Negatory

Yes, allow the class politics to only see the world through the most distorted of lenses. Tucker Carlson would be proud of you guys 🥹I would also discount the whole of science based on a funny article about a super minority of one political side! I guess if we’re doing sweeping generalizations that have no basis, it’s those damn religious Republicans who are destroying the world and lying about it with false, untenable pretenses. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kenneth-copeland-jet-inside-edition_n_5cf822fee4b0e63eda94de4f/amp In reality, it’s rich vs poor, plain and simple. I was gonna ask why you all don’t believe climate change is a real threat to humanity, but then I realized that this forum gets their opinions straight from Rush Limbaugh reruns (RIP). By the way, it’s possible for there to be more than one ill in the world.

Any argument against the total combined will of the American people isn’t anti democratic? It is clearly anti democratic. It’s not implicitly anti republic. What does arguing honestly mean, by the way? Did my opinion based on philosophy and reasonable arguments hurt your feelings?

Cool, we’ve figured out the root cause. Now do we punish the children, when we agree they aren’t the root cause?

Yeah, actually, beyond all your other fallacies, let’s address whether government has an obligation to the American people to maintain a court that accurately represents the will of the people. Seems like there may be a moral imperative to bring the court back in line with American values in whatever way necessary, up to and including adding more moderate members to the court. Remember, any argument against this is implicitly anti democratic. Good luck.

First, it’s rich to say that the left should reconsider the meaning of democracy when a very unpopular, anti-democratic, opinion was passed. Almost all polls show 60-65% of Americans support Roe - nearly 2:1. Now if you wanna make some bullshit argument about how the Supreme Court represents our republic or something, go for it, but I’d recommend you look up what a democracy is supposed to be. Also, it’s rich to say that I don’t understand something that is clearly extraordinarily contentious and not understandable. Its an opinion. It’s also rich to say that Thomas determines what is correct in the constitution. Also, Thomas’s written opinion was a majority concurrence, not a non-majority. My point, which is 100% valid, is that a real Supreme Court justice in the majority of this case is calling for some really ridiculous things in a real Supreme Court ruling. He called for re-examining whether I as a married person can use contraceptives with my wife behind closed doors. Also, you’re lying about the dissenting opinion having no constitutional basis. They clearly used the 14th amendment, but I don’t expect you to read, as you’ve demonstrated a curious aptitude for avoiding facts over many years now. Just to be clear, Roe was upheld precedent for the last 50 years and was reaffirmed in Casey. Just because this court changed their mind doesn’t mean that this court is correct or that the previous 7-2 ruling was incorrect. This doesn’t “prove” anything other than packing the court with conservative judges gives a different result. Congratulations. At this point, it’s easy to see the court as a politicized, less neutral, branch of government. Time to pack it up! How about, say, 21 justices? We can probably get 12 more before congress turns over to the republicans, no more rules! Why not? Oh, there’s precedent for there to be just 9 Supreme Court justices? Precedent doesn’t matter anymore.

Sweet! Clarence Thomas owning the libs: "For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell." Remember when you guys said it was alarmist to say that contraception was potentially on the chopping block next after abortion. Here it is! Better stock up on birth control, because we're going full Gilead. Nevermind the fact that literally none of these policies (including abortion) are even remotely popular in our society. #democracy Gotta hand it to ya'll, the theocracy is coming together! I, for one, am non-ironically donating to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They, along with TST, do some good work pointing out blatant hypocrisy and overstepping of religious bounds in government. May we all heal from this and ultimately come together as we are touched by his noodly appendage. R'amen.

Jesus. You think people choose to be gay. I guarantee you have literally 0 family members or close friends in the LGBT community.

Recent statistic: Millenials currently own 4% of real estate equity in America. Boomers at the same age owned 32% of the nations real estate equity.

I left off nothing that was important and immediately addressed his statement you referenced in that I agreed that very few people are actively hating or suppressing the LGBT. My whole argument was that it wasn’t just active actions that are bad, though, the issue is being passive in the face of fucked up opinions also causes harm. I know you read it. Also, your argument about marriage doesn’t stand up to other specific examples when you use basically any other immutable trait. The flaws abound, and you’ll see that “thought police” is just an alarmist buzzword. Some thoughts are actually so fucked that they should be not allowed: hence why there are anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-ageism, anti-terrorism, anti-anarchist and multiple other laws in our society. Let’s apply your final argument to 1865: ”I, personally, don’t and would never own slaves. But I ask you, good sir, why should someone who does be forced to give up their slaves that they paid for and rightfully own? It’s not even a moral position in [this] case - it’s a legal/financial one.” Took over 100+ years for society to fully get on board, but sounds pretty fucked up to argue like this today, doesn’t it? It will be like this for LGBT rights after you all die out - just check Gen Z’s opinions. BL: Harmful effects of discrimination against those with immutable characteristics isn’t limited to just those who actively fight against them. That’s been my whole point. It’s also those that implicitly support those that fight against them. Enabling fucked up opinions is bad.

I mean, this statement here is actually more telling than you realize, and it’s indicative of the centrist “everyone is right” attitudes that are extremely troubling to some of the LGBT folks I know. THIS subtle implicit non-acceptance is what they’re still fighting against. You don’t personally actively hate or oppress LGBT folks, I’m sure. Most people and military officers I know don’t. But some don’t oppose those that do to the level that shows any moral courage. Implicitly, statements like these normalize and equalize f’d up beliefs. Try these hypotheticals on, imagine you heard one of your buddies say one of these statements: “I don’t morally agree that black people should be able to marry white people. In fact, they shouldn’t be allowed in the same place as white people, it’s just not right.” “I don’t morally agree that a woman should be allowed to have a job. That’s a man’s right. They just shouldn’t be doing this stuff, their place is at the home.” “I don’t morally agree that a person with a different sexuality than me should be able to get married or serve in the military. It’s just not right.” If you heard someone say one of the first 2 things, you’d tell that person to fuck off. You’d tell them they’re wrong. I doubt you’d say “I respect your opinion” - in fact, I would expect you not to. Why is the third one different? Just because someone has different morals doesn’t make their opinions “totally cool.” In fact, their morals can be pretty fucked up and oppressive. The first amendment makes it legal to say whatever dumb shit a person wants, I get that and am not going down that rabbit hole. But you don’t have to respect someone’s beliefs, and you surely don’t have to say that “it’s totally cool” for them to believe something that marginalizes a group of humans for an immutable characteristic.

Because you like to oversimplify my arguments into black and white, lib and conservative, whatever. I think my opinions are more nuanced than you would ever give me credit for, and often I don’t align with the bucket you try to put me in (sts). Also, I don’t believe that serving on active duty provides an iota more feeling of service to the nation than serving in the guard or in the civil service. I believe that if the military wants people on active duty, then they have to compete. As a young fighter pilot, i realized that TR guardsmen got to fly 6-9 times a month working 3 days and one weekend a month. I also realized that’s how much I was flying as a CMR wingman. On top of that I realized that flying was what I actually enjoyed in the Air Force, and it’s where I felt I was actually accomplishing something. The military/gov is type one spatial D’d (unrecognized) when it comes to retention. They know active duty is the most important for military health and they need folks on active duty to accomplish their mission. But every single incentive other than slightly increased chances to become an O-6 🤮 goes to the advantage of the guard or GS. You let me fly fighters, pay me twice as much, don’t force me to move, can’t deploy me if I don’t accept, and have to keep me to 40 hour weeks - thats better in literally every single way.

Why the f would anyone stay active duty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change I don't think any of your guys' comments about how the science isn't settled match up with, y'know, the science and/or reality. Would love if you would even look at 2 of the references on this article. Maybe some of the NASA, NOAA, or IPCC reports. If it makes you feel better, when I voted for Bush, I also thought climate change was fake. Because, you know, I was told to think that. Was good enough at the time: Go republicans, beat demtards!

@bfarginThat is a quote from the article the previous person posted. Looks like you don't read either.

We both know you wouldn't believe even then. Your arguments have always focused on entirely unrelated appeals to emotion and virtually never on evidence or facts.

Case in point. I don't know if you even read the source. Second paragraph: "We can clearly show the causal link between carbon dioxide emissions from human activity and the 1.28 degree Celsius (and rising) global temperature increase since pre-industrial times." Then he goes on to tell you about other things that have affected the climate in the past, but that article in no way backs up your point. Also, just to be clear, the scientific community is not even slightly split on this. 99-100% consensus on humans causing anthropogenic climate change. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0270467619886266 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966 Brandolini's law strikes again. "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it"

I think the fundamental disconnect of this forum to American society is that the majority of you don’t believe global warming is either real or a real issue. https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-views-on-climate-and-energy/

Another well informed take that boils down an entirely flawed economic policy among all us government since 2001 into simplistic red vs blue. It’s everyone’s fault here. How much of gas prices are due to domestic economic policies dictated by the executive branch? Is the US President causing gas to be $6-9 across Europe as well? Oh wait this is global? That’s not good for my narrative or funny gas pump stickers. Or is there a potential that a war in Ukraine + restarting a global economy after a massive overreaction due to COVID + a literal cartel (OPEC) have a lot more to do with energy prices? Also, reminder that there are a surplus of drilling permits (about 10 years worth) available by the federal gov that are unused. What’s the policy you think that would solve this? https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/spending/articles/a-look-at-gas-prices-around-the-world Second, how much of inflation is due to quantitative easing? Reminder that the Trump admin effectively printed and threw over $3T into the economy in 2020 to prop up the stock market. 2 of the 3 stimuluses came from GOP leadership, but giving that free socialism money to everyone probably had no effect on inflation. At least no effect we should talk about. The bottom line is that neoliberal economic policy, which both parties fully support, is driving us off a cliff. Unlimited economic growth in a limited society (actually approaching contracting) isn’t possible. It’s time to raise the interest rates to 6-9% and deal with our poor decisions we have made thinking we could avoid natural economic cycles. The real marker in failure economically was October 2019 when the government saw that quantitative tightening (the right call) made the stock market go down and abandoned all logic to maintain the illusion of a green DJIA. Then COVID happened and the whole of US government lost their collective minds.

Also lots of folks in these forums afraid to actually throw down with their thoughts but very excited to throw spears at political opponents. Par for the course.

I appreciate your opinion and agree with a lot of it. We do need a debate in congress. We really need a coherent grand strategy, but we’ve never really had that outside the Cold War. My point is that the more isolationist we become, the less influence we ultimately will have. You can bet the Chinese will make decisions on Taiwan based on our response to this incursion.

Of course it’s factually correct, but there is little substance beyond that. Your point that Ukraine doesn’t perfectly mirror our nation is no argument that they are not worth protecting or bringing democracy to. Other nations that weren’t American style democracies: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Lebanon, Cuba, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria. Love it or hate it, engaging in the world for the last 70 years is what allowed us such an influence on it. What on earth is the justification to only protect democracies? We get to choose how to exert influence. It is our choice to expand and protect the free world and our sphere of influence or to allow functional autocrats like Putin and Xi to do it. It’s not easy to do that. Here’s an actual opinion. We should have peacekeeping troops protecting Kyiv and Southern Ukraine right now. It’s a question of whether we want to allow this behavior or not. There may be justification, no matter how shitty, for Russia to attempt reunification of the Eastern sects. Fine, whatever. There is no justification or for further aggression other than “we want a land bridge to Crimea and we will take what we want because we can threaten you with nukes and the US isn’t going to do anything about it.”

Also, anyone see how weak the American sanctions were? Literally just two regions in Eastern Ukraine. Hit em where it hurts, huh? "The order bars 'new investment, trade and financing by U.S. persons to, from, or in' the so-called Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, located in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement."

Fox News in 2022 is amazing.

Hey @ViperMan, your quotes for me from 25 Dec onwards were trying to make it seem like I was insinuating the death rate of omicron was gonna be be 5-15% for certain portions of the population. Just wondering why you misrepresented my actual points on this forum? Is this a perception error because you aren’t actually reading what I’m saying? Or is it an execution error in that you’re arguing fallaciously? Did you miss two days prior where I said exactly what you’re arguing I didn’t say? Did you not understand that the estimates you quoted (5-15%) were in reference to historical data under an entirely different pretext? We were talking about what we would have done differently with foresight of historical data. The historical data - which is true - is for delta/previous variants. How can I make my opinions more clear so that you can stop misrepresenting them? I don’t need to engage in this echo chamber where you can only see it as simply you vs my entirely opposite views. I am glad that my predictions on 23 Dec (that the disease would have significantly lower hospitalizations and fatalities) based on scientific evidence (that I was the first to present on this forum) came true. I know you guys want to hate on people like me, pawnman, Prozac, etc. and find the bogeyman, but it’s not productive. I’m good not engaging with you in the future, as you’ve proven not to want to engage in a good faith discussion. Godspeed.

Although you are desperate for validation - craving the herd’s approval and being able to say “I told ya so” - you’re not gonna find it. I never said there was a guaranteed increase in deaths. I never said that omicron would have a death rate that was the same as delta or higher. I said there would likely be over a million cases a day, and we couldn’t know how that would impact the healthcare system. You said that there was no chance we could quadruple our maximum cases per day and were very wrong within just a couple weeks. Standard. Maybe you forget that I used exact quotes from you to prove how incorrect you were. In reality, I see that still bugs you. Glad the mortality of this virus was significantly lower for Omicron. I am and have been fully in support of removing all mask and vaccine mandates shortly after more data came out (but you don’t know or can’t accept this because you can’t debate a nuanced opinion). Go ahead, check my posts. This is not gonna be the “and then they clapped” moment you wish it would be.