. Yet, these no-nothings shout down those who have studied the matter closely.
There are, of course, some kooks. I have often wondered if these kooks are intentionally ridiculous in order to discredit knowledgeable skeptics.
Comment: Our years of experience in dealing with these types, leads to the conclusion that this seems to be the case. In the majority of cases, they are no other than cointelpro agents.
Another problem that the 9/11 Truth Movement faces is that their natural allies, those who oppose the Bush/Obama wars and the internet sites that the antiwar movement maintains, are fearful of being branded traitorous and anti-American. It is hard enough to oppose a war against those the US government has successfully demonized. Antiwar sites believe that if they permit 9/11 to be questioned, it would brand them as “terrorist sympathizers” and discredit their opposition to the war. An exception is Information Clearing House.
Antiwar sites do not realize that, by accepting the 9/11 explanation, they have undermined their own opposition to the war. Once you accept that Muslim terrorists did it, it is difficult to oppose punishing them for the event. In recent months, important antiwar sites, such as antiwar.com, have had difficulty with their fundraising, with their fundraising campaigns going on far longer than previously. They do not understand that if you grant the government its premise for war, it is impossible to oppose the war.
As far as I can tell, most Americans have far greater confidence in the government than they do in the truth. During the Great Depression the liberals with their New Deal succeeded in teaching Americans to trust the government as their protector. This took with the left and the right. Neither end of the political spectrum is capable of fundamental questioning of the government. This explains the ease with which our government routinely deceives the people.
Democracy is based on the assumption that people are rational beings who factually examine arguments and are not easily manipulated. Studies are not finding this to be the case. In my own experience in scholarship, public policy, and journalism, I have learned that everyone from professors to high school dropouts has difficulty with facts and analyses that do not fit with what they already believe. The notion that “we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead” is an extremely romantic and idealistic notion. I have seldom experienced open minds even in academic discourse or in the highest levels of government. Among the public at large, the ability to follow the truth wherever it may lead is almost non-existent.
The US government’s response to 9/11, regardless of who is responsible, has altered our country forever. Our civil liberties will never again be as safe as they were. America’s financial capability and living standards are forever lower. Our country’s prestige and world leadership are forever damaged. The first decade of the 21st century has been squandered in pointless wars, and it appears the second decade will also be squandered in the same pointless and bankrupting pursuit.
The most disturbing fact of all remains: The 9/11 event responsible for these adverse happenings has not been investigated.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
Comment: Please also consider the following, from QFS’s research into Psychopaths, and Cleckley’s book ‘The Mask of Sanity’ :
What kind of psychological weaknesses drive people to prefer lies over truth?
This may have something to do with what is called Cognitive Dissonance. Leon Festinger developed the theory of Cognitive Dissonance in the 50′s when he apparently stumbled onto a UFO cult in the Midwest. They were prophesying a coming world cataclysm and “alien rapture.” When no one was raptured and no cataclysm he studied the believers response, and detailed it in his book “When Prophecy Fails.” Festinger observed:
A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.
We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks.
But man’s resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.
It seems that part of the problem has to do with ego and the need to be “right.” People with a high “need to be right” or “perfect” seem to be unable to acknowledge that they have been conned. “There is no crime in the cynical American calendar more humiliating than to be a sucker.” People will go along with and support a psychopath, in the face of evidence that they have and ARE being conned, because their own ego structure depends on being right, and to admit an error of judgment would destroy their carefully constructed image of themselves.
Print
says Henry:
You’ll never have a piece of paper or a recording or a videotape of anything that would stand up as evidence in court or even lead to an indictment. I know of lots of legitimate stories that don’t make it to that level either that still have more independent verification than your assertion that the Bush WH was in any way connected.
The fact that they, architects and engineers, have been trying to get an honest investigation, court hearing for years speaks volumes. After all, the majority of the 911 Commisioners called BS on the investigation, idiot.
Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal
By Glenn Greenwald
*
The creepy mind-set behind Cass Sunstein’s creepy proposal
Salon/iStockphoto
Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.” In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.
Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). This program would target those advocating false “conspiracy theories,” which they define to mean: “an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.” Sunstein’s 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story’s Daniel Tencer.
There’s no evidence that the Obama administration has actually implemented a program exactly of the type advocated by Sunstein, though in light of this paper and the fact that Sunstein’s position would include exactly such policies, that question certainly ought to be asked. Regardless, Sunstein’s closeness to the President, as well as the highly influential position he occupies, merits an examination of the mentality behind what he wrote. This isn’t an instance where some government official wrote a bizarre paper in college 30 years ago about matters unrelated to his official powers; this was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein’s close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees. Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class. All of that makes Sunstein’s paper worth examining in greater detail.
* * * * *
Initially, note how similar Sunstein’s proposal is to multiple, controversial stealth efforts by the Bush administration to secretly influence and shape our political debates. The Bush Pentagon employed teams of former Generals to pose as “independent analysts” in the media while secretly coordinating their talking points and messaging about wars and detention policies with the Pentagon. Bush officials secretly paid supposedly “independent” voices, such as Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher, to advocate pro-Bush policies while failing to disclose their contracts. In Iraq, the Bush Pentagon hired a company, Lincoln Park, which paid newspapers to plant pro-U.S. articles while pretending it came from Iraqi citizens. In response to all of this, Democrats typically accused the Bush administration of engaging in government-sponsored propaganda — and when it was done domestically, suggested this was illegal propaganda. Indeed, there is a very strong case to make that what Sunstein is advocating is itself illegal under long-standing statutes prohibiting government “propaganda” within the U.S., aimed at American citizens:
As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, “publicity or propaganda” is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) “covert propaganda.” By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.
Covert government propaganda is exactly what Sunstein craves. His mentality is indistinguishable from the Bush mindset that led to these abuses, and he hardly tries to claim otherwise. Indeed, he favorably cites both the covert Lincoln Park program as well as Paul Bremer’s closing of Iraqi newspapers which published stories the U.S. Government disliked, and justifies them as arguably necessary to combat “false conspiracy theories” in Iraq — the same goal Sunstein has for the U.S.
Sunstein’s response to these criticisms is easy to find in what he writes, and is as telling as the proposal itself. He acknowledges that some “conspiracy theories” previously dismissed as insane and fringe have turned out to be entirely true (his examples: the CIA really did secretly administer LSD in “mind control” experiments; the DOD really did plot the commission of terrorist acts inside the U.S. with the intent to blame Castro; the Nixon White House really did bug the DNC headquarters). Given that history, how could it possibly be justified for the U.S. Government to institute covert programs designed to undermine anti-government “conspiracy theories,” discredit government critics, and increase faith and trust in government pronouncements? Because, says Sunstein, such powers are warranted only when wielded by truly well-intentioned government officials who want to spread The Truth and Do Good — i.e., when used by people like Cass Sunstein and Barack Obama:
Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improved by doing so.
But it’s precisely because the Government is so often not “well-motivated” that such powers are so dangerous. Advocating them on the ground that “we will use them well” is every authoritarian’s claim. More than anything else, this is the toxic mentality that consumes our political culture: when our side does X, X is Good, because we’re Good and are working for Good outcomes. That was what led hordes of Bush followers to endorse the same large-government surveillance programs they long claimed to oppose, and what leads so many Obama supporters now to justify actions that they spent the last eight years opposing.
* * * * *
Consider the recent revelation that the Obama administration has been making very large, undisclosed payments to MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber to provide consultation on the President’s health care plan. With this lucrative arrangement in place, Gruber spent the entire year offering public justifications for Obama’s health care plan, typically without disclosing these payments, and far worse, was repeatedly held out by the White House — falsely — as an “independent” or “objective” authority. Obama allies in the media constantly cited Gruber’s analysis to support their defenses of the President’s plan, and the White House, in turn, then cited those media reports as proof that their plan would succeed. This created an infinite “feedback loop” in favor of Obama’s health care plan which — unbeknownst to the public — was all being generated by someone who was receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret from the administration (read this to see exactly how it worked).
In other words, this arrangement was quite similar to the Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher scandals which Democrats, in virtual lockstep, condemned. Paul Krugman, for instance, in 2005 angrily lambasted right-wing pundits and policy analysts who received secret, undisclosed payments, and said they lack “intellectual integrity”; he specifically cited the Armstrong Williams case. Yet the very same Paul Krugman last week attacked Marcy Wheeler for helping to uncover the Gruber payments by accusing her of being “just like the right-wingers with their endless supply of fake scandals.” What is one key difference? Unlike Williams and Gallagher, Jonathan Gruber is a Good, Well-Intentioned Person with Good Views — he favors health care — and so massive, undisclosed payments from the same administration he’s defending are dismissed as a “fake scandal.”
Whistler, I can read reasonably well, and I can tell a hawk from a handsaw. Your evasions are obvious and your excuses are as silly as your phony commitment to the methods of scientific analysis.
As has been shown above, ropelight, the National Acadamy of Science endorses Mann’s science. It has since been confirmed with other analyses, using different methods.
You have been well and truly spanked again on this issue. Let it rest, and nurse your bleeding backside.
Presumptuous poison dwarf, go back to your unnatural preoccupation with sheep shagging, and leave matters which are beyond your comprehension to the principals.
Your typical response when publicly spanked. You don’t deal with humiliation well, do you?
Repeating – as has been shown above, ropelight, the National Acadamy of Science endorses Mann’s science. It has since been confirmed with other analyses, using different methods.
little lightrope just said, autobiographically: “Presumptuous poison dwarf, go back to your unnatural preoccupation with sheep shagging, and leave matters which are beyond your comprehension to the principals.”
“‘Nuff said!”
[Sorry, but just can't resist teasing the usurper!]
Ropelight: You may be able to tell a hawk from a handsaw, but apparently you don’t recognize any answer except the one you want to hear. And so you repeat the question again, without any kind of elaboration or explanation as to why you believe I haven’t answered it yet. So let me answer it, yet again. I will type slowly for you.
I’ve read the report. Not just your shitty rightwing rant and two juicy quotes. The logic of the exoneration is that Mann is innocent and there’s no proof that he hid or manipulated data at all. The logic of the report is that it is because of Mann’s top-notch work that he has won a great deal of funding…
…NOT, as you are attempting to imply, that his work is top notch because of his funding.
Now, I’ve made this point clear several times, but there it is again, for you, broken down a bit more simply for you. You say, “I understand those two quotes aren’t the entire reasoning, never said that!” but that’s not very true. You very purposely selected a passage that was horribly skewed and selective. Now you want to discuss the actual report and extent of the inquiry into Mann’s work? Good! There was no evidence of wrongdoing, and ample evidence that all Mann’s data was widely available in raw form, and that the calculations he performed on the data were sound.
How do I find the logic? Sound and scientific! Now you tell me what’s wrong with it. so you can prove how a real scientific mind thinks!
blubonnet: Paul Craig Roberts is an economist, dipstick. Not a demolitions expert. Thus the unbelievably stupid passage:
Wow. Honestly? A skyscraper compressing itself through sheer pressure, shattering windows, expelling air, but Paul Craig Roberts cannot believe that any paper made it out unburned?
Of course, Roberts’ scenario that no piece of paper should have made it out without being burnt to a crisp is the one that demands real scrutiny. How does a collapsing skyscraper “trap and burn” every piece of paper within?
http://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=Propaganda-vs-Projection-by-RuGBYZHG-090924-225.html
That’s a good link for a takedown of this non-expert.
The previous site I mentioned, you naturally blew off without addressing the errors demonstrated within. Instead, we get more cut-and-paste screeds.
Seriously, the way you non-truthers try building arguments of authority so repeatedly…ZOMGIHAVEEXPERTS!!!- is just like every other pseudo-junkhead out there. Creationists do it too. Everybody with a degree they can get, they trumpet it as loudly as possible.
Of course, many of the experts you guys love to cite have actually objected to having their statements used (usually out of context) to support your theories, and want nothing to do with you.
Seriously. I dated a truther for nearly two years. Believed anything she saw on the internet, any conspiracy theory. You could power a car with energy from the universe, it was a conspiracy! AIDS is caused by the drugs, it’s a conspiracy! On and on and on. Naturally, I condemn myself a bit for admitting this, but people are people, and, well, she seemed much nicer before we moved in together. Not a bad person, really, but a damaged one, for sure. Emotionally damaged and literally unable to deal with facts that contradicted the things she needed to be true.
George W. Bush will always be a runner-up in any “Worst President Ever,” contest, and Dick Cheney is beholden to the Dark Side, his heart problems emblematic of his inner rot. I despise nearly everything about their eight years in office, yet I cannot ascribe any of this babble you perpetrate as part of that eight years.
Quit whining about how you can’t get a fair hearing. All your experts shouldn’t have a trouble constructing a model of the destruction on 9/11 that represents their theories, one they’re willing to put up to the test. Where would the thermite have to be? Model the explosions and collapse. Any scenario, any at all.
ZILCH! And so it always will be, because it’ll get shredded. That’s the hallmark of a conspiracy theory.
You could power a car with energy from the universe
I’d be amazed if you could power it with energy from outside the universe…
Henry Whistler thinks he’s smarter than 15,000 scientist. Yeah, you tell’em Henry! What do they know? You dumb ass!!!
Hey, good one, Phoe!
I don’t believe just anything on the internet, by the way. Scientific evaluation, ample evidence, and certainly personal analysis is part of it, but the collaboration of thousands of scientists certainly helps. But you believe the government, Henry. They don’t ever lie, do they? Especially about starting a war, huh? Hundreds of thousands of innocent people getting killed. But they, our government wouldn’t do anything hurtful to anyone, would they? Chump.
YOU are so F-ing naive (or bought). Notice the parentheses around the word conspiracy theorist below. They, our government, of course are noting the immensity of the numbers of people realizing what has taken place. You know, those with objectivity intact? So they are paying people on the net, to counter us. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you? Our whole government is now part of a corrupt war profiteering, regime. You still haven’t figured out that. Astonishing. Torture, wars without actual provocation, with proof of intent prior to 9-11-01, spying on citizenry, elimination of a right to a lawyer if the Power deems you a “terrorist”, on what ever whim they so desire. When are you going to get it? You still think we live in a democracy?
I bet your Truther girlfriend dumped you, didn’t she? Fools like yourself are lacking in any sexual attraction, once they open their mouths. Science, you know, that hippie thing, doesn’t phase them.
Did you know that as all democratic descents go, the step of turning inward upon the population, when dissent is growing in huge numbers, as is the case w/ the Truth Movement (It’s massive and international now, by the way) a Truther was sitting in a court room, not a participant, but there in support of some friend there, and his INVOLUNTARY facial movements displeased the judge, and he was escorted out of the court room by police, and accused of threatening to assasinate the policeman there who escorted him out (despite witness saying otherwise). He actually got thrown into a cold jail cell, with cold air being blown in, to the point that he got hypothermia. He shivered to the point he was actually convulsing, and passed out. Guess what that is? It’s called torture, buddy.
Start looking into history and the demise of a democracy.
Since the common minds resulting from the common MSM, (a controlled MSM, you didn’t know that, did you?) what Churchill said rings true.
“One thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.” Thanks to idiots like yourself. You help us along the way to hell.
It’s always just a matter of time, and we are on that threshold. As I mentioned this Truther got called…guess what?
A “terrorist”. Fortunately, thus far he is allowed an attorney. It was a trumped out bogus charge, so who knows what will happen though.
Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal
By Glenn Greenwald
The creepy mind-set behind Cass Sunstein’s creepy proposal
Salon/iStockphoto
Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.” In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.
THE 10 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE END OF A DEMOCRACY by NAOMI KLEIN
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens’ groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Treat all political dissidents as traitors.
10. Suspend the rule of law.
WE ARE THERE. IT JUST HASN’T AFFECTED YOU. SO YOU DON’T TAKE NOTICE!
you are all a lovely lot.
keep it up and i might be convinced to adopt your liberal worldview…. /sarcasm
honestly, you all need to find some real work to do in this life.
Phoe: Google “Joe” energy. There’s a video, some liquid mixture smokes (while attached to batteries), and a car vrooms by in the distance. The universe, as in energy embedded within the fabric of the universe rather than a fossil fuel. If only the oil companies would let us develop it!!! (heavy sarcasm)
blubonnet: Oh, you have 15000 scientists! Which you yell right after I talk about your fake appeals to authority. I’ll just give up now then, I guess!
assovertincups: So you make short pointless comments in order to have more time in your personal life?
Whistler, when I let you off the hook for wrongly assuming your response was limited to the two brief quotes presented in Bill Lawrence’s article, I told you, “But, no more dodging the issue.
Yet, that’s exactly what you’ve done yet again. This time for what, the 5th time in a row? Talk about slow on the uptake. That’s not the way to repay a kindness, so come on, just face up to the issue and lets move along, your evasions are getting to be a bit more than tedious.
You claim to have answered the question, but the truth is that you haven’t even tried. You’ve ducked and dodged, thrown up smokescreens, and pretended to misunderstand the issue.
Here’s your latest example of smoke and mirrors. You write, “The logic of the exoneration is that Mann is innocent and there’s no proof that he hid or manipulated data at all.” (*notice those are your exact words, see below)
First, you’re wrong, that’s not logic, it’s a conclusion, and the emails tell a far different story.
Next, you go on to write, “The logic of the report is that it is because of Mann’s top-notch work that he has won a great deal of funding…
…NOT, as you are attempting to imply, that his work is top notch because of his funding.”
Well, now, where to start. First, let’s dispense with the your idiot assumption that I’ve attempted to imply quality scientific work can be guaranteed by increased funding. (That’s my summation, notice it’s not enclosed in quotation marks.”
Your silly statement is not only a typical Progressive nostrum, used to extract tax payer’s money from governmental agencies, it’s also illogical and dead wrong. I never implied any such thing. You made that up out of whole cloth.
Next, you’ve begged the question. I know what the report says, you provided a useful link, which I assure you I have taken the time to read, but that’s not what we’re about here. I don’t know if I can explain it any more clearly than I already have:
“Let’s try again from the top: start with Penn State’s exoneration, (linked in Romm’s article), then say what you think of the logical relationship between their stated reasoning and their conclusions. Capiche?”
I know what Penn State’s conclusions are, and I know the reasons they listed, anyone can read that at the link you provided. What I’ve been trying to get at (pay attention, here it comes) is the logical relationship between the reasons and the conclusions.
Are the conclusions logical? That’s the great test of logic: do the conclusions follow necessarily from the premises? If not, that’s how you know Penn State may have reached bogus conclusions after having deviated from the scientific path.
Of course, there are also other ways to deviate from the correct path. That’s what Dr Lindzen was pointing out when he learned that Penn State had dismissed the first 3 allegations against Mann at a premiminary inquiry. He said, “It’s throughly amazing. I mean these are issues that he stated in the emails. I’m wondering what’s going on.”
Dr Lindzen didn’t have to wait long to find out what was going on. After having peremptorily dismissed the most serious and most damning allegations, Penn State went on the whitewash the inquiry and then boldly announce that Mann had been exonerated. Thus was the reputation of a great institution of higher learning brought low in service to the twin evils of Mammon and false prophets.
But, a big talking scientific aficionado like you probably already knows that. Big talk becomes a big liability when actions don’t measure up to the self-aggrandizing and puffed up advance publicity. But, that’s your problem and the only honorable way out is to face it squarely. Otherwise you join the ranks of those with no face, like Perry and Phoney.
The choice is yours. The only thing you have to gain is self-respect and a reputation for (belated) forthrightness.
——–
*BTW, you misquoted me. You put the following words in my mouth, “I understand those two quotes aren’t the entire reasoning, never said that!”
Now, while your fraudulent quote does represent my position, those are not my words. Apparently, you’re unfamiliar with the conventions of standard composition.
Quotation marks are used to indicate direct quotes only, you can’t just make up stuff, or include your summation inside the quote. It just isn’t done.
Sloppy thinking and sloppy writing go hand-in-hand, both are hallmarks of substandard scholarship. Fraudulent quotations are unacceptable, and most especially so in a debate on science or logic.
assovertincups said:
you are all a lovely lot.
keep it up and i might be convinced to adopt your liberal worldview…. /sarcasm
honestly, you all need to find some real work to do in this life.
Hey, words of scholars, you shrug off. Real observations. Real observations about our country that are real. No, they are not fun. Sorry. I guess I need to watch football, drink beer and eat potato chips, and I’ll be more “lovely”. Caring apparently is not a good thing by AOT’s perception. Who the hell are you, AOT, to tell me to find real work. I have real work, and if I didn’t it would be because of the R-supported, corporate strength, shipping out of jobs overseas.
But, a big talking scientific aficionado like you probably already knows that. Big talk becomes a big liability when actions don’t measure up to the self-aggrandizing and puffed up advance publicity. But, that’s your problem and the only honorable way out is to face it squarely. Otherwise you join the ranks of those with no face, like Perry and Phoney.
Repeating – as has been shown above, ropelight, the National Acadamy of Science endorses Mann’s science. It has since been confirmed with other analyses, using different methods.
Spanked again.
Ropelight observes:
In confronting the same dishonest and unscrupulous progressive mindset repeatedly, one experiences the same problems repeatedly.
They not only avoid quoting properly if at all, they basically lie about what has been said, and without the slightest compunction.
Trying to rationally discuss anything with these people who have so few standards that they are willing to brazenly imply arguments or contentions that were never made, who attribute made-up remarks to people who never made them, and who then surround these “points” with dishonest punctuation in order to try and gain some rhetorical edge, is virtually impossible.
They play a pathetically shabby a shabby game to begin with; and one which has gotten, as Hoagie has observed in another context, very old.
ropelight: Giving up when you’re wrong just isn’t in your vocabulary, is it?
1. “…when I let you off the hook for wrongly assuming your response was limited to the two brief quotes presented in Bill Lawrence’s article…”
You have obviously let yourself off the hook for choosing that article as representative of your argument. Even when you’ve refrained from offering anything else by way of commentary. Trying to turn this around onto me won’t make it come true, because it’s so obvious that this has been the extent of your critique. Those are the passages you found to be in contention. You weren’t asking me to go read the report and get back to you. You thought you had your gotcha.
2. Evasions? You’re just a liar at this point. There’s no way you can truly believe I’m dodging a question at this point. Most of what you’re writing is an attempt to pass off the critique of Mann’s exoneration that YOU provided for us to read here. You didn’t say this, you didn’t say that…ZOMG I don’t know about conventions of discourse, so my accurately paraphrased quote is bad, but it’s perfectly okay for you to yap a question over and over again and pretend it wasn’t answered…
3. …when it’s answered, and here you actually try engaging with what I said. So I finally shamed you into trying to debate and take a stand on something here. The results aren’t good.
Playing on word order. “There’s no proof that he hid or manipulated data at all, therefore Mann is innocent.” Same statement, same idea, same point: The logic of the exoneration is one based on tangible evidence. Regardless of some poorly worded e-mails, the data is there. It’s been shared. The math has been shared. There’s nothing being hidden. There never was. People composing scientific journal articles have a right to keep some data private until after the article has been published, but it is all eventually distributed.
Most importantly, it was repeatable. Another research could take the same data, do the same math, and get the same results. That’s where it’s on those who are convinced Mann is guilty to provide stronger evidence of manipulation, which has been essentially ruled out as being possible given the full disclosure from Mann.
Thus, my logic, that of evidence. As I’ve been telling you, repeatedly.
4. You then respond with what is nothing more than conclusions without evidence. Charges were dismissed, but Penn State was examining itself so it was a whitewash. You don’t explain why the charges shouldn’t have been dismissed. So you don’t know anything, but you know what you know! And you just know deep down that money drove their decision. That’s what you’re saying, the exact message you meant to send with your article citation.
Right back full circle to what you denied you were saying all along. Except now we’ve established that you have no support for your conclusion.
5. A mass of indignation. Oh, poor you, besot upon honest man. Why don’t you knock off grabbing your knee and screaming for the referee like a bipolar soccer player? I’ve been doing nothing other than trying to teach you something, to squeeze some ounce of rational thought out of your head. “Oh, dear DNW, how do we ever tolerate these liberal ruffians? Hold me!” (did you really say that? nobody will ever be able to tell because I didn’t properly acknowledge!!!) I’ve held you to some semblance of rational discourse, and drawn you out like the sophist you are. Whining about paraphrasing! Talk about the last refuge of scoundrels…
Mann was exonerated. The numbers have been exonerated. You’re a junk science peddling corporate stooge. You’ll believe anything Rush Limbaugh, college flunkie, has to say about important scientific matters.
As Phoe points out, you’re simply on the losing side here. I mean, I’m sure if Bush were still president and Gonzalez was still Attorney General, you could go have a good Republican lackey DA go in and round up Mann and try to ruin his life for a few years, you’d be happy. He’s guilty in the court of Fox News, to be sure. But for serious scientifically-minded people, the matter is settled.
You go chase your unicorns. Ask blubonnet for a hand.
Whistler, you embarras yourself with that unintelligible prattle. Really, it just doesn’t make much sense, it’s unresponsive to the issue, fails to add anything of value to the debate, and it’s yet another example of your ongoing campaign to duck the central issue. Plus, it recycles most of your intentional misapprehensions, insults, and smokescreens.
You know, I’ve read some of your comments on other topics on this site and I’m confident you know enough about science to know how deep a hole you’re been digging for yourself. Likely that’s the source of your irrational rancor.
Several times I’ve offered you good advice on how to free yourself from the constraints of your own ignorence and arrogrance, but you’re too invested in dishonesty and denial to see the utility of forthrightness. Nor, since you’ve come this far down a dead-end path, can you find your way back to solid ground.
I think you’re in the grip of a childish passion, you’ve mortgaged your allegiance to an unworthy illusion, you’ve squandered your integrity in tantrums of bluff and bluster, and you’ve reduced yourself to attacking straw-men and calling for help from a disreputable wretch.
How low can you go?
PS: I don’t need any help from blu to deal with the likes of you. Truth is she really doesn’t like me or my politics much at all. Her natural inclination would be to side with you if you had sense enough to quit acting like a two-bit jerk and make an effort to see beyond the end of your nose.
And with that substance-free non-answer meltdown on your part, I collect the win.
This is not ‘Nam, Smokey. There are rules. I have no interest in your emotional need to feel good about yourself after flopping into the ground like that. No rebuttal, you lose.
And with that substance-free non-answer meltdown on your part, I collect the win.
You do indeed – he didn’t address any of the substantive points in your comment.
Well done on the spanking.
Whistler, if you’re so willing to label my comments as lacking in substance, then you’re even more ignorant and arrogant than I’ve previously concluded. Perhaps a second look might improve your comprehension, but you’ll have to be the judge of that.
Or, maybe you’re just too far gone to be able to help yourself. In which case you can’t stop the downward spiral.
Now, it’s true I hold you in low regard, although it didn’t start out that way, that’s been the lesson of this series of exchanges. And, I have no real expectation that you’re capable of rising above your petty deceptions. But really now, these petulant displays of spite and pique are both unseemly and unbecoming. So is claiming honors you’ve yet to earn. It’s the mark of pretenders and guys who didn’t make the cut.
I don’t detect any sign of integrity, or of commitment to scientific inquiry, or to disciplined thought in your comments. They’re full of hyperbole, subterfuge, error, carelessness, and rancor. I just don’t think you’ve got it in you to face inconvenient facts.
Whistler, you’re all about raw emotion and petty revenge, deceit, and blind partisanship. If your name wasn’t “Henry” I’d figure you for an unhappy old women, past her best, and bitter that life had passed her by.
What, you thought another empty pile of adjectives and accusations would matter more a second time?
You’re not backing up anything, ropelight. You’re just having a tantrum. I’m “ignorant” because…um, well, ropelight says so! There was substance in your comments because, well, um…that’s right, ropelight says so!
I offered the last substantial post. It awaits to be rebutted. There’s nothing emotional about that, unlike your masterpiece of ego management. I’m sorry, but until you address the arguments at hand, none of your hand-wringing matters to anybody but yourself.
Whistler, contrary to your silly claims, and after all the bluster and pretension, you’ve consistently refused to back up your braggadocio. Like I said at the outset, you talked the talk, so I gave you an opportunity to walk the walk.
You’ve had more than half a dozen chances to deliver, and time and again you’ve ducked, dodged, insulted, pretended and done lots of other superfluous things except answer the question. Apparently you’re not going to.
So, OK, I get it, you don’t know the first thing about formal logic. It would have been easier all around if you’d have acknowledged that at the outset. There’s no shame in being unfamiliar with the rules of disciplined analysis, the shame comes from claiming knowledge you don’t possess, and in drawing out this long and ultimately unproductive exercise with dishonest excuses.
So, the result is you’re identified yourself as an ignorent and arrogant blow-hard, who would rather expose his naked rear-end in public, than admit to being unwilling or unable to engage in rational thought.
Says Henry Whistler.. Oh, you have 15000 scientists! Which you yell right after I talk about your fake appeals to authority. I’ll just give up now then, I guess!
Oh, I guess only the government “scientists” that profit off of government/corporate agenda wars are the ones to trust, not the ones that risk all their life’s work, their reputation on challenging the government and are getting noting for it. Gee, that makes sense. (eye rolling necessary)
I see, I should only trust the authorities you like. Oh, now I’m all straightened out.
Incidentally, as we continue on this subject of science in it’s various topics, I’m sure you are familiar with the NASA folks a few years back that did a study on Global Warming and Bush twisted it all around to suit his corporate cronies, in the oil industry’s best interests. Thwarting of science. Well, 60 aeronautical engineers many from NASA are yet again calling BS on the government regarding that day in September.
So, they make sense when they talk about climate, but not about fire and explosives. Do NASA people know about things that go boom? What about fire? Well, they all have science as a basis for their work.
You’re trying to mix-up the scientists who objected to Bush’s climate data manipulation with those who have expressed doubts about 9/11. Hint: One group is much larger than the other. Especially since most reputable scientists I’ve heard cited have angrily attacked the “truthers” for taking their statements out of context.
I agree with those scientists who lambasted Bush. As I said, Bush/Cheney was eight years of constant lying, immorality, and corruption. Their list of crimes is great, and the country is paying the price on several fronts for it (while our Republicans friends gladly attack Obama for not miraculously curing all our ills instantly). Science was considered just another enemy when it came to achieving their political ends.
However, that still won’t make your fraudulent 9/11 theories come true. Yelling, “TRACES OF THERMITE!” doesn’t cut it. How much, where was it placed, etc. Something falsifiable.
Again, you’ll never have that. Your cause isn’t meant to be falsified, it’s meant to satisfy emotions.
DNW, your comment was spot-on. Deceit is their inspiration, deception is their intention, presumption is their method, and fabrication is their first resort.
Previously, I thought it was a reading comprehension problem, but that’s not it. Than I concluded it might be the result of a modern public school education. But that’s only part of the problem.
Now, I see it’s just plain dishonesty masquerading as stupidity. Technically, they may not actually be all that stupid, but they wear the fool’s mask in order to cover their dissimulations.
I’m largely through playing straight man with liars and posers. My patience is running thin, my time here may not be long, and I’ve got other fish to fry.
Best Regards.
As my dad always said, “Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out!” Whenever you want to rebut the actual last substantive post, written by myself, drop me a line at Iowa Liberal!
[...] I just have to go over to CPST and knock’em around a little bit. Real wingers can only handle a few exchanges of actual point-counterpoint debate before they [...]
Henry Whistler, have you even looked at the growing number of sources?
For God’s sake, the the most recent signatory number on just the architects and engineers list is 1222, but it’s a slow process, vetting all the ones that are on the list that are signing. Vetting in the sense, that they are who they say they are. They have to know a little (ALOT) about building structural and the characteristics of steel, cement, energy sources, under pressure, under high temperature, etc. Basically, all that a physicist would need to know about such characteristics.
Why should these fine people risk their livelihoods, get called names, put their credibility on the line, (especially in those numbers, amassing), risk losing government employment, when our government is one of the most lucrative employers. Tough situation, when every industry out there is feeling the pinch, living cheaply, when big money would be easier outside of tasked with the speaking engagements, for the sake of United States. These men and women, of the firefighters, scientists, pilots, survivors, air traffic controllers, explosives experts, former CIA, military officials like gennerals, whose jobs it was to analyze plane crashes, dang, the list is so long. All the words of those speaking up are compelling, and they are making sacrifices to travel around to do it. All those on the list are highly credentialed. I wonder if you’ve even looked, to hear their professional analysis, if they make sense to you? That would be architects and engineers for 911 Truth, which I’ll bring the link for shortly. I’ll momentarily bring you the links, if you care about what firefighters have to say, you do, don’t you?
A physics professor, who got fired from BYU, after raising his voice. Colleges get government money, so all can’t wont allow scrutiny upon a “radical” (honest) professor. So, it goes with networks, wherever money is exchanged in between businesses, secrets are often kept, where the biggest money, like weapons industry and TV and Pentagon pals mix it up. Fathoming it is probably the biggest problem. That is understandable, until you have the balls to honestly scrutinize it. I’ll give you some sources to scrutinize. Name calling does not account for intelligent exchange. I trust honest assessment, will supersede fears of seeming foolish and called names. Can you?
http://patriotsquestion911.com/
http://www.ae911truth.org/
http://firefightersfor911truth.org/?s=perspective
http://pilotsfor911truth.org/
http://patriotsquestion911.com/professors.html
http://world911truth.org/
This is to name just a few of the sites where information, you are freee to scrutinize, and check for your self, the alignment with real science. Dr. Steven Jones gives a down to earth, compelling, impossible to debunk, in my opinion, or someone please try. There are more.
This fellow studies forensics. He also was a cousin of a firefighter that was killed. CSI stuff.
http://www.csi911.info/
Well, that is the tip of the iceberg on sources where professionals speak out against that which defies physics.
I’m sorry, that all this defies your concept of what you’d think impossible. It is understandable the cognitive process of denying it possible. With the ample evidence now, it really is cut and dry, but the media kissing face with the government, and the corporate violators of humanity and the planet that just recently, we are just expected to sing, “God Bless America.” Never mind, don’t say bad things about what we are having our military have to do, with the shock of the reality of what the government has made them do in these wars of aggression, exploited their patriotism, with the shock of being thrown into deadly, daily horror stories. You don’t think it’s that much farther of a stretch that they all play together, where the big money moves. Rather like a mafia. For sure. Only innocent people, including the soldiers stuck fighting, while in shock and disbeleif and in a state of fear at the same time. Kind of would F you up, huh? Well, let’s not think such awful things. Sorry. As the fellow, I left the link for above, says, (do the math, please, so we don’t have to think this).
ALBERT EINSTEIN: “Under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main source of information (press, radio, eduction). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed, in most cases, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.”
There are defense industry companies, controlling what comes out of the tube, on one another’s behalf. Bush family and friends-Carlyle (defense industry) Group, Helliburton, Bechtel, and many many others that are seeking new places to make more money, they are gatekeepers on the tube networks. Where the oil is, usually the main focus. War goes where the resources are. Little stories dance around to substantiate the take over of countries by us. Killing people is just part of the game to make money. These people have no F-ing soul. There are some fascinating documentaries on the net of the Carlyle Group. They would like to control the freedom of the internet, the same way the press now is all bought.
ive not seen clever counter arguments overcome the evil of lying or cheating, it is not our most powerful tool.
expose the heart and you disarm the ammunition.
…….
Very true, assovertincups. Thus ropelight’s descent into a tirade of insults and fake outrage after being unable to coherently respond to the last post of substance, written by me.
Because I can see right through that pattern, the ammunition is, indeed, disarmed.
And don’t worry, your brief farts of irrelevance don’t worry me the slightest either. If you ever intend to contribute something meaningful, by all means let me know. I suspect that, like ropelight, luring you out of your snark-cave would end the same way, with you embarrassed and spouting insults on the retreat.
blu: Oh, great, more link spam instead of dealing with anything I said.
The truth is, way, way more scientists and engineers are on my side than yours. So it’s really pointless of you to keep copy-pasting your litany until you can demonstrate some actual ability to think.
Where’s Steven Jones’ alternative model of how the towers were brought down? Where was the thermite placed? How much?
Whistler, does that comment at 5:09 really express your commitment to science?
I mean really now, is scientific truth decided by a majority vote? Since you say you’ve got “… way, way, more scientists and engineers…on your side,” than blu does on hers? You better beat a hasty retreat on that idiot notion or someone just might hold you accountable for your ignorance of scientific methods.
I wonder what Galileo would make of your little demonstration of a commitment to “…real science, period. Real journals, real research, real methodology.” After all, he came up short when his ideas were put to a vote.
And, even you can’t deny that Galileo was right, or can you?
yes, i can tell.
I wonder what Galileo would make of your little demonstration of a commitment to “…real science, period. Real journals, real research, real methodology.” After all, he came up short when his ideas were put to a vote.
Uh-huh.
Meanwhile:
I expect that any intellectually honest wingnuts here will be apologising for using this fake “scandal” as a means to cast doubt on global climate change science?
You can be excused, ropelight – you’re probably too busy screaming about
ni-usurpers to notice.BINGO**** it is according to progressive “doctrine”
assovertincups: You find your own stupidity to be a matter of pride, don’t you?
ropelight: You’ve already established that you’re willing to evade and lie in order to avoid confessing error. Now you wish to defend a truther? You just really don’t realize how far off the reservation you’re drifting, do you?
My point all along has been that blubonnet’s constant screeching of how many scientists she has backing her up, besides inaccurate, is a fallacy. It doesn’t seem to shut her up. So I pointed out that if numbers of scientists is her criteria, I still win.
But yes, I do express my commitment to actual science in that comment. I want to see the truthers construct a falsifiable model. The mark of a conspiracy theory is usually half-baked statements, ala the previous, “IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR SO MUCH UNBURNT PAPER TO BE FLOATING AROUND NEW YORK AFTERWARDS!!!” Until the truthers can actually try to construct a model of where the “thermite” (it doesn’t actually seem to be the case, given the number of chemicals present within the building and the heat reactions that must have taken place) was located, how much of it there was, how it resulted in the collapse, how it was detonated with such precision, not to mention coordinated with multiple airliner attacks by dedicated anti-American zealots…
It’s much like JFK. The “grassy knoll” theory doesn’t really explain the bullet wounds either, whereas the wounds could have plausibly come from the depository building.
But anyway, it seems that you, ropelight, suffer from bruised ego and anosognosia…you’re so limited that you can’t seem to grasp that you totally screwed it up earlier with your “SO YOU SAY YOU BELIEVE IN SCIENCE, ANSWER ME THIS!!!” line.
I don’t care how much it offends you. I won the point. You may hate me for embarrassing you, but that has no impact on the merits of my arguments. That’s actual logic, not the stupid self-serving version you seem to adhere to. Too much rightwinger junk science in your diet! Stop listening to Fox News idiots and college drop-out talk show hosts and loudmouthed outliers.
I apply the same principles to studies on climate science that I do to studies on black holes and loop quantum gravity. The fact that environmental science is suspected by those with an economic agenda against it isn’t going to change my behavior a whit. If Mann were credibly debunked, he’d be out the door, and I’d gladly reassess what we know. As would most scientists.
The comedy is that people like ropelight were the ones persecuting Galileo. Now they persecute the leading scientists of today. What’s the difference? The GOP has an economic agenda: Big business doesn’t want to get hit with the real cost of carbon.
That’s all there is to it. People like ropelight are free PR for them, period.
well, i was getting proud until you went out of of your way to insert the line about black holes and loop quantum gravity. i am so dumb compared to you.
there whistle, you feel better now?
I’d feel better if you could just be a man about it instead of a pouty teenager. But it’ll do:)
well, i was getting proud until you went out of of your way to insert the line about black holes and loop quantum gravity. i am so dumb compared to you.
Hey, don’t apologise. I’m way smarter than you and all I got out of the Wikipedia explanation for LQG was that space seemed to be made of little pixels which are both foamy and knotted.
There’s a chance I’m missing something there…
Whistler, you got some ‘splaining to do. You’re claiming the very criticism I made of your statement was actually in agreement with one of your criticisms of blu’s position. Hummm
Have I got that right? It’s a bit confusing, because you wrote, “The truth is, way, way more scientists and engineers are on my side than yours.”
Now, that statement seems to me to be much more likely to occur in an electoral context than in a discussion of scientific validity.
But, if that’s what you say now, I won’t quibble, except to ask why, if you agreed with my criticism, did you go on to say that “…people like ropelight were the ones persecuting Galileo.”
Then you said, “Now they persecute the leading scientists of today.” Wow, those are some pretty pointed accusations to make against someone you claim holds the same position you do.
What’s up with that?
Ropelight: You can go back and read the sequence of arguments anyway, and see it’s exactly as I explained myself. I’m dismissing blu’s constant refrains of “15000 scientists!” (attacking Bush’s science record, not supporting 9/11 conspiracy theories). It’s true, it really doesn’t make a difference to me, personally, the quantity of the scientists. What matters to me is that the quality of the scientists on my side is much higher, and it’s evident in their better reasoning and more open intellectual honesty.
The fact of the matter is that most scientists are among the most intelligent and ethical people in our society. The quality and scope of thought out there today among those pursuing pure science without consideration of (and with some disdain for) tangential factors. Make no mistake, the world of politics can only stain the world of science with its touch, except when it’s to support and fund good research with high standards.
You’re correct that Galileo held the superior scientific ideas despite his minority status. However you’re bringing it up to defend blu’s small group of scientists with dubious reasoning. Being the minority, likewise, doesn’t guarantee them any special status as martyrs for a cause. They’re getting ganged up on for good cause. The engineering community accepts the official story that two jetliners brought down the WTC buildings, nothing more. The science of it is plausible. The destructive capability of those jets was stupendous. Once one floor collapsed, the structural integrity of the building was immediately exceeded (think about the sudden force vs. sustained load capacity…the speed of the falling top completely overwhelmed the limits).
And dare one apply Occam’s Razor, as any prudent scientific thinker is wont to do, and it’s not even close. The “truther” scenario is so elaborate and absurd that they don’t dare go all out with a falsifiable theory. Thus they fail my test for rigorous dedication to objectivity.
There you go again Whistler, making foolish assumptions, jumping to unsupported conclusions. That’s the antithesis of science. My criticism of your statement was not in any way supportive of blu’s Trutherism. I personally like some aspects of blu’s personality and some others not so much, but I have little patience for her positions on the events of 9/11. It wouldn’t be too far wide of the mark to say I admire her persistence, and let it go at that.
You may recall I tried to warn you about getting mixed up with her obsessions. I told you she was nutty, that you didn’t have to respond to her comments, and that she wouldn’t count as representative of your side. Then, I ended by asking you to cut her a little slack. Hint, hint.
But, you ignored the request. Just as you ignored the point of my recent criticism. Scientific validity doesn’t depend on the quantity of the scientists in agreement, nor does it depend on the quality of the scientists either, although there does tend to be a strong correlation.
Both the number and the reputations of scientists on one side of an issue or another are ultimately irrelevant because at it’s most fundamental level science is not dependant on scientists, but on the scientific method. And, if you don’t know that, then you don’t know the first damn thing about science.
Which is only reinforced by your statement that “… most scientists are among the most intelligent and ethical people in our society.”
Well, then I guess you just don’t know all that many of them. You ought to sit in on a meeting of physics department faculty when it’s time to divide up the annual budget, or select a new department head, or allocate offices, or lab space, or on one of the really contentious issues, like parking places in close proximity to the labs.
One mistake our critics make is that the science on “our side, is from theorizing”. No theorizing involved. Let the science have its scrutiny, honestly among scientists that do not work for the government’s ever growing security firms.
We would like that very much, more scrutiny, the scientists that are growing in numbers by the day. There is empirical evidence, on the side of the Truth. I’m sorry about it too, but science has challenged, the official government conspiracy theory. Otherwise, to pulverize anything, all you’d have to do is set fire to it, for example, if NIST, the folks putting out more bogus science, with links that lead to links that lead to bought institutions, think tanks, compliments of the really big money. Review Einstein’s statement again….
ALBERT EINSTEIN: “Under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main source of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed, in most cases, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.”
Just review both sides of it yourself and come to your own conclusions. NIST has been caught lying. If you want to see it, I could bring it here, the video, along with at least another exapmle, they were caught on video tape with actual honest physicists observing with as polite a demeanor they could muster, when, what they offer up, actually defies physics. There was metal in liquid form, well into a month after the event. Many, many first responders saw it. Many of them are dying right nowm, with the government unwilling to acknowledgte them, But NIST’s their cartoonish theories, are simple to take down, even an eighth grader with knowledge of science can see it, if he or she allowed themselves to. But I wonder if you would dare look?
“But, you ignored the request. Just as you ignored the point of my recent criticism. Scientific validity doesn’t depend on the quantity of the scientists in agreement,”
I said that to you, exactly. Why are you saying it back to me?
“…nor does it depend on the quality of the scientists either, although there does tend to be a strong correlation.”
A correlation worth putting stock in, but as I pointed out, I look to the quality of the arguments as well.
And then you spend the rest of your post ranting about me because I supposedly base arguments on the quantity of scientists.
It would help if you would stop skimming and skipping material. You completely got the first four lines wrong, then stop after the fifth line, after your newsflash that there are still petty squabbles in the scientific community.
I spend the rest of my post talking about the faulty logic of trutherism, and you just wipe it from your brain. Genius approach there, ropelight. Just pretend words don’t exist, and that nobody can scroll up and see what I wrote to you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcqf5tL887o
NIST caught lying. One example of evidence. There are lots more if you look further, and refer to high school physics books.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRnwRxXJw6M&NR=1
Please look for the sake of the families that are asking you to look at the science.
Why are your scientists, Henry Whistler? I want explanations from them, that the woman in above video would like, (she lost her daughter) how the towers pulverizing don’t comply with laws of physics. Hell, how a high school physics book doesn’t comply with the government?
No, never mind, it’s all made up. Hundreds and growing professionals, of very relevent to the subject matter, profession to the free fall are just traveling around the world to get attention. They just want to stir up controversy. They think it’s fun when people call them “conspiracy theorists”. Risking their professional status, by honestly speaking out, is not big deal to them. They like to create fear. It’s all a big joke. LOL.
Obviously, as you clearly demonstrate, some people succumb to foolish beliefs. You clearly believe a number of reputable people are doing precisely that. Why shouldn’t it be your group rather than mine? This has nothing to do with evidence or reason.
These non sequiters don’t build my trust in your ability. Not to mention that you keep repeating yourself and link-spamming me. I don’t see any difference in your method and that of anti-vaccine types, AIDS “debunkers,” creationists, and global warming deniers. They all have a few jackasses willing to back them up, and by jove they let you know each and every one of their names!
You’re fundamentally dishonest, blu, because you’ve really failed to address my objections, and you have no intention (or ability) to do so. You just swear something’s being covered up, even though none of your scientists (the ones you and your “sources” aren’t misquoting) can produce a falsifiable model. It’s just continuous noise that “something is amiss!”
Lemme guess, you’ve got more links and I’m denying the laws of physics!
BTW, the whole “molten metal” thing is beyond retarded. That you found a man ignorant of the molten metal doesn’t mean the molten metal was significant, and it certainly was no indicator of thermite (not that thermite is really capable of the things truthers claim it to be).
http://www.debunking911.com/moltensteel.htm
This offers some good info and some actual solid argumentation. The conspiracy theorist loves to yell, “It could not have happened that way!” but indeed, it surely could. Do they care? No, they just find another theory that you have to scramble to disprove.
Not that you really understand anything being said to you, blu. I must go to bed, where I shall sleep well.
The links are bunk, because, the evidence in contrast to the theorizing done by by NIST and their paid shills still go contrary to high school physics journals. Sorry, talk is cheap, evidence holds weight. Analysis aligned with video doucmentation and proof. NIST has not done that. The Truth Movement’s scientists have. Some have the balls to look. Others are bought. Others are too afraid th=o think that far out of their safety zone, and so ignorance is bliss. All need to discuss, what can be done.
Not to mention that is Bush “science” you are hanging your hat on. Obama inherited the lie, the deciet, which is so sneaky, it is in plain sight, for anyone that will take their hands off of their eyes. Science Journals whose whole devotion is to science only, not government contracts, worth billions, making millionaires out of those that would sell out to the government/Pentagon psy-op, the false flag operation that will spread the wealth among all the insiders.
Remember what this fellow, I will bring, next post had to say..
video read (as if by him speaking) a highly decorated General, whose catharsis, moves me, and should you too, if you value human life, and can fathom the disregard for the multi-national traders of weapons, with whom their allegiances lie…questionable. Discord serves them, with death a means of it making them money. Some always have to die for their global agenda and corporate acquisition. Sadly its US military used for the dirty work. Tragic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3_EXqJ8f-0
[released from moderation - pH]
Actual science journals, prestigous ones, have done peer reviewed study, which you cannot dispute. The evidence IS indisputable by the Truth movement. Nano-thermite was in all samples of pulverized debris all over the city, several inches thick, blanketing the city. The buildings became dust. Those speaking from the Truth movement with solid science have nothing to gain, but keeping their own self-respect intact. The cover-up, which even the majority of the 911-Commission admitted was a white wash, what ever the reason, if opened up, to scrutiny would only prevent the continuing growth of the Truth movement, (if they can prove their theory, they cannot! But it is international now anyway, and the recognition of the falling of out of our democracy from it, with the threat of even more. The internet needs to be kept from oversight, like our TV networkks, which are now holding on board,defense industry personnel, to present to the public, what information will put a good face on what is actually a brutal destruction, upon anyone that is in their way, whether innocent or not. Brutality is astonishing, the newest policies of the US, invade, kill, torture for our safety, and by the way you could be tortured too for any reason that they decide, but, let’s all sing “God bless America”. Well, I won’t be singing it in the direction of the Pentagon which uses and abuses soldiers, and chooses to bomb as they so desire among populations that they think a bad guy might be. What do bad guys do? Oh, yeah they kill innocent poeple…but…isn’t that what our government is doing too? Oh, but I guess it is okay if they kill other people, because, they aren’t really people, in the middel-east, Are they?, and the destruction of humanity that happens to be in the way, is of no concern to the brutal aggressors’ agendas of taking what they so desire.
I’VE SAID IT OVER AND OVER, AND I GUESS I HAVE TO SAY IT AGAIN, KIDS, NO THEORIZING ALLOWED AS FINAL STATEMENT IN A SCIENTIFIC STUDY, AND WE DON’T THEORIZE. THE TRUTH MOVEMENT ONLY SCIENTIFICALLY ANALYZES, SHOWS THE AMPLE EVIDENCE IN VIDEO DOCUMENTATION, WHICH ANY CHILD COULD CLEARLY SEE THE EXPLANATIONS ALIGNING WITH SCIENCE AND COMMON SENSE.
[released from moderation - pH]
citing (over and over) “reason” as your foundation , then use emoting to prove it, enforce it and sustain it, and to accost others who cross you. (and i am the pouty teenager?) lol
blu and whislter (and to a large extent pho) are all peas of the same pod. some are just more bitter peas than others.
even when lefties have all the power, and they still whine and complain. its downright freaky.
Whistler, I don’t think you’re playing with a full deck, either that or your education is deeply flawed or incomplete. You continually display a self-centered preoccupation with errant notions, strangely coupled with curious lacunae of astonishing ignorance. (opportunity)
I noticed, thanks, you finally quoted me correctly, “…nor does it depend on the quality of the scientists either, although there does tend to be a strong correlation.”
A statement with which you seemed to agree, you wrote “A correlation worth putting stock in, but as I pointed out, I look to the quality of the arguments as well.”
All fairly good so far, but unfortunately, instead of grasping the deep and subtle truth expressed in my next paragraph, you wrote, “And then you spend the rest of your post ranting about me because I supposedly base arguments on the quantity of scientists.”
I did no such thing, that’s just crazy talk, and you’re dead wrong, you missed the point, or you ducked it because it focused too much light on your perverse inclination to conflate the person with the process.
Here’s what I wrote: Both the number and the reputations of scientists on one side of an issue or another are ultimately irrelevant because at it’s most fundamental level science is not dependant on scientists, but on the scientific method. And, if you don’t know that, then you don’t know the first damn thing about science.
Which, incidentally answers your initial question about why I quoted the quantity issue back at you. You were already half way to the point of grasping an essential concept, I reasoned that if you were capable of seeing one side of the issue, you might be prepared to stand on the shoulders of that foundation and thus come to see a little further.
Apparently not, because you ended up complaining, “I spend the rest of my post talking about the faulty logic of trutherism, and you just wipe it from your brain. Genius approach there, ropelight. Just pretend words don’t exist, and that nobody can scroll up and see what I wrote to you.”
Insane statement Whistler, and a glaring example of one of those curious lacunae I mentioned above. You couldn’t possibly have skipped my opening two paragraphs. Even a dolt could have concluded that I reject Trutherism, fact is I’m better at it than your are.
Nor, contrary to your whinny complaint, did I wipe it from my brain, I declined to mention it for the same reason I warned you, and others here, not to get involved with blu’s obsession in the first place. Ninny!
Both you and she are two sides of the same damn coin, both obsessed with Trutherism. She’s for it and you’re against it. Well, you’re both welcome to have at each other. But I’ll have no part of either side of the silly obsession.
Think about it, Whistler, if I refuse to respond to blu’s Trutherism, why would you expect me to respond to yours?
So it’s about the method, but you can’t fathom why I was discussing the methods of trutherism as the foundation of my opposition.
I made a simple statement earlier, that it was pointless of blu to keep throwing names of experts supposedly on her side at me, because if sheer quantity was her guide I still won. You’ve managed to turn your own confusion over this simple rebuttal of a fallacy into a cottage industry, but I implore you to save us all a little time and read more closely the first time.
Anyway, what was my “trutherism” again? You’re lobbing accusations again, after you had your arse handed to you. Back it up!
assoverinyourhead: “citing (over and over) “reason” as your foundation , then use emoting to prove it, enforce it and sustain it, and to accost others who cross you.”
An accusation you also can’t back up. The poor reading comprehension of rightwingers is only my problem insofar as you fools keep affecting policy with your deliberate ignorance.
Yes, according to them there is always some insufficiently cooperative or enthusiastic person somewhere gumming up the works, fouling up the perfect implementation of their plans for society. One they manage Nan said, to rid themselves of that last percentage of Republican types, he’s sure the result will be a heaven on earth. Just Demo shepherds managing and fungible Demo clients contentedly grazing in loving secular solidarity.
“One “, is once, obviously …
Whistler, are you so dense you don’t understand I’m just not interested in Trutherism in any of its aspects? You’re every bit as obsessed with it as blu, just on the negative side.
Could I possibly make the point any more clearly than I did the last time you whined and complained trying to interject it into the debate? I know you can read and write the English language.
No sentient human being could possibly read my comments and conclude otherwise. And, no, I can’t fathom why you continually do it, your most recent comment includes several such perverse attempts. Einstein defined insanity as repeating the same behavior and expecting a different result.
DNW: I think in that paragraph we see the root of your obsessions, the liberal boogeyman that haunts you and renders you impervious to reason.
On needing enthusiasm, I’m not so sure. What I think would sure improve our society is wingers dedicating themselves to some actual standards of discourse and reason instead of following the lead of wildly uninformed erratic goons like Beck, Limbaugh, and Palin. Less paranoia and rabid ranting about Communism every time somebody suggests a tax hike or some stimulus spending (military stimulus spending excluded, of course!). Maybe being willing to criticize Party Leader Limbaugh when he goes off on a racist tirade claiming the recession is Obama’s revenge against whites. Maybe revering your more reasonable conservatives instead of hounding stalwart Republicans like David Frum out of the party.
Our country does deserve good debates between opposing viewpoints to keep the excesses of the other in check. Democrats have largely modified many of their stances and geared the party’s focus towards sensible middle-ground positions.
You guys, being unable to think in terms other than complete warfare, responded by ramping up the crazy to dangerous levels, trying to win another election by slash-and-burn obstructionist tactics that don’t have anything to do with our country’s real problems.
This thread started because I challenged this rightwinger theology that all our problems are due to being taxed too much. As Dana revealed, it’s really about electoral strategy, not about fixing the country. Which was the problem with eight years of Bush.
Who in their right mind would let you back in power? The GOP has only demonstrated that it couldn’t be trusted with the little power it had, the filibuster, completely raping it and essentially remodeling the Senate as a 60-vote requirement.
As I’ve said before, 40 Republican Senators is obviously too many. When you guys can start behaving with some sobriety, perhaps it will be a good idea again. As it is, GOP wins in the fall can only mean more trouble for our country.
Ropelight: Density certainly is a problem here. You addressed my rebuttal to blu, I’m pointing out why you’re mistaken. If you’d like to back out of this debate now, by all means, but my original point stands. You’ve tried to assault the integrity of my dedication to scientific thought and standards twice now, and failed twice. Maybe stop picking that fight…
Ropelight observed:
Click on his name where it appears before his messages. Take a look at him over at Iowa Lib, stomping around in circles in an empty room, pumping his fist in the air and shouting out his imaginary triumphs to a nonexistent audience.
Then dare to tell us that you think he’s got a mental shortfall …
You’ve got the votes to do pretty much whatever you want that’s Constitutional (or otherwise if your party can manage it) shit-for-brains. You don’t need political cooperation for anything other than spreading the blame for your failure.
Whistler, you say I’m mistaken?
Surely not where you reveal your ignorance of one of the basics of science. I mentioned your idiotic response to blu to mock your incessant and unseemly posturing. You’re a braggart and a blow-hard, and you don’t know the first damn thing about being a scientist, but you play one on the Internet.
I wrote, “…really now, is scientific truth decided by a majority vote? Since you (Whistler) say you’ve got “… way, way, more scientists and engineers…on your side,” than blu does on hers?”
Then I advised you to “…beat a hasty retreat on that idiot notion or someone just might hold you accountable for your ignorance of scientific methods.” Again and again, when offered sound advise, you take the opposite tack. That’s sorta the definition of wrongheaded.
Now you claim that I’ve “tried to assault the integrity of (your) dedication to scientific thought and standards twice…” Yep, ya got that one almost right, Einstein.
Well, actually more that twice, but that does makes two of us, and we’re both succeeding in unmasking your self-deceptions. You aren’t dedicated to science at all, you’re a fraud, a pretender, a wannabe who can’t even think straight, or write clearly.
You make ridiculous pronouncements more akin to those of a religious fanatic than to a scientific observer, and then, after your Walter Mitty fantasies have evaporated in the light of observation you whine and complain that I won’t get down in the muck of Trutherism and play patty-cake with you. Shameful Whistler, absolutely shameful.
when he oddly declared up earlier on this this page “i won” it was a clue. i was wondering how the reasoned, professorial identity was going to reconcile with the infantile emoting one.
thats right , they dont reconcile. that pesky scientific law of non-contradiction. naturally since he didnt deem that a valid law he has excused himself from the consequences, (that of him being exposed.) in his own mind anyhow.
so, where is pho, we are short on spankings today.
lol
DNW: “You’ve got the votes to do pretty much whatever you want that’s Constitutional (or otherwise if your party can manage it) shit-for-brains. You don’t need political cooperation for anything other than spreading the blame for your failure.”
An outright lie! Oh wait, of course you forgot about the super-majority requirement in the Senate, a technicality that your party has used much more than at any time in the history of the super-majority rule? Now tell me you never heard [of] it, DNW!
With you people, it is all about party/ideology over country, an almost total unwillingness to work out compromise solutions. Most always, it is the Dems who reach across the aisle, with almost no takers.
You cannot be trusted with telling the truth, which most readers of this blog have long observed, nor for participating in civil debate, as your ‘shit-for-brains’ epithet is just your latest example from the gutter!
yes perry, you are “mr compromise”. so are pho and whistler.
they are sweet loving philosophical scientific geniuses too apparently. kindness, reason and a genuine concern for mankind oozes from all their orifices. (i dont have a red dripping sarcasm icon or i would use it.)
On needing enthusiasm, I’m not so sure. What I think would sure improve our society is wingers dedicating themselves to some actual standards of discourse and reason instead of following the lead of wildly uninformed erratic goons like Beck, Limbaugh, and Palin
What would improve your society is teaching bullshit filters in your schools so people aren’t fooled as easily by corporate-funded propaganda.
so, where is pho, we are short on spankings today.
lol
Gotta go to work, then pick up some stuff from the shops before heading north for the weekend with the gf.
What exactly do you mean by a super-majority requirement, Perry?
Are you suggesting that Obama would veto a Democrat law and it would require an overide? Are you discussing a treaty?
Certainly you cannot be referring to the placing of a bill on hold by the “threat of a filibuster”.
Certainly you are aware that the privilege of placing a hold on a bill is merely a Senate courtesy and procedure, and not Constitutional law. Certainly you would think that the bringing of your policies to the floor for an open vote was worth a couple of days of the Senators’ time in order to test the proposition of whether someone or some party would actually get up there and insist on discussing the bill in detail for days?
And certainly if they actually did that, it would give the bill a more complete airing and enable the public to see exactly what was being argued?
Oh, wait, no, according to your kind, the sheep need to be led and managed, and it is only proper that they wait for a bill to be passed before finding out its contents and discussing its implications.
Hey, sheep shagger, which of the embraceable ewes gets to experience the brunt of your unnatural predispositions, the cute little hefted Corriedale, or the piebald Freemartin?
It’s always been a source of mild amusement for me to watch your political kind blunder their way so predictably through the same old maze of their own creation.
Upon entering, you generally start with waspish comments and insults embedded in a fabric of misrepresentations and outright deceptions.
You proceed to unvarnished invective and insult, while preemptively (you hope) complaining that others will probably engage in “ad hominem” when they naturally retaliate in kind.
Finding your arguments collapsing and yourselves bested generally; as your quivering emotions dribble away, you’ll do something like pull out a pipe, and adopt a deflective avuncular tone, as you then begin discursively ruminating on the importance of social amity and accord in a modern civic republican state based on evolving principles of social solidarity and self-sacrifice. (rather than natural rights, of course)
Maybe your kind, is highly emotional. Or maybe you have forgotten all your insults because you were never deliberate in delivering them in the first place. Maybe among people of your social background, within your most intimate social environments, the air is full of that kind of abusive “give and take”. Perhaps you know no better, and you think that it’s just part of being a modern member of the collective; one which has evolved beyond concepts such as honor and respect for the individual and interpersonal boundaries.
Maybe it’s all part of your secular kumbayais, spindle-armed-steatopygous-male religion, and it is mostly unconscious taken-for-granted behavior as far as you and your kind are concerned.
Maybe that’s the way your mother talked to you, and at the end of the day, you were after all, still family.
Well I have my own family, and I see no reason to put up with the transgressions of hyperventilating moral defectives generated by families like yours.
As far as I am concerned, your hypocritical and emotionally driven political behavior puts you outside of the framework of useful or desirable civil relations. As I said before, due to historical circumstances we share a political space, and that’s all.
Given that, the term “Shit-for-brains” is probably one of the kinder ways to describe your type as they witlessly tread out the same old obnoxiously transparent patterns to the annoyance and social cost of everyone unfortunate enough to encounter them.
Hope this explanation helps.
DNW
You will recall probably his apropos-of-nothing wedging in of the topic originally. And now the repeat of the same. Feeling a little cozy is he? In a sharing mood with the “wingnuts”, perhaps? LOL
No, it’s just that immature geekling’s way of laying down a marker: Putting everyone on notice, he hopes, not to mock him any more over the whining celibacy he recorded on his blog.
Hope for her sake the “GF” doesn’t mind being paraded around the Internet as masculine bona fides for little Herr Goofus of NZ. Perhaps she’ll never find out, and be spared the humiliation of being used as a pawn by an Internet troll trying to salvage his reputation. Here’s hoping so.
Ropelight:
Here was my original quote:
Now I’ve explained this to you twice already, but there it is again: I’m critiquing blubonnet for using that kind of argument. Pointing out that I have more scientists on my side isn’t meant to be any kind of proof, which was my very point. I wanted blubonnet to do some actual thinking and practice some real argumentation, instead of playing the usual crank game of appealing to authority.
Now you’ve decided you’re going to keep making that point to me and pat yourself on the back for it. You couldn’t possibly be more stupid for doing so. Here you are again, clamping your jaw to a car going over a cliff.
Why don’t you knock off telling me I haven’t answered your questions when I answer them over and over again?
This has been our conversation:
“Aha, you used the quantity argument, Whistler!”
“To point out how useless it was, ropelight.”
“I caught you!”
“No, you didn’t. It’s an appeal to authority, one that can have some heft but isn’t by itself an argument. Blubonnet is trying to pretend she’s assembled a greater and more important body of experts than she actually has. The fact is that trutherism is rejected by the overwhelming majority of scientists and engineers around the world because the science is simply of very poor quality.”
“I don’t want to talk about trutherism!”
“Except for the part where I talked about the quantity of experts…”
“Yes, except that part! You used the quantity argument, Whistler!”
“Here we go again…”
You’re spinning in such circles trying to throw anything at me to see if it sticks. But I’m smarter than you, ropelight, and my logic is far sounder. If you’d quit being a jerkface and actually read to learn instead of pretending you have me in a “gotcha” for espousing very sound, rational sentiments, you’d save us all a bunch of time.
DNW: Heh.
We get more readers than this site does, you depraved idiot. If you’re going to engage in pure ad hominem, can you at least get your facts straight, so that you don’t blatantly advertise to the world how irretrievably broken your brain is?
No, it’s just that immature geekling’s way of laying down a marker: Putting everyone on notice, he hopes, not to mock him any more over the whining celibacy he recorded on his blog.
Uh-huh. You missed the others mentioned, huh?
Idiot.
BTW, DNW, based on your comment, I assume you’re prepared to deny the effect of Republican filibusters on the past two sessions of Congress, and assume no responsiblity for a policy of pure obstructionism?
I mean, I assume this because you’re a completely unscrupulous liar who will gladly say anything. Democrats just got to do whatever we wanted, didn’t we? Go ahead and say it. You’re a salesman, not a truth-teller.
assovertincups: I get it, you’re a cheerleader, you don’t do actual thinking.
I did win. Ropelight didn’t respond to my last substantive post on Mann, and refused several times to acknowledge clear answers to the question he kept asking repeatedly.
It’s not very complicated.
This time, I’ve explained that I didn’t consider quantity of scientists to be the actual reason truthers are full of shit. Ropelight responds by continuing to accuse me of saying quantity was what counted, while refusing to acknowledge the rest of my argument, because he doesn’t “want to discuss trutherism.” So the actual facts of the case that I’m building my argument on, the actual premises, are ruled out of order.
That’s patently ridiculous, however, and only reveals ropelight’s poor reading comprehension (not that yours is so hot either).
Thus I win again.
Surely you have some wonderful saying about depraved liberals and enlightened conservatives, but do you have a single solid ounce of reason on your side?
No, you’re just a cheerleader. Shake those pom-poms, girl!
DNW: “What exactly do you mean by a super-majority requirement, Perry? “
The answer is obvious, thus you lied, not surprisingly!
“It’s always been a source of mild amusement for me to watch your political kind blunder their way so predictably through the same old maze of their own creation. ….”
Hilarious!!! DNW, I have to admit, I have never encountered a character like you, twisting, turning, spinning, and attacking personally, with well developed verbal skills all for naught, except to attempt to put yourself on a pedestal that one might look up to you in awe. You are truly humorous, as I look forward to your next episode in response to the well chosen and well placed bait. To your discredit, you step up faithfully every time, having no concept whatsoever how you come across from your little gated world, unwilling even to have a person to person exchange or a little personal chit-chat. Who are you? What are you?
This one statement says it all: “Well I have my own family, and I see no reason to put up with the transgressions of hyperventilating moral defectives generated by families like yours. “
No further comment [debate] is required!
I am not impressed!
Wow, DNW, you sure got to ‘em, and right where it hurts. One application of the lash and they’re all riled up and squealing like a new weaned piglet. My compliments.
hmmm, say, whistler seems to know a lot about cheerleading.
so whistler, i see your persona is morphing at an accelerated rate. whats it going to be? (bitter)emo or poindexter?
yep,
funny how the actual winner is the one who doesnt have to declare himself such. some might call it ironic.
oh i forgot to add…
“rahh rahh”
lol
aotc, when I read your comment at 7:46pm above I couldn’t help but notice how few words you used to drive the point home.
So, I looked at one of my own overly verbose efforts:
On 6/7@10:22pm, “Now, it’s true I hold you (Whistler) in low regard, although it didn’t start out that way, that’s been the lesson of this series of exchanges. And, I have no real expectation that you’re capable of rising above your petty deceptions. But really now, these petulant displays of spite and pique are both unseemly and unbecoming. So is claiming honors you’ve yet to earn. It’s the mark of pretenders and guys who didn’t make the cut.”
Ya know, the more I looked around up thread the more I found that might come in handy.
Hey, ropelight and assovertincups – where did you buy your kneepads?
rope, that right there is gold.
More circle-jerking isn’t exactly going to change the facts, gentlemen. Can even one of you compose a substantive reply?
Oh, I know, wingers get mad when you declare victory. Whether or not you won never actually matters…they have the rhetoric ready to go. “He who declares victory has really lost!” Well, no. See, victory is actually possible if one successfully defends one’s points from the other and deconstructs the opponent’s argument.
To you guys, “victory” means cheerleading each other into a mutual fit of euphoria. As long as you keep hating “the enemy” you think you haven’t been beaten. But in the end, the things you’ve said about me are not true, and the things I’ve said about you have been. Your elaborate defenses against confronting your own shortcomings (which will probably include bouncing that phrase back at me) aren’t going to make them go away.
I’m struck by the collective display of inappropriate attention seeking. Since my last comment addressed to aotc, Phoney once and Whistler twice, have ended comments pathetically begging for responses. Typically odd.
Could we be observing some sort of an especially needy form of extroverted narcissism? The exhibitionistic bragging and boasting, the premature celebrations, the inability to focus on salient issues, the petty squabbling, likely it’s all connected.
Anyone know if the symptoms also include any short of shocking exhibitionist behavior?
Holy smokes.
If you can’t rebut, you lost the argument. You don’t like me saying that? Rebut.
It’s been a long, long time since I posted the last relevant comment regarding Mann. And since I was already lambasting a lefty for poor science, your initial contention that I don’t bash lefties for poor science was already on pretty damn weak ground.
But let me guess, more, “IT IS SUCH A BIZARRE PHENOMENON THESE DEVIOUS LIBERALS AND THEIR SCURRILOUS WAYS!” babble? You’re an utter fool, and I don’t mind saying it over and over.
Could we be observing some sort of an especially needy form of extroverted narcissism? The exhibitionistic bragging and boasting, the premature celebrations, the inability to focus on salient issues, the petty squabbling, likely it’s all connected.
Could we be flailing around with pseudo-psychological twaddle because our bottoms hurt so hard from the spanking?
Whistler, I don’t recall you ever making a relevant comment about the Hockeysticker, certainly not one relevant to my initial question. Here it is again.
“Well, you’ve already talked the talk, now have a look at the reasoning behind the decision to clear Michael Mann of wrongdoing, and we’ll see for ourselves if (you’re) willing to walk the walk.”
It’s been a week now and you still haven’t faced up to the real issue. Your ducking and dodging, while entertaining, is really only an ongoing indictment of your initial false claims and phony posturing.
You second paragraph above actually proves my assertions. You say, “It’s been a long, long time since I posted the last relevant comment regarding Mann. And since I was already lambasting a lefty for poor science, your initial contention that I don’t bash lefties for poor science was already on pretty damn weak ground.”
Since I already debunked your silly Mann claim above, I’ll expose your other obvious lie now. As anyone with eyes can see, my “initial contention” had nothing at all to do with “bashing lefties for poor science” or for any other reason. Your phony claim is nothing more than a red herring.
You just made it up in order to hide behind it, and use it as a platform for another dishonest assault on me. And, it’s not the first time you’ve pulled underhanded crap like that. I’ve already had to call you down more than once on using bogus quotes. Your closing paragraph above is also somewhat illustrative of the ongoing problem.
Early on I accused you of being a fraud and a blow-hard. Now, I’m adding braggart and deceiver to the list of indictments, and there’s more to come.
they know they have a limited time window to try to trap people in the miserable bondage they themselves are in. it will get nastier. ever watch a spoiled, ungrateful child in the last throws of a tantrum? yea, it looks like that.
if i did have kneepads they would be gettin’ a workout.
(note to ideologues; feel free to confuse that ironically with standing down.)
Again:
I wrote:
The auto-fellating Henry Whistler, hearing the alarm bell, resentfully looks up from his interrupted activity and after having taken care to exclude any context or even original text from his reply, petulantly retorts to some proposition existing only in his deluded mind:
But, as I actually said about you, Henry:
Perhaps Perry would like a “cite please”? As of 2:26 PM of the 9th:
In fact Henry, you have about eight straight with just the same response level.
You may now go back to whatever you were doing before you were so rudely interrupted by the outside world.
Whistler, I addressed the second part of your phony accusation in my most recent comment above. These are your words, ” And since I was already lambasting a lefty for poor science, your initial contention that I don’t bash lefties for poor science was already on pretty damn weak ground.”
Hold on there Whistler, I made no such contention.
What I did was to offer you an opportunity to demonstrate your high sounding and often repeated commitment to scientific inquiry wasn’t a fraud, a phony commitment that was actually limited by your liberal political views. Your decision to duck the question actually provided a stronger answer than your words ever could. But, I already covered that issue above.
However, now, I want to take up the first part of your contention. Although you claim to have been lambasting a lefty for poor science, what you were actually doing was pushing around a girl you knew was vulnerable. I told you she was nutty and even asked you to cut her a little slack. But, no, you couldn’t do that. You’d already spotted an easy target.
So you continued to attack her. She’s a Truther, a member of a despised group, an easy target for a bully to pound down. I even told you that her positions wouldn’t be held against liberals here. There was no valid reason to continue to attack her. She’s in the grip of an obsession, and she’s not functioning at full adult capacity.
No one here agrees with her, yet she keeps coming back, sometimes politely but more often with bitter words and ugly accusations, too often her comments are lengthy and inappropriate, and she’s desperate for attention, but she keeps trying and she coming back. I admit to having a soft spot for her, and that I try to look out for her. But, don’t attack her when it’s actually me you’d really like to get at.
I warned you, and others, to leave her to her obsessions and that’s the voice of experience talking, but you don’t listen, you leap at the easy opportunity to take a cheap scalp and celebrate with unseemly pronouncements of what can only be seen as a cheap and hollow victory.
I find that sort of thing lacking in compassion, and it’s a shameful display of the worst sort of chauvinism. Real men, decent men, gentle men, just don’t act like that.
DNW, thanks for adding that. It confirms my suspicions, and makes me look like a mind reader.
Well now, DNW, I clicked on your link, and guess what I found at Whistler’s blog? But, likely you already know.
I found my own words, originally addressed to you if memory serves, posted on Whistler’s site, without attribution, and under his claim of having added another skull(presumably mine) to his trophy case. The quote was lifted verbatim, complete with typo, from CSPT 2 days ago.
Then the laughable buffoon brags about – toying with a Truther – and eating them for breakfast. This guy Whistler is a ghoul. I’ve been way too easy on him.
You found out he’s an honor-less imitation of a man, and that it’s no wonder he spends so much of his time psychotically ranting to an empty room.
ropelight: Holy smokes. You just don’t have to abide by any standards of proof, do you? You just get to make shit up all day, because DNW or asshead will tell you it’s real.
“What I did was to offer you an opportunity to demonstrate your high sounding and often repeated commitment to scientific inquiry wasn’t a fraud, a phony commitment that was actually limited by your liberal political views. Your decision to duck the question…”
Liar. I know you keep calling me a liar, though you haven’t demonstrated a single lie, but there you are, lying in broad daylight. I answered the question over and over again.
To top it off, you actually dared ask the question again:
Except I did, over and over again, explicitly. Your worldview, perhaps, cannot handle the fact that I answered it, but I did.
And then you gave up and spent the last several days trying to psychoanalyze me.
And here you are, repeating yourself again, claiming I haven’t answered the question, when you refuse to address my answer.
Sure, somebody here is a depraved moronic liar, but it isn’t me. I’ve done my best to be as absolutely intellectually honest with you as possible, and you’ve not returned the favor.
You’re a liar, ropelight. You project your flaws onto others, mimic what other people point out is wrong in your head, and pretend you’re some kind of genius above things like the standards of logical discourse. You’re not.
You’re just a dishonest rightwinger like all the rest. You don’t get to run away from the last substantive post, and then claim you debunked it. You haven’t said a thing. You still haven’t said a thing. You just repeated the question ONE MORE UNBELIEVABLE TIME.
DNW: More “No true Scotsman,” genius. You said my audience was nonexistant. I pointed out that Mike G., who was on fishing vacation and who has been a bit more obsessed with his fishing website lately, regularly pull in more viewers than CPST. Two to three times more, last I checked.
Suddenly, as fast as you can type, it’s about “You have very few comments!” Nice goal shifting, you shameless bullshitter.
Really, I thought for a second you were supposed to be some fearsome debater. You’re a friggin’ joke. “Whistler has no honor!” Oh, okay, some retard on CPST said so, must be true!
Where’s the beef, chickenshit?
Ropelight said, “you leap at the easy opportunity to take a cheap scalp…”
Very true. Guess what I’m doing with you two dunces? I’ve had you both dead to rights for awhile now, now it’s just a game of seeing how long it takes your thick skulls to crack. You seem to keep thinking these shallow, cheap elements of uninformed psychoanalysis are going to pierce my heart, but you assume I’ve not encountered a rightwing idiot before.
It’s ALWAYS like this. You fail at the logic, so you spit and spew and flail.
I wrote the last substantive post of any kind in here, it awaits rebuttal. For people who are against auto-fellating, I implore you to take your own schlongs out of your yappers and start saying something worth a damn for once.
In fact Henry, you have about eight straight with just the same response level.
So where’s your blog, loser?
Since I already debunked your silly Mann claim above,
Just repeating again:
The National Academy of Science endorses Mann’s science. It has since been confirmed with other analyses, using different methods.
Spanked again, liar.
I wrote the last substantive post of any kind in here, it awaits rebuttal. For people who are against auto-fellating, I implore you to take your own schlongs out of your yappers and start saying something worth a damn for once.
That’s a bit unfair, Henry. I’m sure that if you go through their posts above they spend far more time servicing each other rather than engaging in auto-fellation.
Henry says I said,
But Henry, I actually said,
And then I later illustrated it by showing the time, quoting your psychotic rambling, and noting the zero response rate:
Which was obviously non responsive, since I had noted it was you who was psychotically ranting unacknowledged in an empty room, and had made no reference to MikeG’s presence or audience or lack thereof.
But hey, if you want to hang on MikeG’s supposed shirttail