Pangloss

iNow, as far as I can tell none of those points are relevent in any way. Like me saying I can't argue with you because you have a lower case I in front of your name. You're ignoring the substance of my point and casting my argument in a negative light rather than responding to it on point. And you get away with it -- completely unchallenged -- because you're on the PC side. So be it, but I'm certainly not going to respond to it.

It's noteworthy to me that none of the candidates fall into my (purple) zone. It's also noteworthy to me that my zone is purple. The color of royalty! The ancient Roman consul's tunic border color! I rulez, others drulez. Read it and weep, kids.

Dr. James Corbett, a history teacher at Capistrano Valley High School in California, has been sued by Chad Farnan, one of his students, over what he claims is an ongoing, daily assault on religion that takes place for 20-30 minutes at the beginning of every AP History class. The student recorded Corbett, who has been known amongst students for many years for this behavior, saying the following things: One thing I have to say, having heard the tape on BOR last night, is that the quotes don't really do the tirade justice. The guy was frothing at the mouth, big time. I mean seriously *angry* about religion. Totally platforming his case. After hearing it I had no problem believing the student's claim that he does this for 20-30 minutes before every class -- it had a sense of routine to it that's hard to describe, but seemed very familiar to me as a teacher. But it was still a serious tirade -- a very angry rant. LA Times columnist Dana Parsons is sympathetic to both sides and produces some interesting insight (as well as the above quotes) here. Bill O'Reilly had the student and his lawyer on last night, and of course was much less sympathetic to the teacher's point of view, demanding that he be fired immediately. One thing I thought was interesting about this case is that it's actually being brought under the ESTABLISHMENT clause. Yes, the clause in the Constitution that SEPARATES church and state. The charge is that the clause protects religious people from institutions of government (in this case the teacher) from attacking someone on religious grounds. It's an interesting twist, but wouldn't they have to prove harm? And isn't that kinda dubious? But perhaps not, I don't know -- these are kids, after all, and kids can be pretty impressionable. I think the teacher is wrong to do this, but I don't think he should be fired. I think it's ridiculous if it's been going on for 19 years as charged, but even so I still don't think he should be fired. He SHOULD be made to stop the behavior, though, and if he refuses to comply, THEN he should be fired. What do you all think?

Lol, I think I blew up their test. The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders. - Agree The rich are too highly taxed. - Disagree Land shouldn't be a commodity to be bought and sold. - Strongly disagree It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society. - Strongly disagree Or this lovely pair: A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies. - Agree The freer the market, the freer the people. - Agree If that doesn't break their little calculator I don't know what will! Just how liberal ARE these people anyway. I mean come on: "Those with the ability to pay should have the right to higher standards of medical care." Kind of an obvious bias, isn't it? A lot of these questions ask you to make a two-tier response of degree, and yet include a superlative like "excessive" or "mostly" -- are you responding to the question, or the degree of the question? Who can say? And what the heck does this mean: "A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system." If I agree do they think I am saying that a one-party state is a good thing? Who can say? And what the heck is THIS about? "Astrology accurately explains many things." I know astrology has become somewhat identified with the right since the Reagan era, but it was identified with LIBERALS during the flower-power years. Why would it suggest one thing or the other? Oh well, here's how I rated: Your political compass Economic Left/Right: 1.62 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.28

- Fix broken recycling programs that don't recycling anything (national initiative?) - Federal funding for local power company efficiency incentive plans - Federally mandated shift to time-based rate pricing (i.e. power costs you more during peak hours, less during off hours) - Increased federal funding for solar power, including a national program to convince businesses to install solar generating capacity on now-empty rooftops (ala Germany) - Federal regulation and oversight for carbon credit offset purchasing And let's buy Mr. Skeptic's "big space umbrella", for sure.

What science is based on drawing conclusions when you know for a fact that your data sampling fails to account for every variable? I disagree (OMG an opinion! everybody panic!), I think the reason the IPCC didn't call it certain is that it ISN'T certain. It's sheer hubris to think we've accounted for all the variables in the equation of the Earth. No, actually, not hubris. Politics. Telling opponents to shut up, refusing to allow valid objections to be raised, standing idly by while some members counter them with incorrect, illogical, erroneous responses and then other members, who KNOW BETTER, allow those erroneous responses to stand, and general rudeness toward politically incorrect members. Amongst other things. I go around the web and I see perfectly rational people in scientific forums discussing reasonable objections to the human contribution issue, and yet we cannot seem to do the same thing here. Why is that? I see other science forums' members agree to disagree and respectfully leave things unresolved because they recognize that both sides have valid points. Why can't we do that here? If we can't, that does not mean we've established some great scientific truth that nobody else has yet realized. If we can't respectfully listen to two logical, scientifically valid, well-reasoned sides of an argument then something is clearly wrong.

This seems like a good time to remind folks that Lieberman was part of the Gang of 14, as was McCain. That still counts for something in my book, for what it's worth. McCain's not completely stagnant -- he picked up two key endorsements over the weekend in the Iowa and New Hampshire races, with the Des Moines Register and the Boston Herald (I know Boston isn't in NH, but I think they're considered relevent here because of the number of NH residents who subscribe to the Herald). Unfortunately for McCain both of these papers are, as George Stephanopoulos put it, "somewhat liberal", and this probably won't carry enough weight to make a difference, especially amongst the heavily conservative and terribly well-informed Iowa caucus-goers. Okay, to be honest, it may be a bit of over-optimism on my part in thinking he's still alive in this thing. But doggone it, I like him a darn sight better than any of the other Republican candidates.

The fundraising thing reminds me of Howard Dean's campaign.

It's revealing that you threaten like that -- and nobody replies. And of course your statement itself stands as further evidence of my point, which is that you're attempting to silence opposition and dissent. Actually I do seem to have lost track there a bit. I stand by what I said earlier, but I allowed myself to be distracted from my real point. As I said before, even the IPCC agrees that human contribution is not proven, but rather only 90% likely (in their estimation, which is based on statistical correlation and a handful of small-scale cause-and-effect observations). So my point is this: Even if we agree that human contribution is extremely likely, even probably the cause, why is it necessary to stop people from saying things like "it may not be the cause", or "there are other possibilities", or "we don't know that for a fact yet"? Why must these statements be silenced? Why must we ostracize the people who make them? That is not science, swansont. It just is not. That's POLITICS, sir. Politics. And therefore, QED, I am not the one who brought politics into this thread. Not by a long shot. So iNow, if you want to get politics out of this discussion, you know exactly where to start to accomplish that. You can start by not telling people to "shut up".

Then why didn't you, personally, object to Lockheed's statement above that the IPCC is wrong and human contribution is a proven, demonstrable fact? The answer is that human contribution is politically correct on this board, and challenging it is not. It's okay for one side to disagree with the IPCC, but not the other. So much for limiting the discussion to the scientific facts. Here, watch him do it again, and again go unchallenged by the politically correct side of this community:

Wups, I meant that to say "... the religious statements of Democratic presidential candidates...". Sure that's what they say, John, but why are they believed? BTW, if I'm not mistaken, all of the Democratic presidential candidates are opposed to gay marriage, including John Edwards.

That's really beside the point, though. What ParanoiA was asking is whether or not the country can fight a war without presidential support, leadership, etc. I think it's an interesting question. And I think the answer is an emphatic "no". For example if Congress decided that it was time to invade Canada and the people were behind it (all those illegal Canadian terrorist aliens, you know!) and the White House was the only political entity in the entire country standing in the way, then we would not be able to invade Canada.

Mooey I don't think you're wrong, but I think you overstate the case. The current president's approval rating has frequently been in the low 30s, and at least two presidents have dropped into the 20s (Carter and Nixon, I believe). That's a long way from "idolization". And it's not just a matter of public approval. Congress (whose approval rating is currently even lower than Bush's in spite of Democratic control) knows about those approval ratings and capitalizes on them whenever it can. They certainly knew about it this past week when they began calling for hearings and ignoring the Justice Department's requests to drop the CIA file-shredding incident. The rest of that stuff is just a matter of respect. I wouldn't raise my voice to a Senator or Congressman either, and even in disagreement I would be polite and generous. It's not so much about what I think of them personally as it is about what I want them to accomplish during their service and how I want them to go about accomplishing it -- with thoughtful consideration and a level head. Put another way, I'm not polite to the president because of what it says about him. I'm polite to the president because of what it says about me, and what I think this country should be.

You say it's proven? Then why doesn't the IPCC say it's proven? They don't, you know. So why is it so important that we ensure that anyone who posts on SFN use the word "proven"? Why is that necessary? What are we accomplishing by requiring that all posters use that word? Is it so dangerous to point out that there is reasonable doubt about the cause? What are WE going to accomplish HERE by drowning out and ostracizing anybody who does not use the word "proven"? That is what I want to know. And I really don't think it's asking a whole lot for it to be explained to me why we have to behave in this manner. I've BEEN on boards where the community refuses to countenance other points of view. Those boards accomplish NOTHING. They convince NO ONE. They get NO WHERE. Not EVER. And they drive away the EXACT people who could help them with that problem. Is that what you all want to happen here? Are you SURE?

No, thank you, because you've taught me a great deal about patience in the time you've been here. But I don't think iNow is really attacking you personally, and I think this is really more of an institutional problem we need to work on. The problem here, ultimately, is not that you're right and iNow is wrong, or vice versa, but that we don't have enough people espousing politically incorrect points of view. That's not because those points of view don't exist -- that's the part iNow doesn't seem to understand. He thinks if you can't prove your point then your point is wrong. That's not the case at all, it's only one possibility. You may very well be right but simply didn't make your case. This is not a laboratory, it's a discussion board. Anybody who thinks we're proving or disproving science here is deluding themselves. This board is for (a) clarifying the details, and (b) debating conjectures and theories. You know, the stuff that hasn't been proven one way or the other yet. Like human contribution to global warming. Human contribution to global warming, when all is said and done, is not proven, and the evidence consists of statistical correlations and small-scale cause-effect extrapolations. But since it may not be possible to ever actually prove, that means we may have to settle for what we have. So what we do about that is REALLY IMPORTANT. Do we listen to all points of view and proceed when we have a majority, recognizing that we could still be making a mistake and taking careful measures to protect against that possibility? Or do we drown out the opposition, ostracize anyone who's not on board, and take no precautions against that possibility whatsoever? You know what, that doesn't seem like such a hard call to me. And it's the green text above that I want to support here. Not the red.

I have a problem with this language, and I think it's high time this forum had an open discussion about this sort of thing. In fact if it were up to me I would close every single thread on every single subforum and nail it shut with a hyperlink to the thread where we're going to talk about this. But I'm just going to point out what you said, in letters big enough that even people on your side cannot possibly miss it. I also have a problem with this, for different reasons: That is so wrong on so many levels I can't even begin to express it. But to try, in a nutshell, I will just say that it is not our purpose here to prove one side right and the other wrong, and you OF ALL PEOPLE should understand that. And when a user fails to provide evidence that doesn't mean they're wrong, it means they've failed to provide evidence. If I came in here and said "gravity is real" and you said "prove it", and I couldn't, we would hardly begin floating in midair. You just could not possibly be more wrong to say something like that, oh great preacher of liberal tolerance and humane decency and mutual respect. In every conceivable way.

It sure is. But I think it's interesting that for many moderates the religious statements of Democratic presidential statements are more acceptable because they are believed to be inaccurate and/or exaggerated to get votes! It's as if they're saying "Well we know they're lying, but they're lying to idiots so it's okay."

So you can't be a Christian and a Republican and appeal to moderates? Given that every single presidential candidate, Democrat and Republican alike, has professed a belief in the Christian god, is the problem really the fact that they're a Christian, or the fact that they're a Republican?

SFN Chess server!

But we do appreciate your paying attention to Fred during his detrimental stay here, iNow. Consider this an unofficial thanks from SFN staff.

OMG Mooeypoo is left-handed?!?! You all know what the latin word for "left" was, don't you? ParanoiA I already knew you were evil.

Incidentally, Huckabee easily has the king of celebrity endorsements on the Republican side: Chuck Norris! http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/the-chuck-norris-factor/ (Edit: Sorry Ecoli, I missed the Chuck Norris reference in the OP!)

iNow, what do you believe that it means if the answer to your question is "no"?

If you want to talk about political strategies here, I think one has to look beyond appeasement of the far right. Most Democratic politicians frequently profess their religious nature. There is a very large base of religious support in the Democratic party, especially amongst (but most definitely not limited to) African Americans. I'm afraid logically-minded post-graduate intelligentsia are still a minority in this country, would that those of us here at SFN would have it otherwise. Remember that in spite of what MoveOn.org would have you believe any real growth in Democratic power is based on BROADENING appeal, not pandering to extremists. They used to call the Democratic party "the party of the Big Tent", referring to the fact that it appealed to such a wide variety of people. The loss of various groups from the big tent in the 1970s and 1980s signalled the rise of Republicans in the Southern states (when I was growing up in Georgia you couldn't find a Republican if your life depended on it). Returning the Democratic party to the "big tent" means moderacy and cross-party support. And THAT means finding issues with common ground, such as this Christmas thing, or video game censorship, for example.

Right, I said that all sides likely agree on this question. Why it's interesting is because it points out that the wall is not truly a wall.