Liberal Forum

SJConspirator » 08 Aug 2021, 9:02 am » wrote: ↑

08 Aug 2021, 9:02 am

A case study:  North Korea.  A large percentage of their 25 million citizens is starving, they herd dissidents into huge concentration camps, and they are a nuclear power with the 4th largest military in the world.  Their dictator, Kim Jong Un, may seem like a monster, but he brutally suppresses any dissent in his country and makes it a hellscape, because of US.

Kim Jong Un has seen leaders such as Saddam Hussein and Qaddafi die violent deaths after they loosened restrictions, bowed to U.S. sanctions and pressure to abandon their nuclear programs, or both.  This is a guy who has learned from the mistakes of others, and his actions are not that of a lunatic... they are perfectly rational in light of the constant existential threat coming from the U.S.A.

So America exports terror, and even without much direct involvement, we passively create the conditions for human misery around the globe.  Arent you proud to be an American, and pay your taxes to fund this ****?

ArthurTreacher67 » 16 Aug 2021, 2:34 pm » wrote: ↑

16 Aug 2021, 2:34 pm

CP, as LF's Grand Poobah, please consider reviewing this video and giving it a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Thank you.

In one minute, I think you will be hooked.

Bill Warner, PhD: Professional Ignorance

https://youtu.be/xhwBV39uWT0

"This is a talk given to political leaders. It covers how universities, law enforcement, clergy, politicians and military are not protecting our civilization via their professional ignorance. Institutions are failing and not doing their due diligence to learn and explain the true nature of political Islam. The problem is not Islam. We are the problem."

After one of Warner's speeches, a member of Germany's Executive Committee said, "I can now see after your talk we will never defeat Islam using our methods and that the only method will work are yours."

Vegas » 26 Dec 2020, 3:20 pm » wrote: ↑

26 Dec 2020, 3:20 pm

Like I said, I wouldn't expect you to admit it. But yes, that's just how it is in America.

AND IT WASN'T DEMOCRATS IN THE DIRT POOR  STATES WHO UNDERMINED UNIONS THAT FOUGHT FOR DECENT WAGES & SAFETY REGULATIONS & PENSIONS FOR AMERICANS WORKERS!

And it wasn't Democrats who SHUT DOWN OUR ECONOMY, STANDING NEXT TO CDC representatives telling Americans that they MUST "SOCIAL"(PHYSICALLY) DISTANCE THEMSELVES FROM EACH OTHER, WHILE THE  STOOD WITH DIFFERENT CROWDS NEXT TO EACH OTHER FOR WEEKS, SHARING THE SAME PODIUM & MICROPHONE WITHOUT GLOVES & MASKS THAT HIS CDC WAS RECOMMENDING, CAUSING ****  STATE IDIOTS TO GO TO BARS & NAIL SALONS, GENERATING NEW SPIKES IN THOSE  STATES!

And it wasn't Democrats who "FLATTENED the TAX BASE," of our PROGRESSIVE MARGINAL GRADUATED income tax system, that once made US the MOST POWERFUL NATION this  has EVER witnessed, even the landing of men on the moon a HALF CENTURY AGO, by shifting the TAX BURDEN DOWN ONTO THE BACKS OF THE POOR & MIDDLE-CLASS WORKING AMERICANS, while ALLOWING THE ELITELY OVERPAID TO CHEAT ON BOTH ENDS WITH FLAT TAXES of incomes  ABOVE $600k, even when paid 10s of MILLIONS of $, or even more than $154M/year! 

ENOUGH WITH ALL OF THIS RNC CULTIST **** CHAOS! 

FOS » 17 Aug 2021, 12:52 pm » wrote: ↑

17 Aug 2021, 12:52 pm

Remember that arrogant assumption prior to the Bush invasion of Iraq?

It was a very common assumption held by many us citizens. 

And the fact we were proven wrong, SHOULD have inspired us to re examine our assumptions about human nature and the nature of governmental power. 

But it didn't. We are dumb. 

It is predictable that we would have such incorrect predictions...because in the west we are sold absolutely absurd lies in our education which we never examine. 

"The peasants under Christian monarchies were miserable and oppressed. They hated being peasants and the lord or king had no respect for them and just expoited them"

remember being trained to think this? But there is a massive body of literature that proves this is a lie. 

You can simply read Shakespeare in fact. We writes about kings quite often..often amazingly he makes them very human. they were not evil...they also were not somehow innately superior. 

How can your education explain this? It can't. You would at the very least assume that Shakespeare...who himself lived under the yoke of oppressive absolute monarchy...would view them in one extreme or the other. 

And yet all the us citizens who read Shakespeare just never think about the inherent contradiction here. 

Shakespeare simply respected kings. He liked the institution...yet he did not view them as actual gods (as your Hollywood education on the divine right of kings might suggest). No, kings were the fallible tool for the collective will of the people...so in fact loving the people was akin to loving the king. The king may not always do the best job, but it was assumed that he tried to do a good job. 

And what did you learn about the French revolution? 

Well it might be surprising that the people overall loved the king...and indeed the peasants seemed very happy with their lives. 

And this love was mutual. Indeed the reason the revolution succeeded is precisely because the king ordered his army toarever shoot at the mob. You can easily confirm that this is true on Google or something...it is not controversial. 

Only the very first riot was put down (because the king did not expect it)..and the revolution was later nearly defeated simply by Swiss mercenaries (because of language issues...they did not seem to understand the kings will)

the French king conceded to every demand of the mob, and did not resist being imprisoned by them. 

Now obviously that begs the question...what really motivated the revolution and who were the real actors involved? That is a deep and complex question...and I don't want to delve into it here. It is enough for me to mention that it was almost the same as the bolshevik revolution in russia, with almost identical outcomes. 

the truth is...our liberal education is simply wrong about human nature. What people want far more than material comfort is a purpose for their life. 

and that is why the taliban defeated us. Because Islam is quite simply more inspiring than empowered hip hop American ***. 

I often hear leftists say "white people don't have a culture"...that is a VERY revealing belief. 

The truth is, we used to have a culture. It was stolen from us. Our indoctrination into nihilism is the only thing that maintains the current power structure, and allows our elite to exploit us far more than any king ever did.

The baathists...who were a secular pan Arabic political movement...exactly like like Arab version of the whitr nationalists in early america...wanted no part of this.

IkeBana » 20 Aug 2021, 8:59 am » wrote: ↑

20 Aug 2021, 8:59 am

Go **** yourself.  This is happening because when this country invaded Afghanistan with no goal other than to stage some payback that George W. Bush could play politics with...there was no plan regarding what to do about the Taliban.  And for the next 20 years, under the leadership of three presidents (two Republicans, one Democrat), they failed to go after the Taliban, defeat the Taliban, disarm the Taliban, and hang any Taliban that committed atrocities, which was most of the Taliban.  They didn't do any of that.  What they did, all three of them, was continue to try to do their nation building ****.  They tried to establish a democratic government, and an Afghan military, that would be able to do that job on the Taliban.  Why?  Because the politicians...all **** three of them...didn't want to look like the badass occupiers they would have had to look like in order to get the dismemberment of the Taliban done.  So instead we spent 20 years in Afghanistan while the politicians tried to build a non-graft ridden, non-corrupt, effective government in Kabul.  Fat **** chance.  So what have we accomplished in 20 years?  Here ya go...
20,666: US military members wounded in action in Afghanistan.(Source: Department of Defense.)2,312: US military deaths in Afghanistan.(Source: Department of Defense.)
47,245: estimated Afghan civilians killed. (Source: Costs of War Project.)458: Humanitarian aid workers killed in Afghanistan since the US invasion.(Source: Aid Worker Security Database.)74: Journalists and media workers killed in Afghanistan since the US invasion.(Source: The Committee to Protect Journalists.)RefugeesMore than 2.5 million: Afghan refugees at the end of 2020.(Source: UN.)More than 3.5 million: People now internally displaced in Afghanistan.(Source: UN.)

And now...Biden said we're done **** around playing politics in Afghanistan, we're outta here.

And assholes like you want to play politics with it.  Go **** yourself.

 CARL SAGAN’S **** DETECTION KIT

 Carl Sagan was one of the Twentieth Century’s great critical thinkers. His peers called Sagan the patron saint of reason and the master of scientific balance between blind belief, skepticism, questioning, and openness. Carl Sagan had the chops to back it up. He was a cosmologist, astrophysicist, philosopher, humanist, and prolific author as well as being the architect behind SETI — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Sagan was also good at detecting ****.

 I just read Carl Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. It was published in 1996 shortly before Sagan’s untimely death from myelodysplasia. In it, he debunks superstition, some organized religion beliefs, psychics, sorcery, faith healing, UFOs, witchcraft, and demons — especially the fire-breathing dragon in his garage. One of Sagan’s chapters is The Fine Art of Baloney Detection. He was profanity-correct twenty-five years ago. Today, we know he’d call it “****”.

 In The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan takes a hard run at paid product endorsements by unscrupulous scientists who “betray contempt for the intelligence of their customers and introduce an insidious corruption of popular attitudes about scientific objectivity”. Sagan also predicted the rise of fake news and the down-slide of political ethics and honesty. It made me wonder what he’d say about Trump.

Carl Sagan said that “through their training, scientists are equipped with a baloney (****) detection kit — a set of cognitive tools and techniques that fortify the mind against the penetration of falsehoods”.

 Here is a list of what’s inside Carl Sagan’s **** detection kit:


1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.” 

2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging. 

7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them. 

8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.

9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

 The Fine Art of **** Detection drills deeper.

 Carl Sagan writes, “Just as important as learning these helpful tools and techniques, is unlearning and avoiding the most common pitfalls of common sense. In addition to teaching us what to do when evaluating a claim to knowledge, any good baloney detection kit must also teach us what not to do. It helps us recognize the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric. Many good examples can be found in religion and politics, because their practitioners are so often obliged to justify two contradictory propositions”.

 Carl Sagan goes on to admonish the most common and perilous pitfalls — many rooted in our chronic discomfort with ambiguity — and he uses examples of each in action.

 1. Ad hominem — Latin for “to the man,” attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g., The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken seriously)

 2. Argument from authority (e.g., President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia — but because it was secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President: a mistake, as it turned out)

 3. Argument from adverse consequences (e.g., A God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if He didn’t, society would be much more lawless and dangerous — perhaps even ungovernable. Or: The defendant in a widely publicized murder trial must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other men to murder their wives)

 4. Appeal to ignorance — the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist — and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we’re still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

 5. Special pleading, often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (e.g., How can a merciful God condemn future generations to torment because, against orders, one woman induced one man to eat an apple? Special plead: you don’t understand the subtle Doctrine of Free Will. Or: How can there be an equally godlike Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the same Person? Special plead: You don’t understand the Divine Mystery of the Trinity. Or: How could God permit the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — each in their own way enjoined to heroic measures of loving kindness and compassion — to have perpetrated so much cruelty for so long? Special plead: You don’t understand Free Will again. And anyway, God moves in mysterious ways.)

 6. Begging the question, also called assuming the answer (e.g., We must institute the death penalty to discourage violent crime. But does the violent crime rate in fact fall when the death penalty is imposed? Or: The stock market fell yesterday because of a technical adjustment and profit-taking by investors — but is there any independent evidence for the causal role of “adjustment” and profit-taking; have we learned anything at all from this purported explanation?)

 7. Observational selection, also called the enumeration of favorable circumstances, or as the philosopher Francis Bacon described it, counting the hits and forgetting the misses (e.g., A state boasts of the Presidents it has produced, but is silent on its serial killers) statistics of small numbers — a close relative of observational selection (e.g., “They say 1 out of every 5 people is Chinese. How is this possible? I know hundreds of people, and none of them is Chinese. Yours truly.” Or: “I’ve thrown three sevens in a row. Tonight I can’t lose.”)

 8. Misunderstanding of the nature of statistics (e.g., President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence);

 9. Inconsistency (e.g., Prudently plan for the worst of which a potential military adversary is capable, but thriftily ignore scientific projections on environmental dangers because they’re not “proved.” Or: Attribute the declining life expectancy in the former Soviet Union to the failures of communism many years ago, but never attribute the high infant mortality rate in the United States (now highest of the major industrial nations) to the failures of capitalism. Or: Consider it reasonable for the Universe to continue to exist forever into the future, but judge absurd the possibility that it has infinite duration into the past);

 10. Non sequitur — Latin for “It doesn’t follow” (e.g., Our nation will prevail because God is great. But nearly every nation pretends this to be true; the German formulation was “Gott mit uns”). Often those falling into the non sequitur fallacy have simply failed to recognize alternative possibilities;

 11. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc — Latin for “It happened after, so it was caused by” (e.g., Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila: “I know of … a 26-year-old who looks 60 because she takes [contraceptive] pills.” Or: Before women got the vote, there were no nuclear weapons)

 12. Meaningless question (e.g., What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? But if there is such a thing as an irresistible force there can be no immovable objects, and vice versa)

 13. Excluded middle, or false dichotomy — considering only the two extremes in a continuum of intermediate possibilities (e.g., “Sure, take his side; my husband’s perfect; I’m always wrong.” Or: “Either you love your country or you hate it.” Or: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”)

 14. Short-term vs. long-term — a subset of the excluded middle, but so important I’ve pulled it out for special attention (e.g., We can’t afford programs to feed malnourished children and educate pre-school kids. We need to urgently deal with crime on the streets. Or: Why explore space or pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?);

 15. Slippery slope, related to excluded middle (e.g., If we allow abortion in the first weeks of pregnancy, it will be impossible to prevent the killing of a full-term infant. Or, conversely: If the state prohibits abortion even in the ninth month, it will soon be telling us what to do with our bodies around the time of conception);

 16. Confusion of correlation and causation (e.g., A survey shows that more college graduates are homosexual than those with lesser education; therefore education makes people gay. Or: Andean earthquakes are correlated with closest approaches of the planet Uranus; therefore — despite the absence of any such correlation for the nearer, more massive planet Jupiter — the latter causes the former)

 17. Straw man — caricaturing a position to make it easier to attack (e.g., Scientists suppose that living things simply fell together by chance — a formulation that willfully ignores the central Darwinian insight, that Nature ratchets up by saving what works and discarding what doesn’t. Or — this is also a short-term/long-term fallacy — environmentalists care more for snail darters and spotted owls than they do for people)

 18. Suppressed evidence, or half-truths (e.g., An amazingly accurate and widely quoted “prophecy” of the assassination attempt on President Reagan is shown on television; but — an important detail — was it recorded before or after the event? Or: These government abuses demand revolution, even if you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Yes, but is this likely to be a revolution in which far more people are killed than under the previous regime? What does the experience of other revolutions suggest? Are all revolutions against oppressive regimes desirable and in the interests of the people?)

 19. Weasel words (e.g., The separation of powers of the U.S. Constitution specifies that the United States may not conduct a war without a declaration by Congress. On the other hand, Presidents are given control of foreign policy and the conduct of wars, which are potentially powerful tools for getting themselves re-elected. Presidents of either political party may therefore be tempted to arrange wars while waving the flag and calling the wars something else — “police actions,” “armed incursions,” “protective reaction strikes,” “pacification,” “safeguarding American interests,” and a wide variety of “operations,” such as “Operation Just Cause.” Euphemisms for war are one of a broad class of reinventions of language for political purposes. Talleyrand said, “An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public”)

 Carl Sagan ends the chapter with a necessary disclaimer:

 “Like all tools, the baloney (****) detection kit can be misused, applied out of context, or even employed as a rote alternative to thinking. But applied judiciously, it can make all the difference in the world — not least in evaluating our own arguments before we present them to others.

Cannonpointer » 23 Aug 2021, 9:00 pm » wrote: ↑

23 Aug 2021, 9:00 pm

RNA affects DNA, though - is that not the case?

So manipulating the one may have beneficial or deleterious effects on the other - yes?

Bidennextpresident » 27 Aug 2021, 11:01 am » wrote: ↑

27 Aug 2021, 11:01 am

As you know, I’m a critic of what’s called the blob. It’s called that by its critics. The word refers to the foreign policy establishment. And I mean that broadly, by the way — people at think tanks, journalists, commentators, columnists, the people who show up on cable news to tell us what’s what, and as well as the people who go into government and actually make and implement the policy.

I would submit that most of the people going on to the cable news shows to comment on Afghanistan now supported the Iraq war, for example.

In the Iraq war is something that is widely considered a catastrophe. That’s almost a consensus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/p...rt-wright.html

Very insightful interview. CNN and MSNBC, 'left wingers', are attacking Biden non-stop for ending the war.

AnnoyedLiberall » 01 Sep 2021, 12:59 pm » wrote: ↑

01 Sep 2021, 12:59 pm

That's what I am wondering too.
The war went on too long, and we shouldn't have even been there.
But, the agreement was not kept.
Why did neither Trump nor Biden push back?

Cannonpointer » 01 Sep 2021, 11:56 pm » wrote: ↑

01 Sep 2021, 11:56 pm

Consider my alternative take.

Assume for one moment that the president is not in charge of the joints chiefs, but that they respond and answer to someone above the president 

As evidence for this, I present Trump's repeated and growingly desperate attempts to leave Syria. How many times in our history have we seen a president issue orders to withdraw from the podium of a SOTU address? Only once, to my knowledge - and this hail mary still did not accomplish Trump's stated goal to pull out of Syria. It looked to me like the generals just told the POTUS to **** himself - and to cover his embarrassment, the POTUS simply claimed that it was HIS idea to "occupy the oil fields." But this flies in the face of the orders he gave publicly at the previous SOTU address. 

In my scenario, neither Trump nor Biden is in command. They are gelded figure heads, and we are being run by a shadow government. And not fer nuthin? That shadow government now want to stick us with poisons. 

That's my story, and I'm stickin to it. 
 

---

1 Nomination

SJConspirator Sep 01, 2021

Go to original post on Sep 01, 2021 9:50pm

omh » 03 Sep 2021, 1:45 pm » wrote: ↑

03 Sep 2021, 1:45 pm

I realize the danger I put myself in going against you here, since this site is under tremendous pressure to remove me, but this intellectual divide and conquer psychology **** has got to end and it will only stop when people choose to be ancestors again.

solon » 04 Sep 2021, 1:56 pm » wrote: ↑

04 Sep 2021, 1:56 pm

Yes yes RACIST PIG spamming with more and more RACIST PIGGISM because he is PROUD to be a RACIST PIG Keep proving my point LOSER keep  being PROUD of what a RACIST PIG you are. Done even TRY to act like an adult just ADMIT you are TOO STUPID to address an issue and you KNOW it.J just ne PROUD of what a RACIST PIG you are.   I accept your surrender PATHETIC RACIST LOSER
 

Isabel » 04 Sep 2021, 4:40 pm » wrote: ↑

04 Sep 2021, 4:40 pm

It's none of your **** business if she wants to terminate a pregnancy.

TB7 » 05 Sep 2021, 7:43 pm » wrote: ↑

05 Sep 2021, 7:43 pm

it's real simple....America has had enough. You idiots, cannot make people mask or vax. This weekend is just the beginning of our RESISTACE to the TALIBAN WH. Like I have been saying all along, gonna be a real hard 3 years for you crybabies/whiners. We will never ever support the TALIBAN WH. DeSantis will be our POTUS in 2024. 

THE COVID BOWL                            

https://twitter.com/i/status/1434231397011558401

Pengwin » 06 Sep 2021, 10:40 am » wrote: ↑

06 Sep 2021, 10:40 am

Taipan » 06 Sep 2021, 9:49 am » wrote: ↑

06 Sep 2021, 9:49 am

The Taliban are hunting the Americans who are in hiding this morning in Kabul.

They should have left when it was obvious they needed to go - months ago.

 There's only so much we can do to protect the stupid from themselves...