Pangloss

What's the difference between "knowing they are guilty" and "beyond a reasonable doubt"? Irrelevent to the present discussion. Their lack of response does not prove complicity, and again, we're not actually discussing their 9/11 complicity, we're talking about why you've leapt to the conclusion that they're guilty; why you would convict them in spite of the lack of evidence. By your own admission, the most important questions haven't been answered. Yet you can't understand why other people aren't willing to make that leap of faith with you -- you have to assign reasons like "you're not objective", or "you must not know the facts". To wit: And you don't see a problem with this. (shrug) Not to draw this out endlessly, but it's fascinating to me that you view that as "objective" and "open minded" (your words describing yourself). I don't think it's unusual or atypical -- people do this all the time. It's just interesting.

I have no idea. I think the same thing about MJ as I thought about OJ -- if he's guilty, lock him up. But even if I thought it was, that's different from saying that I would convict him if I were on his jury. There is an important step BETWEEN "having an opinion" and "making a judgement". Of course it is. That's why you know about it. Your web site is media. Your assumption is incorrect. Oh. So he has someone with the opposite point of view writing counterpoint throughout the book? Challenging his assertions, objecting to incorrect procedures, and responding only and entirely within the rules of evidence? That book sounds more interesting by the moment. Oh. Dang. I was getting all hot and bothered. "A lot"? But that's beside the point -- the point is that we're discussing drawing conclusions based on facts not in evidence. Drawing conclusions based on speculation and question-asking without question-answering. The lack of an answer should lead you to an OPEN mind, not a CLOSED one.

Agreed.

What I mean is that most modern "democracies" aren't controlled by the concepts of "majority rule" or "one person, one vote". Those principles play an important role in them, but they aren't dominant (since "mob rule" is generally a bad thing). The analogy is flawed.

Newtonian having a problem with someone attacking him personally is like George Bush asking Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon.

(chuckle)

Which, oddly enough, is not actually how most democracies work.

I don't know if the Volcker report is out yet or not. I really have not followed this closely. Does anybody know?

Well no offense, but we're not discussing people who assume that our government could never have had a hand in 9/11. We're discussing people who believe it. Remember, there's a liiiiitle bity step in between. I got that you know there's a step there, and that you took that step seriously. What you're forgetting is that you took that step without proof, and not everyone is willing to follow you down that path. That's *you*, not the logic. Something *you* did. Not something the logic forced you to do. Because the logic simply isn't there. All that exist are allegations and circumstances with other (better defined, better documented) explanations. Note that I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm saying it's a logical fallacy to leap to the conclusion that it did. That's not keeping an open mind, my friend. That's making a leap of faith. So if you're saying that you would convict on that basis, then that's what you've done. You've made a leap of faith, and you're saying you would convict someone on that basis. That's not objectivity. That's prejudgement. Of course the point is actually moot, because that kind of prejudgement would actually preclude you from ever serving on that jury. Like I said, I respect your opinion (and still do). But I can't respect a rush to judgement without proof. As it stands I have no problem with you having the opinion that the government was complicity in 9/11 -- I still respect. But if you were actually on that jury and made that call on that basis, the respect would go right out the window. But hey, we're just talkin' here. All hypothetical and all that. BTW, Crossing the Rubicon is already on my reading list, I just haven't gotten to it yet. I'm plowing my way through a book about relativity at the moment, then I've got the Spinsanity book "All the President's Spin" to get through, and then it'll come somewhere after that. The difference between you and me, TT, is that right after that I'll probably read "Anti-Americanism" by Revel, and get just as much out of it. You need to open your horizons a bit, my friend, and stop dwelling with the lunatic fringe! You are WAY too intelligent to be spounting extremist talking points.

Just curious if anyone has looked at this yet. I've caught a little about it on the news but not much as yet. The biggest changes appear to be the enlargement of the Security Council (weaken the US?) and the creation of a Human Rights Council (replacing the much-lamented Commission). There's also a bit in there about all nations contributing 0.7% of GDP for poor countries (welfare?). Here in the US the timing of the changes is the main news. The Volcker investigation into the oil-for-food scandal found some pretty nasty involvement by Annan and his son. Some background info can be found here: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7238697/ List of proposed changes: http://www.msnbc.com/modules/interactive.asp?id=/d/ip/unrenewal_050321/data.js&navid=3032506&cp1=1

And Syntax, you have a really bad tit-for-tat habit there. It really detracts from your posts. Just my two bits, FWIW.

By the way, if you really want to grow and develop and as a person, you should hang around places that think the OPPOSITE way from you. All your doing visiting a place like that is just feeding the beast, and all it's going to get you is more and more frustrated and angry at other people for "not listening to the truth".

Yeah, he's trolling you. He's good at it. Get over it. Are you sure you didn't leave out the word "not" in that third sentence? You go on to say there's no proof of anything, just that you feel it's important to listen to these allegations. But the third sentence above really crosses the line in my book. See this is what I don't understand about extremists (I don't know if this applies to you, I'm just reflecting on this "complicity" stuff in general). It's not enough to complain about the stuff we DO know for sure. They insist that every hint of trouble is actually a sure sign that your worst nightmare is the god's-honest truth. As if it's not bad enough already. They don't seem to understand that they lose more people than they gain because of their insistence that we're all blind because we're not leaping to the same conclusions they are. That 9/11 complicity business is a prime example. It's not bad enough that we were caught with our pants down and need to take care of business -- it's really important to these people that every hint or incongruity be interpretted as Bush collusion with the hijackers or something. Never mind proof, we'll just stack on every ounce of insanity we can muster. Put another way, if they really believe that they aren't drawing conclusions or making assertions, then why can't they draw back after showing their circumstantial stuff? Why do they then have to then go on to say that people's eyes are closed? That's absolute proof that this isn't about "opening people's eyes" or "waking people up" -- it's about getting people on board their bandwagon, sure enough. There's a real danger with these kinds of people, because it makes it that much harder to spot the truth when it does show up in a subtle, incongruous form.

Do you support quotas?

Today the state legislature rejected the governor's appeal for another unconstitutional law, and then recessed for Easter. The governor promptly produced a neurologist who's a member of far-right political organizations, who stated that he believes Schiavo is not in a persistent vegatative state. Further examination of court documents, however, reveal that he reported that he saw no sign of conscious activity of any kind on her part during his 90 minute visit. A state judge promptly issued a restraining order preventing anyone from entering the hospice without his authorization. Meanwhile the full appeals court in Atlanta also rejected the parents' appeal, and the family is supposedly appealing to the US Supreme Court. I imagine we'll hear from them some time tonight.

Saw a cool movie over the weekend. It was called "Bud Santa"!

Especially since it'll be NEXT November before it would have any relevence, that being the next point at which we can vote on House members and Senators. Since the House races went almost completely ignored amidst the hubbub of the 2004 presidential race, most of these guys (on both sides) are feeling their oats. House Republicans are particularly smug, and have absolutely no reason to feel otherwise. They have the voters filling one pocket and special interest groups filling the other one, and the media just playing right along. It's really no wonder the Terry Shiavo case got to this point. No wonder at all.

For those who might have missed it, the federal appeals court denied the appeal this morning, and the feeding tube remains removed. 19 judges have now ruled in favor of the husband. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=606647 The Schindlers have announced they will appeal to the Supreme Court. But this would be their second appeal to that body, and it seems unlikely that this one would be any more likely to succeed. What happened the last time we were in this position (yeah, we've been here before -- twice) is that the Florida legislature passed a rather obviously flawed and nonsensical law, which got the feeding tube reinserted but which was struck down by the state supreme court. Various groups are pressuring Governor Bush to do the same thing all over again. He's currently pressuring the state legislature to step up and pass yet another new law that would make removing feeding tubes illegal in Florida. The state house passed week but the senate held back, fearing another loss on constitutional grounds. They're about nine votes away from making that happen. I think this has played itself out and will end, but I've been wrong about this case before. We'll see.

This isn't particularly relevent to the case, but in terms of the politics involved it's amazing that poll after poll after poll on this has come back so overwhelmingly opposed to this intervention by congress. They range from a low of 61% (Fox) to 71+% (ABC) to a high of 80-85% in some of the informal Internet polls on affiliate web sites and, MSNBC, etc. But whatever the number, it always comes down to the same thing -- House Republicans *badly* overestimated the support they'd have on this. As I say, it doesn't have any particular bearing on the case (or whether or not they should have intervened), but it's interesting from a political perspective, and it's interesting as a counterpoint to the consistently held popular view that America is "ultra" or "religiously" conservative. Here are a few I googled up pretty quickly: http://www.nbc5.com/news/4305967/detail.html?z=dp&dpswid=&dppid=65194# http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/PollVault/story?id=599622&page=1 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,149433,00.html http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/3/21/215310.shtml http://selectsmart.com/DISCUSS/read.php?f=33&i=119843&t=119843 http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050316235609990012&ncid=NWS00010000000001

Yes, I'm familiar with the Operation Northwoods business. I've read both of Bamford's NSA books. Twice. I believe them to be accurate and credible, and I've used many points from his books in debate. Well you're certainly right about that, and maybe I'm reading too much into your site -- it's clearly pushing my buttons. As you say they do have an agenda, but I certainly agree that that doesn't in itself mean that there's nothing of substance there. Perhaps it's my problem -- I have a real issue with people who show hints and subtexts and innuendo and then stamp their feet in derision when you don't leap immediately to what they believe is the only possible conclusion. It toally rubs me the wrong way. Why give me that crap at all? Just tell me where to stand and hand me a hymnal for crying out loud. If you've read Bamford, you'll notice how he differs from your web site. He doesn't do that. He's not proselytizing. Even when he wrote a later book that condemned the war in Iraq he still stopped short of outright concemnation of the Bush administration. He may have an agenda, but he's not going to beat you over the head with it. He gives you a little credit and room to figure things out on your own. Your web site friends could learn a lot from him.

Yeah defense of extremism usually involves focusing more on flaws in the messenger than dealing with the facts, so this is no real surprise. That may work when you're talking to someone who really isn't familiar with the events in question, but you run smack into a brick wall when you talk to someone who is. I should warn you that I've read the entire (full, not summarized) report from the 9/11 Commission. I'm pretty familiar with those events. Your web site friends do present supposition as fact, but aside from that they do tend to focus more on the "cast doubt everywhere you can" method. This is an obvious logical fallacy familiar to UFO proponents and Oliver Stone fans, which basically involves focusing on anything that might be spun to their point of view. They *generally* stop short of drawing actual conclusions, but of course the reader is expected to come to a very specific conclusion, or the whole thing was moot. That's not opening people's eyes, TT. There is a word for it, though. The word is "proselytizing". Calling for "further investigation" is a classic example. They want us to spend countless millions looking into anything that they can even remotely come up with, and when that shows up nothing they'll be more than happy to come up with more. It's like my old friend who used to run around telling everyone who would listen that she just couldn't understand why the government didn't release ALL of the documents related to UFO visitation and abduction. She had no evidence that anything like that existed, just countless web sites and fanatical articals claiming that they did. It's *safe* for her to ask that question, because you can never prove that the government doesn't have something like that (can't prove a negative). Your web site exists in that same territory. It's safe and effective and I'm sure it keeps the checks coming in. But it's not objective, it's not critical, it's not investigative (a word you used), and it's not valuable. It's a matter of faith, not science. If that's what you want, more power to you. But your difficulty is not the fact that the minds of the people you're talking to are closed, but rather what happens when they do listen and fail to make the leap of faith you're asking of them.

I'm actually kinda swamped today, trying to finish up a term paper for Wednesday and a program by Friday. But I popped back over to that web site for a few minutes while I ate my lunch. I actually spend a lot of time looking at left-leaning web sites, because I feel that I'm slightly right-leaning/libertarian-leaning myself, so I need the balance. But I'm afraid I can't find much to take seriously on that one. This is their claim, but it's *clearly* not the case. I skimmed through their 9/11 section. Virtually everything in there runs contrary to the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report. That was a *bipartisan* commission, and its conclusions have been accepted by not only the public and the media, but anyone doing any serious, non-agendized critical thinking on the issue. The biggest logical fallacy they constantly promote as "truth" over there is the "connection" argument. In other words, if Dick Cheney used to work for some company that also provided software to a government agency, and that government agency later failed to stop a terrorist in some way, then they draw the *conclusion* (and promote it as *fact*) that Dick Cheney knew about the even prior to it taking place and was in fact part of a conspiracy and cover-up to make it happen. That's hogwash. Utter tripe. Complete *bullsh*t*. Not their conclusion, mind you -- for all I know that's true about Cheney. What's bullsh*t is their claim of proof. If we did science that way, we'd all still be living in the stone age.

What I mean is an example of something that they inform their viewers about that would lead them *away* from the point they're trying to make.

(shrug) Okay, you know the site better than I do, since I've only looked it over casually. So that should be easy enough for you to prove. Simply show me an example of reporting on that site that runs contrary to their agenda. If you can't find such an example, then it's not objective. Period.

Relgious extremism is also a form of life support in Florida. As is Bush Bashing. (grin)