Messages

101

General Comments / Re: RNC

« on: August 31, 2020, 12:04:54 PM »

WmLambert, did you just accuse Drake of being a Democrat apologist?

Were you not there for the whole Drake's Aunt Millie candidacy discussion?

Drake, please tell me your Aunt Millie is still running.  I already made up posters and T-shirts!

102

General Comments / Re: We gotta talk about Uncle Joe

« on: June 01, 2020, 11:59:22 AM »

And specifically while talking to The Drake, who is far from a Hillary supporter, if I remember correctly.

103

General Comments / Re: A Message from the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump:

« on: May 20, 2020, 08:49:00 AM »

It is a conflation of
     1) the study results, which show a statistical increase in deaths from heart attack,
 and
     2) a bloviating pundit, who like all pundits, spins it up to 11

Fenring is questioning the pundit, but the original post was referring to the study, with a link buried in the pundits transcript.

Classic mis-communication.  I hope.

The bottom line is, it has a better-than-placebo chance of killing you, so don't take it unless the illness has an even larger chance of killing you.

104

General Comments / Re: The Shampeachement Follies

« on: May 13, 2020, 12:34:40 PM »

I'm confused.
Conservatives have been saying all along that The Perfect Call was about helping root out corruption, not about quid pro quo.

Now thet are saying that the parts of the transcript about rooting out corruption were fabricated? 

I am all sorts of confused.

105

General Comments / Re: A Message from the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump:

« on: May 12, 2020, 09:06:48 AM »

And yet, just last night at the press conference the president guarunteed that if you want a test, you can get a test.

The PR people and doctors tried to walk that back, but he then repeated at the end that anybody can get tested if they want to, because we have all of this extra capacity going to waste.

"If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor."   -  conservatives launched a ****storm
"If you want to get tested, you can get tested."        -  conservatives defend and 'explain what he really meant'

 

106

General Comments / Re: We gotta talk about Uncle Joe

« on: April 28, 2020, 10:40:36 AM »

Cherrypoptart:

People who believe he is guilty and will support and vote for him anyway. That's gotta hurt.

Why?  That is what Trump's followers have been saying for years - 'yes we know he is a flaming pile of garbage. But he promised to do the things we want while in office, so I will hold my nose and vote for him'

Meanwhile, I am STILL getting flack for voting 3rd party rather than voting for Clinton to keep Trump out.

107

General Comments / Re: coronavirus

« on: April 15, 2020, 12:46:25 PM »

Crunch:

One of us finally read my posts. 

I had opened the page earlier, before your immediately previous post.  When I posted my response, it refreshed, and I saw that you had posted again several minutes before I did.

But you never did explain why so many more people are dying this spring in NYC if it is not from COVID.

108

General Comments / Re: coronavirus

« on: April 15, 2020, 10:25:20 AM »

Crunch:

Sounds about right, the gold standard of science.  Anything that confirms your bias, must be true.

They’re openly admitting to inflating the numbers. And you love it.

So where did this sudden surge of deaths come from, Dr. Crunch?  LR already laid out his reasoning and comparisons to previous years.

You, on the other hand have... snark.  And motive inference.  Why can't you actually present ideas and reasoning, rather than constantly belittling and whining?


Edit:
Wow, you answered before i even asked.  One of us must be psychic!

109

General Comments / Re: coronavirus

« on: April 03, 2020, 10:57:37 AM »

Should Oregon continue to shut down like NY, even though the state's own data show's it's completely non-sensical?

The state's data showed a comparison through May.  Someone already asked what the comparison would be for June and July.
Does that extrapolation exist on the site you found?  There are a lot of plans that look better in the short term but balloon in the medium or long term.

110

General Comments / Re: census

« on: April 03, 2020, 10:31:35 AM »

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Cherry.  I like chex mix better than Gardetto's, but I LOVE the rye chips.  That is the only individual size chip bag I ever buy.  And if they make a family size bag I would probably OD on it.

111

General Comments / Re: coronavirus

« on: April 02, 2020, 10:40:09 AM »

it is always a sliding scale.
Absolutely no-one sane is saying 'do nothing, let nature take its course.  We will come through stronger than ever'
Absolutely no-one sane is saying 'shut down everything, devote the entire resourses of the country to each case as it comes up'

Yet those are the stances that people are throwing at each other during the argument.  Who was the (libertarian) member a few years ago that kept going on about how there was only a 1% difference between the Republicans and the Democrats?

112

General Comments / Re: coronavirus

« on: April 02, 2020, 10:18:47 AM »

2 in a 1000 people under 30 die. I don't exactly call that shrugging it off.

Also, if they end up in the hospital, taking up space and resources.  That is not what people mean by 'shrug it off'

I guess the question is - what does Crunch mean when he say 'shrug it off'?

Also, I always thought that the easing of the quarantine would occur when we had enough new supplies and treatments to handle the expected spike, not when everyone in the world is vaccinated.

113

General Comments / Re: coronavirus

« on: March 25, 2020, 04:27:10 PM »

Crunch from another thread:

China has established a pattern of lying and coverups around this virus. The others have not. Consequently, I trust these guys and their results far more than the Chinese government.

Someone is tracking cell phone usage in China, and she pointed out that 15 million cellphones have had no traffic for several weeks. I didn't read the entire article - it was copied on facebook.  I don't know how robust the cell service is, I don't know if there are cultural forces in play that would affect cell usage.
But I do know that the virus tracker I am looking at has not show a single new case in China for 10 days now.

114

General Comments / Re: Who’s got it?

« on: March 23, 2020, 11:32:52 AM »

We had a service tech in for one of our machines at work early last week.  He lives outside of Philly.  He said that all of the early cases in the area were the 'rich and famous' areas.  That basically if you were rich enough to travel socially, it hit your neighborhood first.

That would line up with Sun Valley being a hotspot.

115

General Comments / Re: Betting as prediction

« on: February 24, 2020, 11:47:57 AM »

And that is one of the things I dislike about the Dem primaries - all of the super-delegates or whatever they are called that get to decide the nomination without any input from the people.
If I recall correctly, Clinton and Sanders were very close to tied after the primaries were done, but all of the supers had already declared for Clinton, which pushed her over the threshold.

116

General Comments / Re: The Shampeachement Follies

« on: February 06, 2020, 12:50:36 PM »

I think its funny that Trump believes Romney should be impeached because Romney had mixed motivations for an action that would potentially damage a political rival.

117

General Comments / Re: A Message from the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump:

« on: January 28, 2020, 07:05:44 AM »

But also in context: we are talking about an army base that came under rocket attack.  I know concussions are much worse than most people think/admit, but a wound which can be worked around within a week and fully healed in 6 months probably IS light compared to what could have happened.

118

General Comments / Re: What are the best arguments against Aquinas's Five Ways?

« on: January 22, 2020, 11:51:03 AM »

1 - maybe I am misreading him, but he doesn't seem to grasp potential energy ('motion') very well.  Something CAN be both potential and actual simultaneously, which negates the entire premise he is working from.

2 - causality and paradox are in the process of being twisted into a pretzel by quantum entanglement

3 - it seems to have been demonstrated that particles CAN simple appear out of nothingness, which negates his premise

4 - he seems fixated on fire, for some reason.  Do all chairs flow from the ultimate archetype of 'chairness' which is out there somewhere?  Is all nuclear fusion caused by the most fusiest fusion ever, in a direct line from one to the other?
also, there is no maximum heat. There is no 'hottest' thing.

5 - does he include animals as unthinking natural bodies?  does he include plants? or is he speaking literally of natural bodies, like rivers and rocks?  I can't imagine a rock acting in the best fashion.
What is 'best'?  If you change the stimuli, a plant will grow differently, which will be best for those conditions.  But that might not be best from our point of view.  Do we want bananas that are all identical around the world, or do we want different strains that are resistant to different pests and diseases?
He is describing the fact that animals have adapted to their environments, and humans have a very human-centric outlook.

As Noblehunter said, most of these seem to be a limit of understanding, rather than enlightened truths.

119

General Comments / Re: Boeing Design Team Clown Car

« on: January 13, 2020, 12:41:24 PM »

Wasn't that the case?  I seem to remember when they first started falling from the sky, everyone blamed the pilots because it was always a foreign airline.  Then when they started talking to the american pilots, the response was always 'yeah that happens, you just switch it to manual.'
But that reaction was not part of the training, because it wasnt included in the simulator.

120

General Comments / Re: Ukraine

« on: November 22, 2019, 09:08:55 AM »

I have actually done that exact thing, Crunch.  My wife was sitting across from me at a table in a restaurant, talking to her father with her cellphone up to her ear - and I could hear everything he said.
I don't know how the noise levels compare to the place they were at, or how close they were to each other.  These variables are what was being referred to above.

But yes, you are absolutely correct: one person failing to recreate the situation invalidates every other time that it was successful.
If the gloves don't fit, you must acquit!

121

General Comments / Re: pardon me

« on: November 19, 2019, 12:17:55 PM »

I dont know about the other two, but I followed the Gallagher trial at the time.  All of the evidence was for him killing the prisoner to keep him out of the hands of the 3rd faction that was overrunning their position.  Questionable, but I could uderstand the reasoning.
During the trial, the team medic, who had previously (not under oath) reported that the kid was alive befor Gallagher stabbed him, changed his testimony.  After receiving a promise of no prosecution in exchange for testifying, the medic suddenly claimed that HE was the one who killed him, and that Gallagher stabbed a corpse.  A bit convenient, but possible.

If I recall correctly, Galagher was convicted of desecrating a corpse by posing with the dead body and claiming to have 'bagged one' or something like that.  Nobody disputed that.  So what irregularity turns unbecoming conduct into business as usual?

122

General Comments / Re: In any other administration...

« on: November 13, 2019, 03:54:56 PM »

Seriati, I got it from your own link!

page 5:
"The terms of the settlement aggreement provided that Mr. Trump [as the owner of Mar-A-Lago, the party in the lawsuit] would contribute $100,000 to charities... In September 2007 Mr. Trump caused the foundation to donate $100,000 to the Fisher House Foundation... On March 10, 2017 Mr. Trump reimbursed the Foundation $100,000 plus interest of $8763.41...

So yes, he did indeed use the foundation money for his business debts.

Now, like I said, I'm not a lawyer.  So you can claim that I am not understanding the byzantine rules surrounding high-level business and family foundations and I will not argue about it. 
But when you claim to have read the paper which you yourself put up a link to, and it is full of nothing BUT Trump being dinged for using Foundation money to pay his business debts, then later (much, much later.  Like after the lawsuit or investigation that the paper was about got started, later) paying it back from his personal accounts; and yet you accuse me of inventing things out of whole cloth ...

Well, it makes me look back at all of those other times you read the legal paperwork and assured everyone here that your opponent was clearly in the wrong or making things up and wonder about your personal biases.

123

General Comments / Re: In any other administration...

« on: November 13, 2019, 02:01:20 PM »

I'm not a lawyer, so I might be misreading it, but it looks like it wasnt just Donald Trump, philanthropist, randomly deciding where to donate the foundation's money, but rather Donald Trump, philanthropist, donating the money to one of Donald Trump, businessman's businesses.  Over and over again.
As you said, he treated it as just another account for him to draw from when he needed cash for something.  Which is absolutely illegal.

The part relating to the campaign was Trump, politician, using his campaign resources to help the foundation (very generous!) and claiming credit for the foundation's work in a propaganda maneuver designed to deliberately muddle the issue in the eyes of the voters. But not illegal, and maybe what Crunch was referring to about the 'every campaign for the last 20 years' thing. In fact, I think it was the ONLY thing on the list where Trump did NOT use the foundation's money for his personal or business concerns.

For a statesman, it was absolutely unethical.
For a politician, it was maybe unethical.  I would like to think so, but maybe I just have unrealistic hopes for politicians.
For a businessman, it was ethical.

124

General Comments / Re: The Race is On

« on: November 01, 2019, 08:03:58 AM »

When the senate majority leader promises that the impeachment will die a very quick death if it ever makes it that far, no matter what the evidence says, one can be very sure that something partisan is going on. 
Look at it from both directions before you accuse only one side of lowering themselves to partisan politics.

125

General Comments / Re: The impossible economy

« on: October 18, 2019, 09:08:06 AM »

Seriati:

This would be like, if Congress said there's a one year statute of limitation for the crime of theft, and then a regulator that decided this was unfair tried to impose a rule that the one year doesn't begin until you admit the theft at the police station.

honest question:  does the statute of limitation start at the occurrence of the crime, or when it was discovered/reported?
What if the theft was at someone's vacation home and not discovered until 6 months later?  When does the 1 year begin?

126

General Comments / Re: G7 2020

« on: October 18, 2019, 09:01:09 AM »

So the government undercutting private business by providing an equivalent service with no profit motive is suddenly a good thing for consevatives?  Just checking.  I'm trying to keep all the new rules straight.

127

General Comments / Re: Why do democrats embrace an ideology of hate and violence?

« on: December 17, 2018, 10:31:12 AM »

I just re-read Seriati's NYTimes article, and could only find 2 instances where Blumenthal was quoted as saying he was 'in vietnam' or 'we returned from vietnam'.
The rest of the article was about other publications describing him as having been there, and that Blumenthal never corrected them.  The quote later on sounded like it was the same "when we returned" as the 2nd quote.

So yeah, Seriati, the NYT article only provided 2 instances, although they alluded to others, insinuating that the 3rd party descriptions must have been told that by Blumenthal.
I didn't go back and re-read the entire thread, so Seriati might have mentioned some other actual quotes


From an outside point of view, it looks like Velcro and Seriati are sensitized to each other by now, and everything seems like a big deal, which if it was any other poster (in either direction) they would not even notice it.

ADDED:
Ah.  The 3rd quote was from a dedication of a Vietnam memorial.  Probably different from the 'Bridgeport rally' in 2003.
So 3 instances, but 2 were almost verbatim of each other, so I thought they were the same thing.

So Seriati was right on the article.  Velcro and I both failed reading comprehension.