Mike Vanderboegh is one of those teabagger patriots — he's very upset about illegal immigrants, he's one of those paramilitary fanatics, he hates Democrats, and lately he's gotten completely unhinged about the passage of our watered down health care bill. He's so irate that now he's publicly inciting violence (which is nothing new, he's been advocating civil war for years):
So, if you wish to send a message that Pelosi and her party cannot fail to hear, break their windows.
Break them NOW. Break them and run to break again. Break them under cover of night. Break them in broad daylight. Break them and await arrest in willful, principled civil disobedience. Break them with rocks. Break them with slingshots. Break them with baseball bats.
But BREAK THEM.
The time has come to take your life, your liberty and that of your children and grandchildren into your own two hands and ACT.
It is, after all, more humane than shooting them in self defense.
And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary.
Great. Another homegrown fascist who has never heard of Kristallnacht.
Vanderboegh is a pretentious thug, but here's the surprise. The gun-totin' proud "Son of Liberty" who rails against big government and hates socialism is unemployed and living off his government disability checks.
$10 says this guy won't bother breaking a single window himself, though. Sounds like a gutless, big-mouthed moron.
Isn't it always that way with people like Mike V? "We don't want this! We don't want that! Oh, but don't take away what we've already got!"
A right-wing libertarian teabagger living on the public dole. Why am I not surprised?
He is absolutely vile. I think he needs to be charged with inciting terrorism, and with making death treats to members of Congress (his muzzle of a rifle comment).
Speaking of terrorism, what I can't stand is how the media throws around charges of terrorism every time someone who is Not A Republican does something threatening, but never, ever calls actions of good ol' red-blooded Americans as such. Either call all calls to violent overthrow terrorism, or don't use the term at all.
startlingmoniker wrote:
I think he's anything but gutless. He's getting his disability cheque for congestive heart failure, diabetes and hypertension. Sounds like his has too much of a gut to me.
Kind of a twisted definition of "civil disobedience", what with the violent assaults and all.
This kind of profound myopia demonstrated how difficult it is to overestimate the stupidity of some people. Vanderboegh would probably be dead or homeless without his government disability check, yet he rants and raves about being oppressed by the state. It would take years of education to raise him to the idiot level.
You gotta love some of the comments, though-- they're hilarious.
"I'm posting this from a Democratic meeting room... they are very scared. They're trying to shrug it off as right wing extremism but I think they know that this message is coming from a pro-liberty majority. If you continue these operations it might push them over the edge."
Okaaaaay. I love how this anonymous comment takes Joe-Bob's call for breaking windows (transformed by his readers into mailing rocks or laying them down in front of windows symbolically) into "operations."
Seems like the "but I deserve it" mentality at work. Most of these extreme positions come out of a sense of separateness and uniqueness, when in fact, he is no different from the bleeding heart liberal next door, well maybe in the next state:) Willingness to take the consequences is at least a step in the direction of recognizing they are citizens of the same country and subject to the same laws as the rest of us. I was beginning to think they thought these actions were lawful and acceptable practice if done by the far far far right. Frightening as this is, it is amusing in the sense of proposing civil-disobedience when it was such a liberal demonic activity in the '60's and '70's. Lest we forget, these acts of vandalism have just been taken over by the other end of the political spectrum to make their point. I wonder if they will achieve anything more than the Berrigan brothers and the peace marches did. Unsettling and discouraging that here we are 40 years later in at least two hot wars and who knows how many clandestine ones and the right wing is fighting health care for all?
Something makes me think he probably has heard of Kristallnacht. It really wouldn't surprise me if someone like him uses the holocaust as a playbook.
I have been trying really really hard to remain an optimist, but these people scare the shit out of me. Where is this anger coming from?
Irony comes in many forms. Just a few days ago I had a public school teacher telling me that government run handout programs weakened America.
Isn't it illegal to incite violence against specific individuals?
I have been trying really really hard to remain an optimist, but these people scare the shit out of me. Where is this anger coming from?
Thing is, these folks are part of a rather long strand of American politics. Hoffstader described it in The Paranoid Style in American Politics, as did David Bennett in Party of Fear. The Know-Nothings, Klansmen, Coughlinites, McCarthyites, Birchers, Patriot Militias, and Teabaggers are of a kind. It's always about a perceived loss of what they see as their birthright due to some "other" that is changing the nation. Be it Southern European Catholics or Eastern European Jews or Irish or Blacks or Mexicans or Bolsheviks or Black Helicopters or Kenyan Usurpers....
Please explain this. I don't remember any liberals seriously advocating overthrowing the government during the Bush years.
Apropos of nothing much, Kristallnacht was initiated by the “government” of the time. What this nutter seems to want (judging by what Pee Zed has quoted), is common, garden-variety hooliganism.
I'm pretty sure there WILL be a revolution, and when this tiny minority group of delusional losers are defeated. The remainder will continue to be delusional sore losers. And complaining about the bloody mess the democrats left on the streets.
Advocating this kind of violence exceeds the bounds of free speech, does it not?
Here's an opinion piece in the Times(New York) that addresses that very question.
"The problem is that the country romanticized by the far right hasn’t existed for some time, and its ability to deny that fact grows more dim every day. President Obama and what he represents has jolted extremists into the present and forced them to confront the future. And it scares them.
Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy."
Thanks for the reading suggestions, MAJeff. I recently read The Eliminationists, but if I recall correctly, Niewert didn't really get into the whys.
Still worth picking up, though.
Most of these extreme positions come out of a sense of separateness and uniqueness, when in fact, he is no different from the bleeding heart liberal next door, well maybe in the next state:)
I don't think too many "liberal" acts of civil disobedience called for violence against individual people or armed rebellion. They didn't regularly go to protests carrying assault rifles. They never sent death threats against the president or others. The few that did were immediately called terrorists, arrested and marginalized by the media. The teabaggers now are praised as "average" americans by the media.
Thank you, Carlie! From the link:
Perfect.
"Break them with rocks. Break them with slingshots. Break them with baseball bats."
Brick manufacturers must not be happy.
"It is, after all, more humane than shooting them in self defense."
Wha? How does one shoot a window in self-defense?
why is anyone surprised? Lots of pictures of folks bearing placards declaiming keep "gummint hands off my medicare" no different tham the vid of a woman screaming obama gonna make my car payment. Political stupidity is endemic
This is a Canadian, asking for clarification. Maybe I am mistaken. I do surely hope I am mistaken. All this raving and anger is because the American president has pushed through a law which will ensure that the 30 million people who had no health care will now get it. And that insurance companies will have to take their knocks and continue to cover people who get ill. If I am not wrong, could someone please explain to me how making professional gamblers (insurance corporations) live up to their bets could possibly result in the decline and fall of the American Empire (irony).
Please?
why is anyone surprised? Lots of pictures of folks bearing placards declaiming keep "gummint hands off my medicare" no different tham the vid of a woman screaming obama gonna make my car payment. Political stupidity is endemic
Speaking of which, yesterday Senator Lamar Alexander criticized the federal government for taking over the federal student loan program.
Re" No. 26
Sorry? Culture shock again. If it's Federal, isn't it already the responsibility of the federal government? I know that the woo factor makes people stupid - but . . .
A surprise that he is living on gub'mint aid? Hardly. No more than the legislators who enjoy government health care, campaigning against it.
@ 10: "It really wouldn't surprise me if someone like him uses the holocaust as a playbook. "
It really wouldn't surprise me if someone like him denies the holocaust even happened (whilst raving about how Obama is a Nazi). But perhaps I'm too cynical.
The NYT piece is off the mark in one respect. The America for which the teabaggers long never really existed in the first place. Its pure, noble, self-reliant white people surrounded by happy, singing minority servants, with everyone prospering while Knowing Their Place, is as much of a fantasy as the Garden of Eden or the Greek Golden Age. It's a politically useful delusion to which no policy initiative will take us.
He's just trying to help the economy.
Ourdeadselves asks, "I have been trying really really hard to remain an optimist, but these people scare the shit out of me. Where is this anger coming from?"
Have you ever tried talking to them? Seriously. One of my hobbies is collecting rocks. Surprisingly, this is not a hobby that attracts a lot of scientists (although my scientific training certainly enhances my enjoyment of it). In fact, most rockhounds are pretty blue collar. The thing is, these guys are smart enough to know they are being screwed. They see that every year they are losing ground. And at the same time, we're producing more billionaires and millionaires than ever.
If you look at the data, it's clear that the middle class and poor started losing ground with the Reagan administration and it's only gotten worse ever since. We now have a distribution of wealth akin to developing rather than industrialized nations. However, if your primary information source is Faux News, you aren't going to hear that. So they know something is wrong--they just have no idea what it is, and they are looking for targets.
What we see is the natural reaction of an uninformed citizenry living in a kleptocracy. In this case, since it isn't the government doing the stealing, but rather the rich buying off the government so it will continue to allow them to steal, government is an easy target.
I keep hoping people will see reason and understand what is really happening, but I don't see it happening before we see tragic consequences.
@4 (Carlie)
I know it's a typo, but it made me think of a funeral with a large table piled high with neatly wrapped death treats.
PZ:
As I noted on my blog, these people are driven by fear, because the demagogues feeding them know that fear overrides the rational part of the brain.
We need to of course, put the certifiably violent crazies in places where they can become safe and sane, but we who must walk among the teabaggers must also develop skillful means to help them not be afraid, and we need to have those means widely taught so as to prevent demagogues from having society behave like lemmings allegedly do when confronted with cliffs (which I understand is actually false).
The problem is that the country romanticized by the far right hasn’t existed for some time
As usual, the NYT is a bunch of numbskulls.
The Ozzie and Harriet fantasyland of the wingnuts was enjoyed by a precious few Anglos. Everyone else, life was not very good.
So much for the sanctity of "property rights."
@32
You're dead on right.
I may be an Australian, but I was involved in a political party which has been taken over by this same class of nutcase.
They're part of the cult of the free-market. The "invisible hand" is almost a deity which will solve everything for them.
They think that abolishing minimum wage will increase living standards because people will work more and productivity will increase. Or, there will be more people in positions making more money, and trickle down economics will make us all better off.
They convince average people to think that they were millionaires, therefore make them identify with the people who stand to most gain from these reforms. It's amazing how with the right non-existent carrot you can make people vocally attack their own interests.
Okay, this guy is a dangerous nuts and the fact he is on disability and is reacting this way is nuts.
But I take offense at some of the comments about disabiliy. I am disabled. I am not unemployed, I am unabled to work, unemployed means you can work but aren't working. I am under several doctors orders not to work, I find it frustrating when somebody calls me 'unemployed' as if I'm some lazy loser. I would trade my medical disability to be able to work the dirtiest job on 'Dirty Job', I want to work desperately but am unable to. I am on disability for a reason.
I find that type of thinking is discriminating of me because I'm too sick to work through no fault of my own. I was never able to work much and I am getting adult survivor benifts off of my late father's socical security account who paid into it his entire working life, but died at the age of 47 and never got the benift from it.
I am glad we have a government that provides for its own in situations like mine. This guy gives people on disability a bad name and we are running up against enough stigma as it is.
Well at least no one has hijacked a plane and suicided into a building like those Moslems did in NYC.
Oh wait, didn't someone just fly a plane into an IRS building in Texas? OK, bad example.
The Reich wingnuts do occasionally get violent. Who knows how many people they've killed this year but it is more than a few.
@#39,
Sure, but those people aren't Terrorists. Everyone knows that Terrorists have brown skin and scream about Allah. Americans can't be Terrorists unless they're originally from one of those other countries. Those are simply criminals... if they get caught.
Now, I wish this was all hyperbole, but that's exactly the excuses offered when that plane hit the IRS building. No one wanted to call it terrorism, despite the fact it meets the definition. However, since the pilot wasn't Muslim, it wasn't terrorism.
Re: those that think the left doesn't incite to violence.
The reason I was a republican for the first twenty years of my life was because the left-wing democrats were busily tormenting, shooting at, and blowing up scientists, fishermen, and company workers.
Just because the right has taken up the mantle doesn't make the left innocent. All political parties - even the small ones - contain violent radicals.
I have and I just can't wrap my mind around the politics. For instance: guys at work were freaking out before the healthcare bill passed because "OMG! Socialism!" But the funny part is that half of my office simply cannot afford our employer-provided insurance. They would rather go without any sort of insurance, rather than support the government option. I just can't reason with people who are blind to their own self-interests.
Of course, he's on the dole.
He wouldn't have time to rant that much and keep a blog if he had to work for a living.
News to me. Which universe are you posting from?
We are talking about now, not then. I exist today, not in the past 40 years ago.
Way to excuse right wing homicide, violence, and terrorism. Oh well, that is why we have police, DAs, laws, courts, and prisons. While you apologize and make excuses for these idiots, the institutions for protecting our society and its members have different ways of dealing with them.
The reason I was a republican for the first twenty years of my life was because the left-wing democrats were busily tormenting, shooting at, and blowing up scientists, fishermen, and company workers.
Citation seriously fucking needed for that one.
Citation seriously fucking needed for that one.
Really. As far as I can remember, this never happened. Either the guy is delusional, lying, or posting from another time-space continuum.
Hey Craig, what color is the sky on your planet?
But this is the right! They don't need citation. OR facts for that matter.
Get out of my gene pool!
"defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary" against what?
I still do not understand how health insurance companies being forced to cover pre-existing conditions and not capping lifetime benefits is in anyway infringing on our civil liberties.
I can still say "fuck the government", right? Like, I can still say "GO TO HELL MR. PRESIDENT!" and no black helicopters will surround me, right? I can still officially start my own political party tomorrow, gather 10,000 signatures, and run for Congress, right?
Plus my pre-existing conditions are now covered?
Yay America.
Admittedly, I was very young, but don't go nuts without looking into things. At the time, I did not distinguish between "democrat" and any other left wing organization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_violence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_for_the_Ethical_Treatment_of_Animals
At the time, the media I was exposed to was filled with stories of anti-whalers, "animal rights" terrorists, corrupt unions, and "peaceful" campus protests that would invariably turn violent.
Nowadays we seem to associate violence with right wingers. I don't think "right wingers" are the ones who blow up animal research facilities.
Now, what planet are you from? Where are your counter-citations?
Oh, I forgot, you're from another space-time continuum where violence and communism where never associated!
Indeed! Speculating, craig.perko has confused/conflated the antics of nutters like the SLA, the Weathermen, et al., with “left-wing” and/or “democrat”.
Only until a Republican returns to the White House (hopefully no time soon), at which point you become a Commie Mutant Traitor.
Oh, uh, didn't see Raven's earlier post: I'm definitely not excusing anyone, and I'm certainly not an apologist. I find myself put in the unhappy position of "defending the right", and I would rather be stabbing myself with a fork.
But everyone's a human, and don't pretend that one side is magically pure while the other side is entirely sleaze.
A lot of the wannabe "freedom fighters" are deluded that all they have to do is wave a deer rifle and Obama will scurry back to Chicago, or Kenya. Like the Red State people who wanted to organize in military style units to stand up to the ebil O'Muslim (how did that work out, btw?), they live 24/7 in a fantasy world. The letter below is something a lot more of them need to read. Now, when I get a moron-o-gram from a relative I send this piece back to them. So far the silence of the responses has been deafening. Worth the read.
http://christopher-calbat.newsvine.com/_news/2010/03/26/4073188-an-arti…
I remember my oath to the US Constitution and the line about defending from enemies foreign and domestic. Firmly believe that most active duty and vets will live up to that oath. If push really comes to shove, which I doubt, a lot of chicken hawks are going to be in for a hell of a surprise. More likely will be a string of killings by one or two groups/people. That will be horrendous and should be prosecuted with all possible force. However, I think it will turn a lot of the normal people of America against extremism out of shock. Right wing militias and extremist groups did decline in the wake of Oklahoma City - I just hope it does not get that deadly again before the nuts are defanged.
Rant off, down from soapbox.
OF course he has to be on the dole because his fellow libertarians would never give up their money to keep him alive.
Ah, another nutter who confuse ridicule for oppression because he doesn't realize what free speech entails. Otherwise he wouldn't have post this statement:
Oh gee. Now Democrats are Communists. Is that why the Vietnam war was started by Kennedy and escalated by Johnson, both Democrats saving SE Asia from the commies?
Way to lie and Make Stuff Up.
Greenpeace and PETA are annoying but they aren't part of the Democratic party either. Their targets are as likely to be democrats as republicans. You left out the Earth Liberation Front and Earth First. Which is OK, they aren't Democrats either.
What I thought. Craig is just another delutional idiot lying.
Civil disobedience. Does anyone remember if Thoreau or Gandhi advocated breaking windows?
Raven: I prefer to think of myself as concentrational rather than dilutional.
As I said, I was young. Perhaps you remember it differently? Far-left democrats are far-left loonies seemed the same to me.
Much the same as far-right republicans and far-right loonies are being conflated today.
I'm very upset that you would dismiss all violence committed by left-wing thinkers as being not affiliated with the left wing, and then conflate all violence committed by right-wing thinkers as being affiliated with the right wing.
Technically, the freaking tea party people aren't any more republican than the PETA extremists. Many of them are either theocrats or religious libertarians who are only "republican" because Fox News says so. You want to make the distinction? It's as clear as "PETA isn't part of the democratic party".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
Let me get one thing clear: I read this blog because I agree with it. I just don't like people pretending that only the enemy is violent, only the enemy is bad, only the enemy is capable of being wrong.
Then you don't understand things at all. Like a lot of those peaceful campus protests that turned "violent" were essentially police riots, with the police going in and swing clubs at everybody, even if they were moving away. You need to get a grip on reality.
I do trust you have gone to the FBI with your evidence that one of the major US political parties employed violence.
Or are you just spouting bollocks ?
Nerd: Aside from my spelling error, yes, I agree. Most of the student protests I see today that end in violence end in police violence, not student violence.
However, that was not how it was covered when I was young. At least, not in the media I saw. And given the kinds of students I grew up with, I can't imagine they were as innocent as you make them out to be. And the students I grew up with were long after the really upset students finished with school, so I imagine they must have been even more aggressive.
Also, the police generally don't carry molotov cocktails, so I wonder how those sorts of things showed up without the students planning violence ahead of time.
It's easy to think in extremes. The problem is that extremes are so rarely correct outside of science. I believe the police attacked more often than the students, back then, but... images of burning things and broken glass don't indicate the police. There had to be SOME violent students.
Anyway, this whole thing has gotten out of hand. Somehow my statement that the left isn't all daisies and rainbows has become "the left were violent pinheads", which is not what I intended to say at all.
These days, I associate more with the atheist/secular humanist side of things than any given political party. Being stuck fighting an emotional post war on a topic I feel no emotion about... I was trying to make a statement about human nature, and ended up stepping on a landmine.
craig.perko,
What said what that one of the major US political parties employed violence. Now maybe that is not what you meant to say, but we are not to blame if you are inarticulate.
I am more inclined to think you are just a fuckwit.
Penfold: Ugh, you mean the guys investigating vegetarians as possible terrorists?
Pretty sure they got being uninformed and over-reactive down better than I do, even if it turns out I'm uninformed and over-reactive. They don't need my help.
One more impotent, infantile, hate-amped shit-head outed by a slowish news day. Sweet.
However, rumour has it that a much broader class of tantrum-throwing mentalists - frustrated that the belief-beggaring hypocrisy of yet another attention-whoring gobshite has been so cruelly exposed - are standing by in solidarity and support to take to the streets for a revenge rampage of knock-down-ginger.
Reports that they are to team up with the infamous Anti-Socialist Scrumping Sodality were further fueled by a press-release from the managers of the Arch-Confraternity of Altar-Boy Soccer Teams, who pledging their unwavering support of whatever it is the defenestrated deadbeat is pissed-off about in return for the unedited footage of any protest actions by athletic, socially-vulnerable youths in need of personal religious guidance.
Meanwhile, the offical spokes-scamp of the Confraternity of Churchill-era Comic-Book-Antic Enactmentations has refused to confirm rumours that Vanderboerg has been taken to a secret treehouse after threats from a group of characters from Viz comic.
So no evidence after all.
You really are full of shit.
Fuck of troll.
Penfold: what said what that I'm a fuckwit. Yes, it's so hard to make a lexical mistake.
Conflating a political party with an extremist group is TOTALLY UNKNOWN HERE! Why, we would never call the teabaggers "republicans!" That would be... the same exact mistake.
You ever done that?
Which still happens: The police in London recently killed a man at a protest . He was walking home from work, passing through the area, and a uniformed officer attacked him from behind. The police at first denied they were involved at all, and then arranged an autopsy with a “friendly” examiner. It wasn't until a second autopsy, and the emergence of some video taken of the incident, that the attack was taken seriously.
Switching gears, a relative of mine once sent me a picture of a USAian police officer in riot gear, dragging along the ground by the hair someone at a environmental protest, with the comment: “This kind of violent ‘stuff’ is why I don't trust the greens.” My reply was: “The only violence I see is a armed guy with a helmet dragging some along the ground. The armed guy with a helment isn't a ‘green’.”
<headdesk> They can't work more, because there isn't more work.
The supply of workforce is bigger than the demand. That's how it is in most countries (perhaps all meanwhile), and that's how it's going to stay throughout the foreseeable future. Nobody can work more without someone else working less.
Is there such a thing as a far-left Democrat?
No, really, is there?
Both Clintons, Kerry, and Obama would comfortably fit into the conservative party where I come from.
Does Dennis Kucinich count? I haven't read his website in detail. Mike Gravel perhaps?
That's like conflating Sarah and Palin.
Craig,
I understand that you lived an awful, crushing childhood filled with trauma induced by living in the terrorist-plagued society we called the 70's.
I for one remember it vividly. Picture it: Carmel, 1972, my mother and I trying to get from our bullet-riddled Monterey colonial in Hatton Fields down to Monte-Mart at the mouth of the valley. Would we even reach the battered Vista-Cruiser without feeling the searing sting of a sniper's bullet?
My mother had fashioned crude body armor for the whole family out of Le Cruset cookware and sailcloth from our beloved Shields 70. That battered beauty, the veteran of so many campaigns against Greenpeace's sleek frigates, was rotting at the bottom of Stillwater Cove after the Battle of Pebble Beach.
Had we ever sailed on her without weapons? Had we ever known the simple pleasures of a picnic without a mine detector? Nevermind that though, we had to get to the store to sift through the ransacked aisles for the occasional overlooked Chantrelle, hidden bit of shredded wheat or half-empty bottle of Emerald Dry.
I don't know how you made it through those years Craig, the humiliation of the Greenpeace strip searches. The endless hours under naked light bulbs being forced to memorize every word of "Silent Spring" at gunpoint in our "schools". The makeshift loudspeakers blaring Joan Baez at all hours of the night and day.
I'm sorry, I have to stop now. The memories! The memories . . .
No.
Any other stupid questions ?
I doubt the fuckwit actually knows much about political anywhere else in the world. I have to think what would happen to his brain should he come across a genuinely socialist party, such as are found in Europe.
The healthcare reform is really just a totalitarian takeover attempt. There hasn't even been much of an attempt to hide that fact. At what point is civil disobedience needed to oppose such a thing?
I cannot tell if this is meant to be taken seriously or not.
Oh, the media of the day wouldn't twist things like Faux News today? One of those riots happened at the University I was attending. The students had taken over the administration building. They were in negotiation with the city police and the university, and were going to stay the night, then surrender. Terms of surrender were in place, including not cutting the long hair of the male protesters. The county sheriff, a conservative idjit, decided to take action on his own, and technically outside of his jurisdiction, since the University was within the city, and went in clubs a swinging about 1 AM. And they gave all the long haired males they arrested terrible haircuts (I saw several). The sheriff was surprised at the political muscle and law suits that came down on him for his "heroic" actions, since many of those arrested had important parents with connections.
Early in the war, before the media had turned against it, the protesters were made to look deliberately bad.
Rift - I don't think (I hope) that anyone was conflating his having a disability with a negative thing, but that he is being hypocritical for accepting a government assistance for himself while saying that the world will go to hell if the government assists anyone else.
#73
You used the word "fact" in a way unfamiliar to me.
Ugh, sorry, I officially apologize. I was attempting to make a small and relatively nonoffensive comment. It's been radically blown out proportion beyond what I intended. Since I tend to agree with the posters here, I just stepped in with a comment without thinking too hard.
Obviously, I shouldn't have. I'll go back into lurk mode after my beating is done.
Please be aware, I never intended to make such a big deal out of this. People seem to think I'm saying the left were the destroyers of the planet or something. I wasn't trying to say anything of that magnitude. I was coming at it from the "secular humanist" viewpoint, and it turns out that a lot of commenters are coming at it from the "democrat" viewpoint. So, I stepped on toes, sorry.
Matt: You're too aggressive. My views are very, very similar to PZs, and presumably yours are too. Your ad hominem is really irritating, coming as it does from a "side" I generally consider my own.
Um, Nerd: That last post of mine wasn't aimed at you. I think you're probably right.
I guess I should go read up more on specific events, rather than going off the media imagery I absorbed as a child. Deconverted to atheism, never thought to re-inspect those old, non-religious memories.
According to a Quinnipiac poll, 74% of Teabaggers are either Republican or lean Republican and 77% voted for John McCain in 2008. Equating the two sounds pretty reasonable to me.
Learn what ad hominem means you tosser.
I called you names. That is not an ad hominem attack. I said you what you were saying was bollocks and thus you were a fuckwit. An ad hominem would be saying that you are fuckwit, and thus what you saying is bollocks. I suggest you refrain from accusing people of logical fallacies until you comprehend the difference.
I am glad you find me irritating. It was my intention.
You spouted a load of bollocks, and you got called on it. It is still not clear if you just suck at writing and did not mean what you said, or you meant it and wish people would just forget you ever said it.
Pareidolius, #70:
If I weren't holding on to the sides of my chair, I'd be on the floor. Comedy gold.
Actually, since Vanderboegh acts like and talks like a Nazi, I think he's definitely heard of Kristallnach.
Matt: I mean it. I have lots of memories of left-wing violence, and at the time the media I watched conflated it with the "extreme" democrats.
It's unclear how close that affiliation actually is, as I am working from biased memories, but there are definitely left-wing terrorist organizations, no matter how loud you shout. PETA and, more recently, the ALF are the biggest and nastiest examples in my life.
"I doubt the fuckwit actually knows much about political anywhere else in the world. I have to think what would happen to his brain should he come across a genuinely socialist party, such as are found in Europe."
Is ad hominem: declaring that I don't know something because I'm an idiot. But I'm not interested in continuing that argument.
Can we declare my beating over, please? I want to go back to not hating this site.
I think it is 50-50 that he is either a paid up Nazi or so ignorant he knows little of what the Nazis did.
Perko, honestly, get a clue. Look at the statements routinely made by elected republicans such as Bachmann, King, Cantor, Boehner, etc. (just to mention the well known ones) They proudly ally themselves with the teabaggers each and every time they open their mouths. They are part and parcel of the terrorist movement known as "The Tea Party". Republican members of the house went into the Gallery during the vote to wave signs with and encourage the teabaggers. Elected Republicans have routinely spouted eliminationist rhetoric on air. Elected Republicans have fueled the flames by spreading lies about "Death Panels", abortion funding and socialism. The teabaggers have an entire 24 hour propaganda network devoted to messaging for them. There is absolutely no comparison between today's teabaggers and the struggles of the sixties and seventies - none.
Stop with the ridiculous false equivalency.
@#19: vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank)
Barney is gay AND a Jew!
No, you weren't. I'd hazard to say that 80% of us here are secular humanists first and Democrats second, if at all. We'd recognize a secular humanist perspective if we saw one. Instead, we saw a bunch of easily-debunked factoids that you quickly backed away from. Why not just admit you posted without thinking and get on with life?
A significant number of us do not live in the US, and are not American.
I would also venture that a good many of us consider the Democratic party to centrist.
"I cannot tell if this is meant to be taken seriously or not."
Its meant to be taken seriously. For starters utopian eschatologists are always trying on Quixotic power-grabbing attempts. So for example one might think that it would be impossible to set up a world government at a climate conference. Yet someone made the attempt nonetheless.
And this "health-care" bill has nothing to do with improving health-care and everything to do with grabbing power. So once again, we have to ask when the civil disobedience starts.
The bill isn't there to cut costs. It will not cut costs. Its not there to increase choice. It will reduce choice and the people connected with passing it have already opted out.
In fact its an immensely creative attempt to grab totalitarian power in such a large and diverse nation. How clever it was to grab the power of life and death over the most influential people in the community .... that is to say the elderly.
Such power-grabbing attempts may always be quixotic. But what if the public is so stupid that they actually succeed?
PZ - Could you please add a line of code to your site that will automatically add one of those Terry Gilliam village idiots to every comment made by Graeme Bird? Thank you.
mmelliott01: I did, and I'll do it again: I posted without thinking. I just got into the flow of the thread, and people started saying things like "I don't remember any liberals seriously advocating overthrowing the government during the Bush years."
I *do* remember those sorts of people, and that was the point I was trying to make. Evidently, I made it very poorly. I wasn't trying to change the thread's topic or counter PZ's post, I was just trying to address that one small point. Sigh...
Carpentiam: I was trying to defend a small point with a large one, and it blew up.
To me, the teabaggers represent the stupidest of today's political movements, and I can't say I like defending them. But they are not the Republican party, technically, and neither is Fox News, technically.
They all work together, but as Matt called me out on earlier: they are not the same organization. So I cannot say that they are Republican in the same way that I cannot say that Greenpeace is Green Party. Even if most of the members are republican (or green party), they are not officially part of the organization.
Their collusion is clear, but their actions cannot legally be considered to represent the Republican Party itself. Even though, culturally, they obviously are.
In my youth, there seemed to be a similar situation with left-wing groups. I'm not going to claim that was definitely the case, though, as that was a long time ago and I haven't done enough recent research to really back that up.
Even if I had, Matt would beat me up for saying it. *sweat*
Exactly. I confuse Republicans all the time when I tell them that I dislike Obama or Clinton just as much as they do, but for completely opposite reasons. They can't get past the assumption that OF COURSE all lefties are brainwashed, adoring slaves to our elected Democratic leaders, incapable of realistically analyzing their actual positions and votes.
The odd thing is that when they hear that I am far more radical than the people they claim to despise, they usually treat me with MORE respect, not less.
Ah, a delusional fool. Actually, many of us feel it didn't go far enough, since there is no public option, or more preferable, total public funding for basic health care.
craig.perko:
The comments are coming in fast and I missed your retraction/apology/whatever you want to call it.
Your most recent post clarifies your stance significantly. Just remember, the ONLY thing we have to go by is your actual words, and they were not only poorly chosen but eerily similar to bad-faith arguments we fend off regularly. The response you got was inevitable.
You are just not up to debate are you?
If the bill is not to increase choice, not to reduce costs then what is it for?
We know how to reduce costs in medicine.
1. You simply hold the firm responsible for quality. And you don't try and force quality in via requiring everyone to be fully qualified.
2. You have a two-tier system, and when it comes to working-age people, and those not chronically and terminally ill, you want as much of the money to come from savings. And neither from insurance nor government subsidy.
Economic law is almost as powerful as anything in science. We know how to make costs go down. Equity in this situation would involve getting rid of the payroll tax.
Soetoro is clearly trying to both grab power and destroy the Republic any way he can. Let us not forget that his campaign turned down 90 million of government money so that his foreign funding would not be fully audited.
The big communist government should suspend his disability checks for a month.
mmelliott01:
I realize that NOW. I just wish I'd realized it earlier. I'm used to everyone being well aware of my stance (forgot I'm a first time poster here), so I got really sloppy.
You might want to learn a bit about the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. The left was in no way equivalent to the Democratic Party.
craig.perko,
Shall we go through a list of prominent republican politicians who have clearly declared their support to the tea party movement ?
Fuck, let's start with 4 big ones:
Sarah Palin Republican VP candidate
Newt Gingrich Republican Former Speaker of the House
Ted Perry Gov. of Texas
Scott Brown Republican Senator for Massachussets
Now name me ONE prominent republican politician who has clearly declared that he is against the tea party movement.
You won't find any, because they are all shitting in their pants that doing so might lose them a big chunk of precious votes.
Graeme Bird #90
Just because your political masters have told you the Health Reform Law is "socialist" and "totalitarian" doesn't mean it is. It just means your political masters have managed to brainwash you into believing stupid shit.
"Carpentiam: I was trying to defend a small point with a large one, and it blew up.
To me, the teabaggers represent the stupidest of today's political movements, and I can't say I like defending them."
Why do you say that? So far they have been pretty peaceful in their protests. And pretty intelligent in their criticisms.
Note that no-one here has even overturned a single argument I have made? Does this make them more or less intelligent then the protestors?
craig.perko: So stick around and be yourself. Eventually we will get to know you and we will only pile on when you are really, really wrong-headed. Or we are in a bad mood. Or the moon is in Pisces. Or PZ has a beard. You know, once in a while.
I wasn't talking about Health Reform. As you can see I want health reform myself.
I was talking about this Bill. Which is manifestly a totalitarian takeover attempt and serves no other rational purpose.
@102 "Note that no-one here has even overturned a single argument I have made?"
Because no one here is going to waste time arguing nonsense. You might as well insist that the planet is a six thousand year old pancake and that the sky is really magenta. Why would anyone waste time arguing with you? You have fecal matter in the brain pan.
mmelliott01: No, I don't think so. One of the reasons I have avoided commenting in the past is because of the way posters tend to use straw-man arguments and blow enemy opinions way out of reasonable proportion just to make their targets look stupid. I feel the urge to bite them, even if they are technically on my side. Today just proved that it's not something I want to try to navigate.
But I'll keep reading, I think.
Canuck @ #27 [asking about the student loan program]
Due to political compromises made somewhere along the line, the lenders were private banks. The federal government was subsidizing banks who lent to students, and was assuming all of the risk from the loans, so it was a big win for the banks. The new plan is to cut out the middleman.
Rachel Maddow explains it much more clearly than I can. (Skip to about 6:20 in that video)
Graeme Bird,
Because you haven't made any?
You use words such as "totalitarian", "fact", "argument", while completely ignoring what they mean.
No wonder nobody is interested in having a discussion with you, unless you start using words properly and making rational arguments that are well justified and supported with evidence or references, it'll be a waste of time.
What you have written so far has little more meaning than "the socialist mystery of the politics of fear represent twice the amount of liberties as Nazi federalists".
What do you want to answer to that?
Graeme Bird #104
Okay, explain, in detail, how it's totalitarian, how it's a takeover attempt, who is doing the takeover, and why we shouldn't consider you to be a complete fucking idiot?
Cue Graeme Bird tone trolling in 3.. 2.. 1..
Graeme Bird,
History shows that a universal healthcare system both reduces costs and improves outcomes.
Just look at Europe, and compare that with the US. The US pays more per capita than any other country, and yet it is mid-table in terms of health outcomes. On some measures it is beaten by Cuba.
The real intention can be seen in the first draft of what Soetoro and those two terrorists' sons tried to get across. Not so much with the watered down version. But it doesn't matter. The watered down version still has enough to continue with the campaign of wrecking the finances of the Republic and splitting the US up by doing so. Its a counterattack to Reagan bankrupting the Soviet Union. Or it can be seen as a mirror image of that likewise successful strategy.
Further, failing the splitting up of the US, the Bill centralises life and death decisions. Thus putting all the most influential people in society under extreme intimidation.
You've just got to face reality. Soetoro ran a 212 billion dollar deficit in February alone. The economic team he put together were all mad Keynesians with the exception of someone in his 80's who was really only there for show. These decisions were made with great deliberation and malice afforethought.
Also Soetoro picked a team of people, the requirements for which were existing political power, and or hard leftist credentials, and-or skeletons in the closet. The ubiquity of scandal in the past of team members serves as protection against his own shady and mysterious past.
What do God and Obama have in common?
Nope, it probably means you are as trolling as the typical liberturd. They are never refuted, no matter how much evidence is presented refuting the totally. You appear to be suffering from the same malady.
No the fact is you are just not up to it. You'd be better off going to the mirror now. And admitting to yourself that you just aren't that bright.
Can anybody explain the Obama campaign turning down 90 million dollars of government money? How about getting scientific about that?
First, some context: I'm Australian.
I have to say this whole anti-healthcare thing really confuses me. Surely a society choosing to implement a universal health care system is an extremely democratic thing to do? One of the fundamentals of democracy is participation, yes? So surely making sure people are healthy enough to participate is key to a democracy's success? Why does the US seem to have such a big movement of people who seem to want to deny people the chance to participate?
I'm so confused. And really, I'm not being fascetious. The social problems that are created by people not being able to participate (and here I mean that broadly, not just voting but education, employment, etc.) are so great - violence, crime, an underclass with massive endemic problems - are so horrid and effect the whole of that society so negatively that I really don't get why the middle classes would want to deny health care, one of the most basic remedies to these problems.
Honestly, why do such a large group of Americans seem to believe that it's not for a society to decide to protect their most vulnerable members through the use of the government that they ultimately control? I truely believe this is a
very important and fundamental part of the role of my government here in Australia. Please, can you help me understand this?
Can anyone explain why it was that Soetoro went to Kenya in the middle of his own Presidential campaign. Helped usurp power for Odinga, after stirring up sectarian violence. Turned down 90 million dollars as I said.....
And can you explain the following without recourse to the fact that Soetoro relied on foreign financing and the obvious implication that he will be doing so again in the future:
"When Obama met the king of Saudi Arabia, a nation in which no one votes, women are subject to severe and demeaning restrictions and it is against the law to have a Christian church, Obama bowed in deep respect.
When Obama ran into Venezuela's murderous despot, Hugo Chavez, at a summit, there was a friendly greeting observed by all.
But there is one leader whom Obama draws the line at. He will not be seen in public with Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Astonishingly, when Netanyahu saw Obama at the White House this week, all photographers and all TV cameras were banned, a level of humiliation almost completely unique in modern White House practice."
All of the above is only consistent with the picture of a man purposefully wrecking things on behalf of foreign sponsors.
He doesn't need your vote. He has the foreign money to buy as many votes as he needs. You are not his constituents. His constituents are not US citizens.
Graeme Bird,
I do not read every single post here, so I could be wrong, but I do not recall any poster saying that this Bill was perfect, wonderful or even pretty good.
The consensus would seem to be that it is far from perfect, rather a disappointment but - just - a small step in the right direction.
As for the power of life and death, that has for decades been exercised by the insurance companies, with no accountability at all. Now they will find it a little more difficult to deny someone an essential test or cut off someone's chemotherapy half-way through a course of treatment. That was one of the major reasons for reform.
The other, as I understand it, was that the current system completely failed to deliver. It denied a significant number of people any health care at all until they were on the point of death and worked against the development of good preventive medicine.
As seen from across an ocean, the delivery model had quite simply failed to keep up with the changes in medicine, surgery, testing and a million other possibilities. It was more suited to about 1850 when there was not a lot that doctors could actually do in most cases.
Before you post again you might want to work out how other countries manage to spend about half what the US does and, with the odd hiccup, still get more bang for their buck.
Oh, and instead of dealing in generalities or propaganda do tell us in precise terms what you lost when President Obama signed the Bill the other day.
Anxious readers want to know.
Citation needed.
Graeme Bird @ 112:
This is a claim that would be possible to back up with evidence, if such existed...
Here is the text of HR 3590, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
Here is the text of HR 4872, the reconciliation bill.
Back up your claim above, using the language from from the bills, or retract it.
Matt Penfold:
As a non-American this is something blatantly obvious to me, and I do know that quite a few Americans realize it too. But to me it really seems like all too many Americans are completely blind to what life is like in the "outside world."
How many times have I heard Americans say that any kind of socialization of health care will invariably lead to death, destruction and the general collapse of society? Some don't seem to realize that most of the richer countries of the world function quite successfully with all the socialization that they so fear. It is trivially true that things like that do not necessarily lead to the downfall of civilization.
And I really don't understand all this "death panel" talk. Graeme Bird talks incessantly about "putting all the most influential people in society under extreme intimidation" - but how do people imagine that working?
Will Obama stand at a pulpit and say to the nation "Come now, vote for me, do my bidding, or I'll have my evil health care cronies pull the plug on you!" I don't think the rest of the nation would follow him in that case, and I don't see how any more subtle intimidation would work... It's not like the democrats could covertly do a major operation to find out the political views of patients and kill the unwanted. It really wouldn't be possible to do such a thing without all the medical professionals with a conscience leaking the story to the press.
So, how do people like Bird envision this "extreme intimidation" to work out for anyone? What would Obama (or whatever evil force he sees behind all this) stand to gain personally from making a "totalitarian" health care system? I must be missing something, because I don't get it...
And Graeme Bird, you have yet to provide any facts backing up your claims about the health care bill being totalitarian. Not surprising, since it's complete and utter nonsense, but that's not surprising, coming from you.
Not only is the Bill not any good. It serves no other purpose but to usurp power. No health savings accounts. No being able to pay your health bills out of your 401k's. Nothing that would work to bring down costs, increase innovation or that would serve any purpose whatsoever relating to improving the health system.
Health Care reform is okay. This bill is not Okay. There is a difference. I don't know how you guys could have got sucked into this. You've been had by a prize conman. It may be painfull to have to admit you've been taken in. But there you are.
@ my #119:
D'oh my bad! My link to HR 4872 contained only the most recent changes to it, after it came back from the senate. Here is the document my link above modifies:
HR 4872
I should also warn people ahead of time, these are PDFs.
Talking Points Memo has a tidy little summary, with links, of the vandalism, threats, and other crimes erupting after the passage of health care reform (including a few, omigod, happening to Republicans!!1!).
craig.perko
I know exactly what you mean. A liberal friend of mine at Kent State violently attacked an innocent bullet with his body.
"Citation needed."
Why. Didn't you catch the rioting at the time? You do know that before he went there Kenya was known as one of the most successful and least violent nations in Africa? You did know that right? So it certainly came as a surprise to me when the killing started.
At the time the excuse for Obama abandoning his own campaign was that Odinga was a cousin of his. This was just another lie. And so we see from the incident who his real constituents are. They are not American.
A fellow who runs a 212 billion dollar deficit in February alone is not turning down 90 million in public money for his campaign as a conscience thing.
Science is somewhat about reconciling at first surprising and seemingly unreconcilable facts.
So how do you reconcile the facts I'm bringing to you? Try applying the scientific method. What could explain this. Your alleged President is a traitor.
Mr. Bird is another liberturd/Right Wing idjit. Emphasis on idjit turd. Better known as a jingoist, unable to show original or cogent thought. And no idea what real liberals, and not his strawman liberals, want.
That reminds me: tell the government to keep its hands off my medicare!
"History shows that a universal healthcare system both reduces costs and improves outcomes."
This is not really true. But on the other hand there is just enough in it to make it a viable belief.
Supposing you were right? It would not be relevant. Since the Bill that has just passed is designed to do neither. But only to take power.
The way to cut costs is to bring up the percentage of user pays and reduce credentialism, leaving the firm responsible for quality. So we have the example of the Swiss versus the American system. Most other comparisons in Europe are to do with vastly inferior systems to the American one, even if very much cheaper systems.
Note the case of plastic surgery. Cost-effectiveness improves all the time. Since this type of surgery tends neither to be paid from insurance nor from subsidy.
The bill was passed on the heels of the knowledge that you ran a 212 billion dollar deficit in February. You people are bankrupt and you face the imminent collapse of your union. Did you know that?
The scientific method involves backing up your claims. Are you going to respond to my #119?
As for turning down the public campaign financing, that was because using the public financing would have limited his campaign to $84.1 Mil between August and November (cite below). Instead his campaign raised $650 Mil from private donations. Seems like a pretty smart bet on their part.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_presidential_campaign,_2008#F…
My oh my, what a narcissistic and mind numbingly boring dipshit G. Bird is. NPD anyone?
So amused by the hypocrisy of this man. I think that if anyone breaks a window and says they did it because of his rantings the money to fix the window(s) should come out of his disability cheque.
Someone should do a study of the teabaggers, see just how many of them are on the dole.
I really love all of the doom-and-gloom (or sturm-und-drang, if you're feeling dramatic) surrounding the health care bill.
Really guys? It's the end of the US as we know it because of one fucking piece of legislation? A piece of legislation that doesn't even provide a government opt-in provision will surpass the Constitution and make us all freedomless slaves? You can't seriously believe that.
Totally explains why Europe is such a third-world shit hole, though. /sarcasm
Well it is only not true if you ignore evidence.
Most systems in Europe are superior, in that healthcare is both cheaper and better. I can only assume you are using a definition of superior until now unknown.
In Europe there is a considerable amount of plastic surgery that is funded by universal healthcare. In fact the field was pioneered using public funds in the UK. Are you sure you are not confusing plastic surgery with cosmetic surgery ? There is a significant difference. I will give you hint: Plastic surgery to restore function to hands scarred by burns is not the same as a boob job.
The scientific method involves reconciling facts. My hypothesis can explain them. Yours cannot. Of course I'm not able to investigate matters to the point of convergent evidence so striking it would amount to proof in some absolutist sense. The best I can do is to show that the hypothesis that he is a foreign-financed traitor is far superior to alternative explanations for very consistent behaviour. Actually the conclusion is obvious. As attempts to supply alternative hypotheses will reveal if they are so attempted.
Since there is no burden of proof nor any null hypothesis then that ought to be good enough. He has to be considered a foreign-backed traitor from here on in, now that the evidence for this is superior. Beating out all other hypotheses. Or so it would seem. One doesn't want the best hypothesis by default alone.
Anatomy of a Graeme Bird post:
Conspiracy theory
Assertion that everyone is blind and should be ashamed
Vague hints at more conspiracy
Declaration that he is the one to see the truth
"Most systems in Europe are superior, in that healthcare is both cheaper and better. I can only assume you are using a definition of superior until now unknown."
No you are wrong. For example in Britain you have all these waiting lists. Your system is far better, although much more expensive.
Logical conclusion:ur doin it wrong.
When the looneytarian asshole doesn't even call his country's president by his real name then we know the looneytarian asshole is just a looneytarian asshole.
Yes, conspiracy theories usually are quite good at that. You should see some of the connections they draw between the Washington street layout, the Freemasons, and the Knights Templar!
Mands #115,
"Because if these people are poor and vulnerable, it's their own fault, and it's not written in the bible that healthcare is a god given right."
If the person isn't a christian fundie loon but more generally a libertarian loon, replace "bible" with "constitution".
That's the logic of these folks, from Glenn Beck to Graeme Bird.
Graeme Bird - you spell Black with a double g in the middle, do you not? I doubt anyone will engage you in a serious manner as most will notice that you are just a rabble rousing birther troll with delusions of adequacy. Making up facts may work with the other loons with whom you trace conspiracies, but most people here do require a few more facts. Why not crawl back over to Red State and whine with your fellow troglodytes about the ebil muslin man who got uppity and usurped power by obtaining a majority in a free and reasonably clean election and then passed HCR by a majority using an old, legal, and tested method (extensively used by the Reptile party) called reconciliation?
I will pray for you.
"Really guys? It's the end of the US as we know it because of one fucking piece of legislation?"
1. Yes really this is the end of the US as you know it.
2. No not because of one piece of legislation. Soetoro's behaviour implies that he will bankrupt the US any way he can. Or alternatively turn it into a dictatorship.
Not unlike the Reagan strategy of bankrupting the Soviet Union and getting it to split up, or alternatively forcing them to knock out many thousands of the most dangerous nukes and bringing the conflict to a close.
You ought to try and deduce the strategy from the concrete small steps he has taken and tried to take.
Who do you think will be willing to pay for this health care system? You won't be paying? Do you expect the poor Chinese people to pay for it?
The NHS, in England, using 2008/2009 figures costs less than £2000 per person.
As for waiting lists, I would suggest you acquainted you self with the evidence. There was a problem with waiting lists, but they are no longer an issue. If you want to participate in discussion on healthcare then you must make sure you use correct data, and do not make up facts.
I am just wasting by breathe though. You do not seem to be sane.
lolwut?
Craig:
I think you are missing one important difference - while there were some small violent groups in the 60's, the Democratic party wanted nothing to do with them. Like in Chicago. Now consider the Tea Party members and their actions. What we see are folks like the RNC chairman supporting the stance of this group. Ditto for the dittoheads and the defacto leader of the Rethugs, Rush. Absent has been any meaningful or broad rejection of the stance of these extreme folks by the Repubs. Sorta like the darling of this group, Sarah Barracuda and her silence when there were calls to kill Obama at some of her speeches. The Repubs want to siphon off and channel all that passion to their own ends, thus the linkage.
News flash idjit. Politics ain't science, and GIGO rules with your hypothesis. GARBAGE. Attempting to put non-science in scientific terms shows your lack of cogency. That makes everything you say subject to verification, and you appear to lack even basic evidence for your inane grunts.
So what you're saying is that it's better to pay out the nose for insurance and still not even be sure that you can get the necessary treatment because the insurance company might tell you that they won't pay for it because your waiting time might be a wee bit shorter (for non-essential services only)?
I can't speak to Britain's system, but in Canada waiting times for essential services seem to be the same as those in the US. My brother has gone into the emergency room twice. The first time, he was seen immediately because he was vomiting blood. Within two hours, he had been diagnosed with cancer and was being air-lifted to our local hospital. The second time he went into the ER, he waited all of fifteen minutes to be seen, had all the blood draws and tests done within two hours and was admitted and put into a room within six. He came in because he was dizzy and losing track of time. None of those are particularly long wait times. Yes, I have to book my physical exams a month in advance, but that's not essential, not terribly important and I would love to know what comparable wait times for Americans are because I can't imagine that they're much better.
Who the fuck is this Soetoro Bird keeps crapping on about ?
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
There is no point discussing with this odious troll Graeme Bird.
Anybody who claims "Reagan had a strategy of bankrupting the Soviet Union" is rewriting history as suits him and it's IMHO a total waste of time engaging with him.
Eidolon: Yeah, it's becoming clear that I was misinformed when I was young, and never noticed it. I am now very, very angry. I'll be reading up on it, I promise.
Now, I think I'm done monitoring this thread. It's become about a common thorn, so I think it's done with me.
"When the looneytarian asshole doesn't even call his country's president by his real name then we know the looneytarian asshole is just a looneytarian asshole."
I'm trying to be scientific and objective. Hence I'm calling Soetoro by his last legally known name. If you can tell me the date he changed his name from Barry Soetoro do let me know. This is his last known legal name. I suggest you call him by that name as well.
You claim that he is your country's President. This is something you cannot possibly know for sure one way or another. I don't know this for sure. So I don't see how you can. The Catholic church has had many anti-Popes. Most determined as such only after the fact. If you were to stay the US and not become Barryland, or Cook County and surrounding districts, then you may one day recognize Caliph Barry as your first usurper-President. Like I say. I'm not in a position to know. Neither are you.
"Graeme Bird - you spell Black with a double g in the middle, do you not?"
Fantastic line. I'm going to steal it and run like a thief in the night. Larry Sinclair assures us that Barry is a white man.
That, you fucking douche canoe, is the fundamental difference between you and me. Of course I would pay for a government option or *gasp!* even single payer. I, unlike you, do not confuse greed with freedom.
And if you think that you're not paying for other people's health care right this very second! then you are way more deluded that I thought.
Oh and p.s. Could you blockquote or italicize or use fucking quotation marks or something?
"Anybody who claims "Reagan had a strategy of bankrupting the Soviet Union"
No that was indeed his strategy. This is just a fact.
You claim that he is your country's President. This is something you cannot possibly know for sure one way or another.
I know others feel a sense of humor and ridicule when they talk to someone this insane.
I only feel despair. If anyone would like to volunteer to behead me at the earliest opportunity so I never have to read a statement from a clownshoe like this ever again, I can give you my email.
It so happens that I looked into the numbers of health care a couple of years ago (before the election of Obama), and they clearly show that the US pays more for healthcare and get less for the money than other countries.
In other words, you're wrong, and the numbers shows this.
You wouldn't recognize the scientific method if it jumped up and bit you in the ass. Also, you're so moronic that you don't realize that Obama isn't the president of many of the commenters here (myself included).
Your claims about Obama's role in Kenya are variations over debunked claims, and unless you can provide evidence for your claims, they can be rejected out of hand. A hint: claiming that it is so, is not evidence. Nor is repeating rumors.
Your claims about Obama being a traitor are so stupid that they are not worth spending time on.
Oh, my bad. Bird did use fucking quotation marks.
Damn, I lay down for a nap and a real-life birther shows up. Move very slowly folks, they spook easily.
Hey, BirdBrain!
We used to have waiting lists when Reagan's little friend Thatcher was trying to reduce the NHS to a fourth-rate service to mop up those she regarded as fourth-rate people. We don't any more.
You want evidence? Lynna OM and I each had a TIA within the last year. She had a lot of worry, waiting, embarrassed requests for financial help - gladly given - but though much better she still hasn't had all the medically indicated tests.
I saw my doctor within 2 days and was told off for not calling him out but waiting until I was well enough to walk to his office, started treatment that day, saw the consultant a week later, had all the tests deemed necessary, am now established on a diet and assorted medicines - and money was never mentioned.
Out here in the civilised world - of which you seem to have little grasp - medical decisions are made by doctors and patients in consultation, not by fucking accountants or pen-pushers who have targets of refusals to meet so they get their bonus.
Anyway, how is death by accountant somehow more moral than death by waiting list? At least the person who used to put you on the waiting list had the balls to say it to your face.
[Citation Needed]
Again, the scientific method involves backing up your claims. Simply asserting them as fact isn't quite the same thing.
While we're at it, care to answer my #119, or will you withdraw the claim? This is how people scientifically and objectively discuss empirical claims.
Who the hell is Soetoro? (quick Google later) Oh, he's Obama, apparently. Yep, we have a certifiable loony here.
Yes, conspiracy theories usually are quite good at that. You should see some of the connections they draw between the Washington street layout, the Freemasons, and the Knights Templar!
You forgot the Elders of Zion and the International Homosexual Movement.
I beg to differ
Thanks. I thought it might be, but then since Obama's name is Obama not Soetoro there was some doubt.
How thick do you have to be not to know Obama's name ?
The fact is you cannot know that Shala. Because he will not prove that Shala.
Our dead selves. You will not be paying for this healthcare system. You won't. You don't have the money for it. You will not be making up that 212 billion dollar PER MONTH deficit, and the interest, and the payments needed for the retirement of the baby boomers, and the payment of another 1 trillion dollar spending program on top of all that.
Just get away from this delusion that you Americans can pay your bills. This is a delusion. You cannot do it. You won't be doing it. Who do you expect will do it? Chinese going to keep buying your bonds? Will the Chinese pay for your medical costs?
We don't seem to have anyone here willing to face even the most uncontroversial fact.
Barry Soetoro, code name for Barack Obama given by birthers such as Orly Taitz and this total troll Birther Bird.
Does anyone have any idea where the moron called Graeme Bird lives, and why the fuck he should be so concerned about US Healthcare and Obama when he does not seem to be American ?
Birther Bird,
why don't you just shut the fuck up and go away?
I see no evidence will be forthcoming from this idjitturd. To killfile or not to killfile, that is the question. Maybe PZ will do us a favor and ban him for insipidity. They don't get much stoooopider....
Matt @ 149:
I finally got the answer...this is a new thread of the birther tapestry. Soreto was Obama's step fater. Much is made of the fact that he never went by his step fater's last name; just the one on his birth certificate.
Check this snopes link:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/occidental.asp
Oh goodie, a glue sniffer is going to use one of my lines, I am moist with delight.
OK, GB, go upstairs and have your momma make you a toaster pizza and a glass of Ovaltine.
For my next trick, Killfile meet GB, GB meet Killfile.
Barry Soetoro is his last known legal name. If you think otherwise you can tell me the exact date he changed his name and I'll stand corrected. But you cannot do that. Because his name is Barry.
"As for waiting lists, I would suggest you acquainted you self with the evidence. There was a problem with waiting lists, but they are no longer an issue."
I suspect you are lying. When do you imagine that the waiting lists were cleared. In any case, your system is superior. There's is cheaper. Even by your own admission this is the case, since you are not claiming that the British system is of higher quality.
Related to the blogpost - have people seen this NY Times article?
With No Job, Plenty of Time for Tea Party
Irony is indeed dead.
Goodness me Matt. Here you are pretending to be an up-to-date expert on the British health system. And you don't even know this fellow's last known legal name?
Obama's Birth Certificate
Show me a legal document stating otherwise, or withdraw your claim.
I'd mention that Barack Hussein Obama II is the name given on his birth certificate but that won't sway the looneytarian asshole. He's a birther and "thinks" Obama's birth certificate is a forgery.
Bird, try providing some evidence (hyperlinks are best here, but citations to published works are also fine) for at least some of your claims.
Okay, GB, I'll play along.
If Soertoro is his legal name, then why does his certificate of live birth say otherwise?
Oh wait, it's a forgery, right? *snort!*
Link, plz.
While we're at it, tell me the exact date you stopped beating puppies.
So, in other words, you have no knowledge about the subject you're spewing comments on? Why am I not surprised.
Graeme Bird:
So tell me, Orly, what's it like to live in a state of chronic, trembling paranoia?
Our dead selves. You will not be paying for this healthcare system. You won't.
God damn right I won't, because I'm not an American you fucking asshole!
I live in a country that hasn't collapsed due to (cue buzzwords in scare quotes) "socialist" or "totalarian" universal healthcare.
Now, with that out of the way, would you kindly shut the fuck up? You've supported absolutely none of your statements whatsoever, using 'hypothesis' as your incredibly inane opinion.
You know so little about this fellow its incredible. For example you didn't link to a real birth certificate, secondly its true that he is going under his birth name. But thats not his last known legal name.
"Anyway, how is death by accountant somehow more moral than death by waiting list?"
Neither is better. Thats why health care reform was important. Rather than a totalitarian takeover attempt and ongoing measures to bankrupt the US.
You guys do realise you are bankrupt do you not? There seems to be a great many things that have escaped your attention.
You do at least agree that you are bankrupt. And that you will not be paying for this scam right?
No you must be lying, because Graeme Bird is Motherfucking Sherlock Holmes and anything he so much as suspects must be true. Without the need for anything as pedestrian as evidence...
For example you didn't link to a real birth certificate
Proof or retract.
Still no evidence from the liberturd/conspiracy theorist. I wonder why. Maybe because they live in a closed world of their own paranoia instead of reality, where evidence rules. GB, you had better hide. The black helicopters are on their way...
"So, in other words, you have no knowledge about the subject you're spewing comments on? Why am I not surprised."
No Matt doesn't. Matt seems to be relying on a recent spate of articles downplaying the problems with British health specifically in support of passing this new Soetoro scam.
You'd have to be pretty surprised to find out that these problems have just disappeared. It would have required a real concerted effort to make them just go away.
And you do realize you're intellectually bankrupt, do you not?
Okay, smart guy, what's the difference between a birth certificate and a certificate of live birth?
And how about the birth announcements that were in both Honolulu* newspapers in the days following his birth? Here I'll provide some handy links for you.
And I still want a link regarding the costs of healthcare.
*The first time I typed this I wrote Homolulu, which made me giggle uncontrollably. That's totally going to be the name of my tiki-themed gay bar.
I'll take projection for the win, please.
OurDeadSelves, I don't think your first link works.
What country do you live in Shala? Is it a country with Americas combination of high debts and low savings?
They will not be paying their bills. So I don't know who they imagine, in their wildest dreams, will be paying for this new scheme.
Is anyone aware of the various estimates of the net present value of Americas unfunded liabilities?
Last I heard it was at least 60 trillion and rising. They will not be paying. This is just a fact. Things that cannot happen tend not to happen. So how will this be resolved? Most likely with the dissolution of the Union.
Should probabaly just ignore Graeme. Some people can't seem to deal with the fact that their elected President is a black man. So they just make up any reason they can think of to delude themselves.
I'll see your projection, and raise you a Dunning-Krueger
First of Graeme Bird, given the fact that you're not American, why are you so concerned with this issue? And why are you buying into all the lunatic claims made by the far-right crowd in the US? Are you just trolling us?
"Totalitarian" has a specific meaning. Learn it. Expanding health care cost doesn't fall within the definition. Also, the health care reform will save money, making bankruptcy less likely (both for the country and for the individuals).
"Bankruptcy" has a specific meaning. Learn it.
The US has some economic problems (to put it mildly), but they are not, and will not become, bankrupt as a result of these.
It could be argued that since the US are running on a deficient, some of the cost of health care are paid by future generations, but claiming that all of them are paid by future generations is plain nonsense. Especially when we're talking about health care covered by private insurance, which much of the health care affected by the new health care bill is.
GB is so busy trying to read from a script - must be hard with your head permanently up your arsehole - that he completely fails to notice that both Matt Penfold and I are speaking from direct, current experience.
Sad, very sad.
Nator are you claiming that the Americans WILL be paying their bills?
If none of you can even get this right it doesn't say much for the intellectual depth of the leftists here.
Mind telling me HOW you will pay your bills? Given that last month you needed to borrow 212 billion dollars just to tread water?
Who you going to steal off.
Just.... face ..... facts.
What country do you live in Shala?
I live in the underwater city of Rapture.
It's pretty damp there, but the big daddies work hard to keep us from being overrun by the parasites.
Which is why I'm asking would you kindly shut the fuck up?
Perhaps that will be understood perfectly by this fuckwit.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/ObamaBirthStarBulletin.jpg
http://whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/obama-1961-birth-announcement-from…
I don't know why it wouldn't work for me.
Now that was a fine nerd reference (OK, gamer reference, but I got it, even though I am not a gamer).
I wonder if we can add some Crank Magnetism?
Hey, how about it Bird:
● Who or what brought down the twin towers (9/11)?
● Do vaccines cause autism?
● Did the holocaust happen?
● Does HIV cause AIDS?
● Evolution or creation?
Now that was a fine nerd reference (OK, gamer reference, but I got it, even though I am not a gamer).
Thank you. I figure when dealing with someone as insane as Bird, I may as well speak nonsense right back at him.
Shala for the win!
Shala for the win!
I aim to please. The god-damned splicers are starting to mobilize around my interbutt machine, so I'd better take the bathysphere to somewhere else. God DAMN splicers!
Birther Bird,
You have no idea what the word "facts" even means. For you facts are the same as fiction, you do not live in the real world, you are a completely delusional paranoid fool. Go and see a doctor. Get help soon. And fuck off.
I had too look a little to see where Graeme Bird got this $212 B number.. this is the closest I could find:
In February 2010, the US did indeed import $213.7 B in goods and services from other countries. That's the only number close to $212 B that I can find relating to this Feb. We did in fact have a record trade deficit in Feb., as we only exported $151.4 B in goods and services, making a difference of $62.3 B.
So: Grame Bird, where did you get your $212 Billion figure?
(source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24046611/ [quoting an AP story] [see, this is how adults back up their claims!])
I'm nowhere near qualified to be an economist, but I feel I can confidently say that a trade deficit is not the same thing as the federal deficit.
What country do you live in Shala?
What country do you live in Shala?
I live at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in an underwater city. Didn't I just get finished telling you I lived in Rapture? But perhaps I've said too much, I'd best go grab my 9-iron before my leader sees what I've been up to...
OurDeadSelves #199
Don't you realize that Obama's mother knew back in 1961 that little Barack would be running for president in 2008 and planted those birth announcements in Honolulu newspapers.
Honestly, you don't understand just how deep this conspiracy runs and how long it was in planning.
So lets get this straight. You alleged science fans, supported this bill, on the basis of the slogans "health care reform" and "single payer" even though the money for this scam cannot possibly be forthcoming?
That about right? Now tell me how you going to pay for this? Given the reality of the deficit running over 200 billion a month. Bear in mind that February is the shortest month.
Its one thing to protest that you are in favour of science. But you are not. You pottymouths are all obsessively against applying any sort of viable scientific analysis to almost anything.
Bird:
● Who or what brought down the twin towers (9/11)?
● Do vaccines cause autism?
● Did the holocaust happen?
● Does HIV cause AIDS?
● Evolution or creation?
*sigh* I know, 'Tis, I know.
Sometimes I just need someone like you to break it down piece by piece so I can accept the *facts!* of our Muslim-fascist-communist-dictator's rise to power. Relatively normal guy who won an election? Nah! His mom orchestrated the whole thing!
I've got to correct my #206, I did find the correct federal deficit numbers, which have the federal government $220.9 B in the red in February. (as I said, I'm a poor economist)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g-YziTsAJw1ofv-BiXk2M…
From the article I just linked:
You pottymouths
Your concern is noted.
For those of you who hasn't realized it. Graeme Bird is an Australian and a Libertarian, running as a candidate for the Liberal-Democratic party in Dobell, NSW, Australia (he got 182 votes)
Apparently he holds "an economics degree from Otago University in New Zealand". This is not to be confused with an Masters or Bachelors degree in economics, as can be seen from this overview.
Hey Birdie, I'm still waiting on a linky to the supposed costs of healthcare reform that you keep prattling on about. Where are you getting your numbers and how are you positive that it will bankrupt the US?
Birther Bird,
until you show evidence that this bill is going to increase the deficit, your assumption that it will has no value.
You are a delusional fool. You don't have a clue about science, economics, finance, public policy, history. Nothing. You are a childish incoherent ignorant idiot.
Just. Go. Away.
@ Kristjan Wager #215
Ah, he's a politician. No wonder he's so averse to actually backing up his claims ...
● Evolution or creation?
is it getting warmer or not?
That about right? Now tell me how you going to pay for this?
heyo little Birdie...
Five bucks sez you DID NOT ask this question when W coerced the US into the war in Iraq.
...but we did.
you see, some of us actually read legislation, and we actually do understand how taxes work, how redistribution of existing program funding works, etc.
Most of us actually understand the concept of science, and the scientific method. Nothing you've done has any connection to neither.
Some of us even have a basic understanding of economics, and understand the difference between how macro-economics and micro-economics operate. There is nothing inherently problematic with a deficiency in the state finances, though the interest rate drain on the finances are an issue for concern. Also a cause of concern is the lack of trust in the economy and the reluctance of others to loan money to the state (either directly or through buying state bonds) - these are not serious issues with the US, though there are some signs that lenders (mostly China these days) are becoming less happy about the current situation.
No no. You are not interested in the scientific method. You are delusional. And you seek to project your delusions onto your non-leftist opponents. Sometimes with justification but usually without.
Now just to prove this. I challenge anyone of you to come up with a plausible scenario wherein the Americans pay their debts without runaway inflation. Without galloping inflation.
You cannot even come up with a plausible scenario or admit their inherent bankruptcy. This is how delusional you are. Scienceblogs is an outfit dedicated to delusional leftist projection.
There is a Graeme Bird who writes a blog A Better World: Graeme Bird for High Office (subtitled: Dearest blog. Cheapest Thinktank. Deepest Philosopher. Most Holistic Prophet.). The writing style and evidence-free claims are quite similar, as in this post, Obama Trashing The United States Really IS A Conspiracy. This Is Just A Fact.
And he is indeed a truther:
Presuming the blogging Bird is our current troll, we have a first-class idiot here.
that is too hilarious for words.
All good stuff. Until we find out how all that molten iron got in the basements. These matters will be controversial until we find this out. Obviously I'm not blaming former President Bush. And I don't think it was an inside job. But we don't know about the molten iron. So the questions need to be raised. We want to find all the culprits and not just a few of them.
Can't argue with that...if it isn't on his talking points list, like evidence, nada...
Bird:
● Who or what brought down the twin towers (9/11)? [explosives, see @232]
● Do vaccines cause autism?
● Did the holocaust happen?
● Does HIV cause AIDS?
● Evolution or creation?
● Is it getting warmer or not?
No no. You are not interested in the scientific method. You are delusional. And you seek to project your delusions onto your non-leftist opponents. Sometimes with justification but usually without.
extreme projection is a sure sign of underlying mental illness, Birdie.
better get yourself checked out!
you'll be much happier and saner.
Underpants Gnomes: Know The Symptoms.
No no. You guys are the idiots. You won't face any facts at all.
To test yourselves out focus on the inherent bankruptcy of the United States. Think of a plausible scenario where they can reverse the logic of Bernie Madoff and keep their ponzi-scheme on the fly.
You won't be paying your bills.
Graeme Bird:
Don't make me compile a list of the number of things you have asserted, as fact, without any sort of evidence, in this thread alone.
A quick little refresher on the scientific method
"extreme projection is a sure sign of underlying mental illness, Birdie."
Yes my argument exactly. Scienceblogs sites are effectively leftist projectionist church.
I like blf's approach. Let's continue until he answers the questions or goes away because we won't tolerate him dodging them:
Bird:
● Who or what brought down the twin towers (9/11)? [explosives, see @232]
● Do vaccines cause autism?
● Did the holocaust happen?
● Does HIV cause AIDS?
● Evolution or creation?
● Is it getting warmer or not?
Still waiting on that linky that proves your facts, Birdie boy.
And Mr. Bird, some of us are professional scientists (30+ years in my case). Don't even pretend to think you can tell us how to use the scientific method, we know better. You are a fraud, poser, liar and bullshitter. If you need confirmation of that, your lack of evidence for your inane assertions is glaring...
Popped back over and see this is still going on. I must admit, this turd can really float. Killfile is my friend. OK folks, is he worth unkilling to read or just more of the same crap? Unless he has some new and interesting lunacies I will not waste my time. Willing to bet he has already moved on to the birth certificate and 9/11 denial. Let me know if/when he gets to holocaust and AIDS denials.
Ciao y'all
The blogging Bird, who does seem to be the current troll (see @225), subscribes to some idea called "the electric universe" (which I'm not even going to attempt to summarise, it's too wacky):
This then somehow proves AGW isn't happening:
So: Birther. Truther. AGW-denialist.
First-class idiot.
You won't be paying your bills.
Birdie!
are you offering to pay our bills for us?
why, that's so generous of you!
we accept!
please contact the Dept. of the Treasury to get the final tally for the last 10 years, including the bills for:
-the afghanistan invasion
-the Iraq invasion
-the "rebuilding" of Iraq
-all economic stimulus packages
which, btw, any one of which DWARF the money it will cost to make the small dent in HC costs this current Bill will entail.
Bird:
● Who or what brought down the twin towers (9/11)? [explosives, @223, @225]
● Do vaccines cause autism?
● Did the holocaust happen?
● Does HIV cause AIDS?
● Evolution or creation?
● Is it getting warmer or not? [AGW-denier, @237]
Hey, I don't mind if Bird pays my water bill for me.
Especially the latter. Every time he posts. This is a case where silence might be his friend. But he will post, the ideological loser idjit he is...
OK. Let's see - reduction on war spending, currently approximately $100 billion per year would definitely help. This could be done by e.g. getting out of Iraq. This would also help reduce future costs to the veterans' health care system.
Cuts on other military spending (totaling more than $600 million, including war spending) would also help, though it might increase unemployment.
Government investment into high-potential sectors, allowing those to do the necessary research and development, creating jobs in the long run, thus increasing the future tax base.
Increase the top tax bracket to e.g. Reagan levels.
On top of that, a general overhaul of the current insurance health care system, which causes a lot of waste and unnecessary bankruptcies.
You know, all those traditional Keynesian measures that you seem to have such a disdain for.
Of course, reducing the debt is a long-term job, and not something which can be done in just a decade, but the measures I mention are definitely steps in the right direction.
Someone has already posted a link to Bird's habitats @223, but it should be mentioned that Bird is already banned at a bunch of blogs including Deltoid, Larvatus Prodeo, johnquiggin.com and probably many others. You wont get any sense from him, he's been pulling his schtick for years.
I see the Bird migrates quite often.
Oh lordy, Bird's a fellow Aussie. I apologise on behalf of all Australians for his existence. Unfortunately it's probably the result of the excellent universal health care system we have here.
It's not without it's faults but it is quite wonderful: have cancer you'll get the treatment you need. My aunt got a new surgical treatment for Parkinson's where they put electrodes in her brain, on the public system. I got made redundant from my job a few months ago and I haven't paid a cent for my medical treatment and only a few dollars for prescribed drugs in that time.
As for Bird's comments about Obama's name, I have no idea what's true or not other than that Obama goes by the name Obama now, as an adult... and that's the name his wife and children use so why are you using another? I know quite a few people who have taken step parent's name while a child or at school and as adults they choose to revert to their father's or their mother's name. It so common that I can't believe bird brain is crapping on about it.
And people, pls continue calling them teabaggers. Itmakes me giggle every time!!!!
I would like to thank Birdy for urging me to google "Soetoro" though, because now I know Obama has a sister who is as talented and impressive as he is! What an impressive family his is. How nice to see such strong and impressive women around a leader.
Not on my list, but the blogging Bird, who is very probably also our troll, is one who claims DDT was banned for killing malaria mosquitoes (it wasn't, not world-wide anyways, the ban was for farming), and that as a result of this non-existent ban, an unspecified number of people (Bird the blogging troll calls it a "holocaust”) have died: How A Pro-DDT Expert Goes To War/Beware The Feeble Wordgames Of The Holocaust Deniers. Amazingly, I believe he's correct on two points: DDT was(/is?) overused at times for malaria control, and DDT is not a full solution for controlling malaria.
And he mentions Lambert, Bug Girl, and others, so I suspect he's infested SciBorg before.
Yep! Anti-vaccine as well, An Embarrassing Fuckwit Calling Himself Skeptico:
I'll (try to) stop now. This guy is multiple train wrecks on a planet with pink skys, polka-dot clouds, and yellow oceans. Geesh!
"The other day in my beloved city of Minneapolis, I saw a car with numerous truther bumper stickers. Fuck me, I went into brain shock for a few seconds."
Yesterday, I went to Cafepress to order one of those little Euro oval-type stickers for my home state of Idaho (just a simple "ID" in an oval, that kinda thing), and for the heck of it, clicked to the seller's page. Brain shock is a pretty good way to describe what I saw. My favorite example: "On November 2, I Will Remember 3/21". Isn't that wonderful? The day that the House passed the health care bill (not the day Obama signed it, incidentally) is such a day of infamy that it gets it's own M/D/Y code!
(Also, it's my younger brother's birthday, so there was that extra level of surreality for me.)
I think we've reached this sort of rhetorical point of no return. People on the left levelled some pretty heavy criticisms of Bush, which were mostly well-founded, but scathing nonetheless. Impeachable offenses, that kind of thing. Now the right-wingers apparently think they have to reach that level of outrage to get their point across. It's not enough to say that they think the health care bill is fiscally irresponsible, no, it has to be treason and the destruction of the country, and other such foaming-at-the-mouth stuff. I feel like from now on, any political debate is just going to be characterized by lunatic screaming. It's not a comforting thought.
While I am "leftist" by US standards, where Obama and the Clintons are apparently leftist, I am not by neither European nor Australian standards. Nor are most of the bloggers and commenters at ScienceBlogs.
I suggest we give our Australian friends a pass, as we ask them to forgive us for Kent Hovind, and assign Graeme Turd a more appropriate and descriptive nationality of his own: Asstralian.
*raises libation in salute to AE #251*
One more thing: Should craig.perko still be lurking, I think a vital point got overlooked in the furor. Certainly there were violent left-wing extremists in the 60s and early 70s but what's significant is not their existence but the contemporary reaction of the corresponding establishment.
Today's teabaggers are getting pats on the head from Republican leaders, who may give tepid official disavowals of violence but in the next breath say "But I can understand how you feel, heh, heh" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). They're actively pandering to them, seeking to incorporate them as Republican voters, and keeping the pot boiling with hysterical rhetoric and denunciations of Democrats as traitors.
In the 60s the Democrats quickly distanced themselves from "revolutionary" movements, and as the party in
power until 1969 were in fact responsible for pursuing and arresting those radical groups.
The key difference is that leftist radicals were immediately marginalized by Democrats, while Republicans are running to embrace their homegrown terrorists.
The alleged commitment here to the scientific method is a lie, and only part of the projectionist schtick.
Give me any subject. I cannot get you to apply reason and the scientific method to it. Doesn't matter what the subject is.
American Finance. The Big Bang. Special Relativity. The global warming fraud. The need for public vigilance.
It won't matter what subject you choose. Your aversion to reason and the scientific method is total. Propaganda to the contrary, is simply part of the projectionist church.
Still not giving me a link to those figures, GB?
Scientific method is all well and good, but it means squat without any evidence. Unfounded assertions = bollocks.
Ditto for tax cuts for the upper 1 % , Medicare Part D and no child left behind. Seriously , GB, as someone who's day job is to have to slog daily through insurance paperwork that's kneedeep attempting to deny my ability to provide the best care that an insurance company would deny my patients you obviously know less than nothing.Is this bill the cure to my patient's problems, no.Is it the first of many necessary steps, I hope so. In the meantime what you've described as a cure( you know, leveraging your retirement against the inevitable) is as stupid as say , privatizing Medicare. Fuck off.
Oh, and cool Bioshock reference, Shala.
Clarification; the quote is from ictyic, which was spot on, the response was to GB who is a friggen loon.
Yes, you're right. The last time I went to the NHS for soemthomg, I had to wait three while fucking minutes. Terrible!
Much more expensive? You're joking, right?
Your aversion to reason and the scientific method is total.
you really don't understand how projection works.
but then, it's what I expect from the insane.
Bird:
● Who or what brought down the twin towers (9/11)? [explosives, @223, @225]
● Do vaccines cause autism?
● Did the holocaust happen?
● Does HIV cause AIDS?
● Evolution or creation?
● Is it getting warmer or not? [AGW-denier, @237, @254]
It won't matter what subject you choose.
that much we agree on.
It's obvious your willful ignorance knows no bounds.
As a professional of scientist of 30+ years, you have done nothing of the sort as far as applying the scientific method. You start with garbage in. Guess what you get out? (hint, it doesn't smell nice) Quit lying to yourself, then you can quit lying to us. We own your ass on applying the scientific method...
Aw, damn. I kind of wanted for him to be living in Texas or Alaska but claiming that they were never properly brought into the Union, so therefore he wasn't actually American (yet had a Social Security card and was collecting unemployment benefits).
This Bird crap troll may not be a creationist, but it's not much of an evolutionist, Dr David Berlinski On Intelligent Design.
Birther. Truther. AGW-denialist. Anti-Vaxer. Some wacky physics, and odd biology.
First-class idiot.
I'll try to stop. Really, I will. But this guy isn't just a floating turd on a planet with pink skies, polka-dot clouds, and yellow oceans, he's the entire input to the sewage plant. Which is overflowing.
I have a question that might sound strictly rhetorical, but I think I'm actually curious. Do you think that people like bird actually are incapable of seeing the repeated requests for citations and sources for their claims?
When someone comes in here like Bird and begins spouting nonsense that flies in the face of all common knowledge and reason, they usually just state everything as if it were fact and don't give any sources for their claims. And of course they get called on it - in this thread there is a multitude of simple requests on the form of "Could you show us a source for those numbers?" and Bird very consistently ignores every one.
I'm really interested in the psychology there, since that behavior is so common among the lesser trolls that come in here. I wonder what the reason is, why they ignore simple requests for sources for their claims.
Do they ignore them because the do in fact lack sources? Do they ignore them because they actually don't understand the importance of sources to back up your claims? Or is there something in their psychology that makes them unable to "see" or process the fact that people are asking for simple information that would defend their claims?
I mean, might there be some sort of reflex to protect them and keep them in their pleasant delusion of holding the higher ground? Delusions are fragile things and it can be painful to be snapped out of them by attempts to find actual, solid evidence for the things you so love to claim, so maybe it's an unconscious defense mechanism that keeps them from seeing the questions about sources...
"Ditto for tax cuts for the upper 1 % , Medicare Part D and no child left behind....."
Well what can I say? I think your last President was a nice man. An honest fellow for the most part. But he was financially incontinent. His Veto arm must have been broken in three places. You can do a lot of little things right and two or three big things horribly wrong and your Presidency can be a great tragedy.
He had his own medical reform, and it started off with some excellent ideas with health savings accounts. But it wasn't financed. Where is business going to get the resources to improve things if they are all being sucked into Washington parasitism?
I thought his first two years were pretty good, but his final six he had your lads in a state of static defense. Waiting to be blown up.
You think all the many failures were due to him and his people, but the system itself doesn't work if you've got these huge deficits and debts.
With regards to 9-11 the Arabs-Alone conspiracy is untenable if the molten iron in all three basements is the real deal. Some on the left claimed George Bush did it. Of course I don't think that. But the fact remains that the official story is untenable and the fever pitch against finding out the truth in all outstanding mysteries is very worrying.
What we have seen here is a massive government of a size where it has hit immense diseconomies of scale. Any widescale change needs to be very careful towards the poorest amongst us because they stand to be disproportionately hurt when rapid change is attempted.
But what was needed in the US was a comprehensive decentralisation, and getting ones financial house in order. There can be no faking reality in these matters. Budgets can be made that would seem to be adequate for the task. And yet the carrying out of policy just doesn't seem to work. So much hidden inflation in the system, and so much gross investment sucked into public waste means nothing really functions any more. George Bush copped too much of the blame. But the fact is your society is not working like it used to.
I don't how you were cursed with a maniac like Hank Paulson. But we can see that with Bush-Paulson-Soetoro there is a smooth glide-path to truly crazy dysfuntion. Your society is in the process of destroying itself. If you don't want to believe in foreign financed malice on the part of Soetoro, you can believe that Washington is ripping the Republic apart. If you are going to survive you are going to have to heal quickly.
I suppose you all made fun of Ron Paul. But he was the only financially sound candidate in the last Presidential race.
"I have a question that might sound strictly rhetorical, but I think I'm actually curious. Do you think that people like bird actually are incapable of seeing the repeated requests for citations and sources for their claims?"
These blockheads are not setting homework for me pal. If I went off on documentation missions for every dim bulb that had no reason to doubt my veracity on these matters I'd end up a serf to stupidtown.
When they want to contest what I'm saying and really care about the answer, and have found actual evidence to the contrary I'll think about putting some time in. But you all have google. Don't ask me to do something for you that you can do for yourselves.
Yawn, what a wasted, without content, post by Bird brain at #267. Losers just never get to the point, or evidence. No need to say what Bird brained is...
If I went off on documentation missions for every dim bulb that had no reason to doubt my veracity on these matters I'd end up a serf to stupidtown.
umm, you just can't see the irony of you saying that, can ya?
You come in making claims. Claims that are extremely different from what is considered common knowledge. The onus is really on you to back up those claims, not for others to do your work for you.
Don't go trying to turn this around, trying to say that someone is trying to make you do their work. The claims are yours and it is the one making the claims who should back them up.
This reminds me of that silly comic about believers and non-believers. Not that this particular discussion is about religion, but there are parallels.
In the comic there is two guys, one says that he has a baseball. The other says "Oh yeah? Prove it!" and the first guy then holds out a baseball, making the second guy go "Oh, ok."
Then there are two guys, and this time one of them is supposed to represent a believer. Again he says that he has a baseball. The other guy asks for proof. The first guy screams in rage "You can't prove that I don't!"
That's not the way normal people handle things. People don't come in making wild claims that seem strange to everyone, and then just go "Oh, prove me wrong" when asked to supply simple sources. People put up or shut up - at least in good, adult conversations.
And again - this is something we see often here. It's not just you, Bird. People who make the wildest claims, the claims that seem the least connected to the reality the other of us know, always refuse to provide sources. They always pretend like they are never responsible for their own claims - it's always the people who listen to you who needs to find proof for what you say, isn't it?
Damned annoying behavior, I think.
Its blog (@223) is noticeably link-free. There are a few (embedded videos and the like), but it mostly just comical rants excruciatingly similar to what its posting here. Essentially no evidence or citations.
Bird:
● Who or what brought down the twin towers (9/11)? [explosives, @223, @225]
● Do vaccines cause autism? [yes, @248]
● Did the holocaust happen?
● Does HIV cause AIDS?
● Evolution or creation? [confused, @264]
● Is it getting warmer or not? [AGW-denier, @237, @254]
So, I'm not getting a link for those health-care bill costs, then?
Color me shocked.
Ouch/augh, that's what one gets for having bunnies, who like to chew on extension cords...
No I'm not making any claims that you are incapable of testing the veracity of.
The fact is you guys live in a bubble world. That is why you are so ignorant. This is your projectionist church.
Choose reason. Find out what the other fellows case is. Science is about judging competing paradigms in parallel. Not about following your own prejudices and purposefully rendering yourselves painfully ignorant.
I could say it wasn't easy after 8 years finding out that 9/11 was a larger deal then I had ever suspected. But for me it WAS easy. Because I don't get emotional about it. I just follow the evidence.
I don't say "Rosie O'Donnell. Stupid. Truther"
and think that I've made an argument. But you guys do. If you don't believe me just check down the thread. So you are not smart. You don't follow reason. You are not interested in applying the scientific method. You ought to stop deluding yourself about it.
Someone even went so far as to post a fake document, that was not even a birth certificate, in order to prove that Obama was Barry's extant legal name, even though we know Barry had his name changed as a kid.
Now this is not just not good enough.
You cannot judge any issue on the basis of total ignorance of contrary contending points of view. And you are ignorant. Purposefully so. Has even one of you checked out just by way of example the objections to the document posted (not a birth certificate) being an authentic document?
You don't know. You don't care to know.
Face it. You are bunch of thicko's get used to it. Or at least accept what you are as a way of improving.
Can you believe the projection from this idjit?
Wrong fuckwit, science is all about judging on the evidence. Which you are shy on. Hence the fuckwit.
Right, points of view = opinion. All opinions are not equal as some have evidence, and others, like the bird brains, don't.
No, we have proved, with evidence you are the thicko. Get used to it....
"I've got to correct my #206, I did find the correct federal deficit numbers, which have the federal government $220.9 B in the red in February."
Great work. I said 212 billion. I stand corrected. Now you all behaved like this fellow I'd have to eat my harsh criticisms.
To what? To politics? That just... dumb.
And what's up with the obsession w/ US politics, Bird? Why do you care if we bankrupt ourselves or not?
No no Nerd. The idea is to line up and develop various theories in parallel. And to rank and re-rank these hypotheses, in light of the incoming evidence.
This job cannot be well done if you are totally ignorant of other points of view.
Bird:
● Who or what brought down the twin towers (9/11)? [explosives, @223, @225]
● Do vaccines cause autism? [yes, @248]
● Did the holocaust happen?
● Does HIV cause AIDS?
● Evolution or creation? [confused, @264]
● Is it getting warmer or not? [AGW-denier, @237, @254]
If you notice Bird, I have been trying to understand your PoV (point-of-view). It would help if you'd actually answer the questions!
The minor fact that the "certificate of live birth" was certified genuine by both the Hawaiian Department of Health and the Republican Governor of Hawaii is utterly meaningless to a true believer. Bird doesn't give us facts because he knows facts are confusing. Sometimes they don't say what he really needs them to say. He prefers to go with "common sense" and "everyone knows" and "you guys live in a bubble world." Facts are for sissies.
Bird brain can't answer questions. That would require going off script, which is not allowed by by the *Conspiracy Theorist Cabal*.
Good analytical skills can be applied to all areas of life ourdeadselves.
Now you have to have more than two hypotheses in parallel in the scientific method.
There is no such thing as EVIDENCE divorced from an hypothesis. The process of the scientific method is applying the evidence to see how it affects the relative plausibility of the hypotheses being judged.
Three hypotheses in parallel is a minimum. Six would be better.
Like the EVIDENCE that you refuse to provide?
And you haven't really answered any of my questions. 1) What's with the hard-on for US policy and 2) I still want to know the difference between a birth certificate and a certificate of live birth.
● Who or what brought down the twin towers (9/11)? [explosives, @223, @225]
NOT THE PLANES ALONE.
● Do vaccines cause autism? [yes, @248]
DON'T KNOW. NEITHER DO YOU.
● Did the holocaust happen?
SEVERAL.
● Does HIV cause AIDS?
I WOULD THINK SO.
● Evolution or creation? [confused, @264]
EVOLUTION. BUT NOT AS COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD. THE BIG BANG IS A LUDICROUS CREATION THEORY.
● Is it getting warmer or not? [AGW-denier, @237, @254]
A BRAZEN SCIENCE FRAUD AND AN ACID TEST TO WHO IS AN IDIOT AND WHO IS NOT.
"Like the EVIDENCE that you refuse to provide?"
Clinically certifiable leftist projection.
"I still want to know the difference between a birth certificate and a certificate of live birth."
That doesn't surprise me. You are just completely ignorant. Find out. Then come and tell me.
What evidence? You never provide any fuckwit. What a loser...
You've been asked nicely to provide evidence for your assertions. It's not "certifiable leftist projection" that YOU refuse to provide evidence for YOUR claims. If you want us to even consider your stupidities then YOU have to show us they're not stupid. Otherwise we'll consider your stupidities to be nothing more than the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind.
"The minor fact that the "certificate of live birth" was certified genuine by both the Hawaiian Department of Health and the Republican Governor of Hawaii is utterly meaningless to a true believer"
That did not happen you are lying.
Man, cognitive dissonance. Can't even argue with em, because they can't think rationally or logically.
Oh, really, Bird? I provided links to back up all of my assertions. This leads me to believe that you don't actually understand that the text that appears in blue is actually this neat little gimmick called a "hyperlink" that lets you jump from website to website! Amazing! It's like magic!
And you still haven't answered my (or blf's) questions.
What, a denialist lying? *Decides against swooning since there are people withing 10 miles of my position, and I don't want to knock them out of even a nanometer of their present position for such an obvious lie.*
Graeme Bird wrote (on global warming):
At least you're half-right...
"You've been asked nicely to provide evidence for your assertions. It's not "certifiable leftist projection"
Yes it is. Drop what you are doing now and provide evidence for your beliefs. At least I COULD do it if I felt the need to.
So its leftist projection. You aren't providing evidence for the global warming racket, that the Americans are financially sound, for special relativity, for the big bang, or anything else.
So you are just an idiot, practicing leftist projection.
Lets make this very clear. You think its fine, to pass another bill, one that will not solve any problems at all, and that is supposed to cost about a trillion dollars over the next ten years....
.... When even as things stand you have no chance NO CHANCE of paying your bills even as things stand?
That is your position isn't it?
Yes it is.
Blockheads. Dummies. Not smart. Not too bright. Dim bulbs. Not the committed analysts you are affecting to be. Not the sharpest tools in the shed.
I did give you links, remember? One of them was even broken, which I helpfully updated in another post. So, what's your excuse?
The difference that Hawaii issues a "certificate of live birth" when a child is born and the birthers say it's not a "birth certificate." It's on such flimflam that the birthers pretend Obama wasn't born in Hawaii. About half the states issue certificates of live birth. The State Department will issue a passport if the applicant produces a certificate of live birth as proof of citizenship.
At least you're half-right...
No I'm totally right. Its a brazen fraud. You have no evidence which could justify cost imposition. NONE AT ALL. I don't know if at our air pressure extra CO2 will warm a tiny bit or cool a tiny bit all I know is that the effect is tiny.
This is such a clear fraud its incredible. I can make the prediction that none of you are even so much as coming up with an hypothesis, that if proved would justify this brazen fraud.
Its just amazing. Worried about some alleged tiny bit of warming during a brutal and pulverising ice age.
Dumb. Real Dumb. You are dummies. So stupid.
Listen up, asshole. YOU are the one making the assertions so YOU are the one who has to provide evidence. If you don't have the evidence nobody will think any the less of you. That's because it would be difficult to think any the less of you.
So stop pretending it's our job to refute your looneytarian ravings. If you want to convince us you're not an idiot then you have to produce the evidence. This concept should be understandable even to a raving looneytarian idiot.
"t's on such flimflam that the birthers pretend Obama wasn't born in Hawaii."
You don't know where he was born. Don't pretend you do. What we ought to be sure of is that he's hiding something. The anti-birther campaign is a campaign against the respecting of the law. If you come to my country, you can have your passport but you must present it. You can have your visa, but if you flush it down the toilet we won't let you in. You can have your pants and underpants, but if you refuse to wear them, you won't get past customs.
This is the case universally. So the anti-birthers are something entirely new. No other campaign has ever been so irrational as to place the burden of proof for ELIGIBILITY on third parties. That doesn't even happen at little league. Here to open a bank account I've got to present more credentials then you wanted from Soetoro to take over the most powerful job in the world.
You see you are dummies. Projecting your stupidity onto your enemies.
The anti-birther campaign is irrational. Simple as that.
It's unclear if Gov. Linda Lingle certified it, but Dr Chiyome Fukino, director of the Dept. of Heath, certainly did. As did independent examiners:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html
Notice, Bird, I named names, gave links, and those links are to reputable sites. You have done none of this. You are a first class idiot.
Fixed.
Even if global warming were a fraud, clean, sustainable energy would still be a good idea, environmentally and economically. Except for rendering irrelevant the dirty energy conglomerates and their little shills like Graeme here, there is no downside.
Actually, that's not a downside.
I only made two assertions-- that Obama's name is Obama and that he's a US citizen-- and I gave you links. Everything else has been questions about your evidence and your sanity. Oh, and I think I called you a douche canoe as well.
Okay, this has gotten insane.
Scratch that, this was insane hours ago. I can assert that Soylent Green isn't people, but without providing evidence, I just look like a reactionary crazy person. You're doing the same exact thing by withholding evidence for your half assed crazy claims, fucktard.
So, once last linky link for you to click, Bird. Hopefully this helps you out.
I've seen convincing evidence (the sort of thing you're refusing to provide) that Obama was born in Hawaii. A certificate of live birth issued by the Hawaiian Department of Health and certified by its director is legal proof of where and when he was born. It's up to you birther delusionists to show otherwise. Normal people don't question his birth BECAUSE THE EVIDENCE HAS BEEN PRODUCED BY COMPETENT AUTHORITY.
I've seen convincing evidence (the sort of thing you're refusing to provide) that Obama was born in Hawaii. A certificate of live birth issued by the Hawaiian Department of Health and certified by its director is legal proof of where and when he was born. It's up to you birther delusionists to show otherwise. Normal people don't question his birth BECAUSE THE EVIDENCE HAS BEEN PRODUCED BY COMPETENT AUTHORITY.
Ok, put a number on it. How much? Over what period of time?
I feel the need to say it again - if you come in here making claims that seem questionable to people, the adult, normal thing to do is to provide that evidence if you're able. You do not simply proclaim that you are right and let others do the work of proving things for you.
Wait.... You want this thread to provide evidence for global warming, special relativity and the big bang when A) There are many thousands of books and peer-reviewed articles on each subject - something you can't dismiss by simply saying "you never provide any evidence." and B) This thread has nothing to do with those things.... Nice.
And upthread I was questioning what the hell anyone would stand to gain from making some kind of crazy totalitarian health care bill. I just didn't get how Obama or anyone else would be able to "intimidate" people into doing what he wants through health care. Of course you didn't explain further, but now I'm curious about another thing...
Regarding this "global warming racket".... Who would have anything significant to gain from perpetuating a lie of that magnitude?
I mean, it's very obvious that the oil and coal companies would have very much to gain from the lie that AGW isn't happening. They would have a clear motivation to lie.
But scientists generally don't have much investment in the few and very much less powerful companies that would gain from more public acceptance of AGW.
And don't come with the typical "Oh, the scientists are aaaalll lying about AGW, special relativity, the big bang, eeeeverything, to keep their jobs and make lots and lots of money!
1) Scientists in primary research generally don't make lots of money. B) Do you think that 99% of scientists in the appropriate fields are morally corrupt enough to present things they know are falsehoods every day? III) Do you realize that if scientists could show work that completely overturn the generally accepted theories about climatology, relativity or cosmology they would not only keep their jobs but also be instantly famous and get Nobel Prizes and whatnot?
So who is perpetuating this "global warming racket"? Who is lying about special relativity and whatever else you choose not to believe in spite of all the research done on those subjects?
Have you read any of the peer-reviewed papers on any of those things? Or have you only read short summaries in popular press? If the latter, do you really think that you can judge whether evidence has been presented or not?
Graeme Bird:
"I've seen convincing evidence (the sort of thing you're refusing to provide) that Obama was born in Hawaii."
No you have not. You are lying. And you haven't so much as found out why that is clearly a fraudulent document.
But thats not even the whole point. You don't want to know where he was born or what it is he is hiding.
Thats the point.
He is hardly going to produce two (or more) fake documents, and release no real documents if he isn't hiding something.
This is not the way we would play it if someone showed up at the airport, with no pants, presenting no visa, no passport, and claiming that he must be let through since all were in his carry-bag, but he refuses to open his carry bag.
Once again. The campaign against the birthers is straight unreason. Straight irrationality. Could not be more irrational. You show up for little league, you hand over your birth certificate. Simple.
So you are on the side of pure irrationality.
Anyone who claims that those fake internet copies have been certified by competent authority is a liar.
But thats not the whole point. What is he hiding?
The anti-birthers are straight and committed irrationalists.
Sorry about the double post. I'm not sure how it happened and I'm not producing any evidence to show I'm not sure.
So, what's in it for you, Bird? Why do you give a rat's ass about our Prez and our health care policies?
So where's your evidence that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii. We've given links to evidence that competent authorities say he was born there. You just can't call them liars. You, that's YOU, you fucking loonetarian asshole, have to show they're liars. We've done our share of the evidence producing, now it's your turn.
This is known in the states as "put up or shut up."
"Man, cognitive dissonance. Can't even argue with em, because they can't think rationally or logically."
Exactly right. Projectionism. Cognitive dissonance. Relentless irrationality. Thats these lefties nailed down entirely.
Don't need to muck about. The fact that he didn't just hand over his documents proves that he's hiding some massive scandal. So much so that its a lesser scandal were he not eligible. You see he is not eligible or if eligible there is even a greater scandal. The lesser scandal protects one from the even greater scandals just so long as one stonewalls enough.
We might call it the "lesser scandal stonewall" as opposed to the even trickier "less scandal tripwire."
"Listen up, asshole. YOU are the one making the assertions so YOU are the one who has to provide evidence..."
No no. Should you state your own point of view this will be an assertion also. Many people here have made assertions. What they haven't done is come up with evidence for their assertions.
Air pressure? You think it has to do with air pressure?
For fuck's sake...
This guy is a case study in Dunning-Kruger.
Side note: we need a hip term for 'AGW-denialist' like we have for birthers and truthers.
I suspect it's because he wants to make sure he gets his money's worth for all the tinfoil he bought to make hats with. He's probably getting 1 post/foot out of this thread so he'll keep going for a while.
I gave you links*, asshole! Did you even click them?
* #178, #199
"So where's your evidence that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii. We've given links to evidence that competent authorities say he was born there"
I don't believe you. I've only seen one statement one time that could count for what you are saying. That statement was apparently ILLEGAL. So you've got to ask whether you want to believe a single illegal statement one time by one woman. So thats some evidence. But it isn't much and it doesn't tell us what he is hiding. Nor is it a substitute for him submitting authentic documents. Nor was it beyond the capacity of foreign intelligence to plant documents at an Hawaiian hospital at that late stage.
When asked to do this sort of thing you've just got to hand over the birth certificate and submit all your other documents. See your point of view is irrational. Since its not up to any of us to prove where he was born. But rather up to Soetoro to prove that he ought not be clapped in irons.
Partial answer: Neither a who nor a specific what. Try again.
Your blog (see @248) indicates you have bought into the mercury-in-vaccines-is-very-dangerous silliness, which (used to be) the alleged cause of autism. So have you changed your mind?
And, b.t.w., it's unlikely you know what I believe, as I haven't stated it. You may suspect, and you don't know.
I'll take that as a “yes”. Good, you're not a complete loon.
Ok. good as well.
Totally confused. The Big Bang has nothing to do with evolution. It does (very indirectly) affect abiogenesis (in the form of stellar processes producing heavy elements), but not evolution per se.
Who benefits from this alleged fraud. Name names. Not “the scientists” or somesuch, but specific names.
So, besides the birther, we have definite AGW-denialist, and very likely a truther. Looks like Crank Magnetism at work.
Prove you're not a serial rapist. It's not up to me to prove it one way or the other, it's up to you to prove we shouldn't throw you in prison.
Now you've gone from wackaloon to completely stark raving bonkers.
It's impossible to discuss anything with you when you refuse to provide any support for your claims. Your word isn't in the least bit credible and that's all you have.
Don't forget physics kook.
Ok, since we're so thick, please explain how that is clearly a fraudulent document. What exactly proves so clearly that it is fraudulent?
Because it says he was born in Hawaii, duh!
"Special Relativity? Do tell? What's wrong with it? Come on, you've made a claim. Now give me the evidence."
You are supporting this ludicrous fairytale of religious-style reification. Lets have your evidence in its favour.
Now about this birth certificate? What is he hiding? What do you think? Essentially this con-artist, who has just conned you into a new bill that solves no problems and that you cannot pay for, has a Praetorian guard and foreign regime backing. He can take out anyone, without even going through his own intelligence apparatus.
So whats he hiding? He's just saying to you, "I don't have to prove anything. I've lawyers guns and money. I don't even need your vote. I can buy any election"
Already he's sown intimidation in the community by failing to do the decent thing and simply hand over all his documents. Then of course there were the murders of a number of gay men in his congregation. You want to stop the church from "singing" it may be advantageous if the voice coach is murdered.
Let us never forget Donald Young.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FrAmzvhGGY
None of you have even heard of this fellow have you?
No-one has claimed that. Both the director of the Dept. of Health, and independent investigators, have seen, touched, examined, and photographed the document, including verifying the embossed seal: See @301.
You now need to produce evidence. Hard, solid, evidence. People have clearly done the searches you suggested, and have found directly contrdictory evidence to your claims. Now stop simply making assertions and start supporting what you're saying.
1. Assert something
2. When asked to support, claim it's up to everyone else to prove the assertion wrong, otherwise it must be true
3. When given evidence that the assertion is wrong, claim the evidence is fraudulent
4. Tell everyone they don't know how to do science
Am I understanding your position here, Bird?
"Ok, since we're so thick, please explain how that is clearly a fraudulent document. What exactly proves so clearly that it is fraudulent?"
No no. You are going to have to find out. You've simply got to get used to looking at all sides of the story. There is simply no excuse when you now have the internet and can quickly find a visual demonstration of everything thats wrong with this document.
You have no excuses anymore to be living in this bubble.
Oops! Sorry, I did. Also, don't forget its DDT-ban-caused-a-holocaust nuttiness: @247.
I rather suspect further examination of its blog will find further gems (it dates back to c.2006): @223.
Yes, I've heard of Donald Young. He was the gay choir conductor of the church in Chicago that Obama went to. Young was murdered. Right-wing wackloons have been trying unsuccessfully to pin the murder on Obama ever since.
Except all that we seem to find are experts supporting its validity.
Oh, fuck you, Bird. I could be playing FFXIII, but noooooo, you had to suck me into crazy-town.
I don't think he's hiding anything. How are you going to prove me wrong? Where's the evidence that the birth certificate is fraudulent? Heck, at this point I'd even take your own personal opinion on what makes it fraudulent. But you haven't produced anything other than rabid frothing nonsense.
Really, Bird, do you not understand this is completely transparent? Most of us figured out, way back in elementary school, that when someone pulls 'if you don't know, I'm not telling you!' they're just making excuses.
If you're not going to provide any evidence to support your ridiculous claims then we have no alternative but to dismiss them as the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind.
blf you are a liar. You are now claiming that no-one claimed that these fake internet documents have been verified by relevant authorities.
You are talking nonsense man. Now your claim explicit and unambiguously worded. Thats something that the Hawaiians found almost impossible to do.
Wrong. Try again. Mr Young, a new(? as I recall) principle at some school in Chicago was murdered (can't recall just when). For no coherent reason, some people have claimed he was President Obama's homosexual lover, with the implication that the President had ordered him killed.
I have no idea if the murderer has ever been found.
Exactly. I have looked around, and it all checks out. If you think it doesn't, it's up to you to show us why it doesn't. We have absolutely no reason to spend any time looking for imaginary evidence that you insist exists, when we're already satisfied with the validity of what we've found.
Bird still has not produced the slightest bit of evidence. Lots of denouncing about "the bubble" and leftist projection and massive amounts of conspiracy ramblings but Bird is still lacking in the actual, documentary evidence department.
When you are talking about what some Hawaiians did or didn't say make your claims explicit.
They had a very hard time verifying anything in an unambiguous way.
I'll go over it again. Only one unambiguous statement was made by a relevant authority which implies that Barry is eligible to be President.
This was apparently an illegal statement. Plus she's a medical person and no constitutional theorist.
Its not up to people to read ambiguouosly worded statements and for the rest of us to look at these statements like they were tea-leaves.
Rather its up to the usurper to just hand all his documents over, to see where he was born, who his daddy was and what is the even worse scandal that he is hiding.
Guh, what?
How was her statement illegal? Did she say it while smoking weed?
Bird, both the director of the Dept. of Health, and independent investigators, have seen, touched, examined, and photographed the document, including verifying the embossed seal: See @301. They did not examine the scans which have been circulating, but the actual physical document.
Me @322:
See you are all mindless bubble-dwellers because none of you have put it together to understand the stupidity of expecting third parties to prove eligibility.
He's just got to hand over his documents. Then you'll see what he is hiding. Then we may have a chance of verifying what this conman is up to.
I mean I would have thought we already know what he is up to. He's up to destroying or taking over the US. But you think so. Okay. The problem is you don't want to know. And thats where the irrationality is.
Next time you are asked for documents tell them "you cannot prove anything" and see how you go.
Face up to your full spectrum irrationality.
Oh, fuck you, Bird. I could be playing FFXIII, but noooooo, you had to suck me into crazy-town.
How is FF13 btw? I'm playing Pokemon Heartgold at the moment, shit is so cash.
To Bird:
I will speak to you as befits a lunatic, with a language that will call into question even my sanity.
Oui yna y dudym mihydel. ku vilg ouincamv oui vilgehk lmufhcrua. Fuimt oui gehtmo mayja drec pmuk?
You really deserve nothing less than people talking complete bollocks towards you.
You still haven't answered why the fuck you care so much.
And as far as I'm aware, Obama did hand over his documents. You know, before he was even nominated. Evidence which we linked to, but you can't be fucked to read.
No in fact you are an idiot Shala.
Now where is the nurses who helped deliver young Obama. Where are the other Mothers who used to talk to Stanley Ann Dunham when she was in maternity ward. Where are Barry's girlfriends?
Why did Barry's grandmother state that she was there when little Obama was born? Why did she claim he was born at the Coast Providence Hospital.
I don't know any of this. Neither do you. The point is he's a conman, and he's hiding important stuff. Meanwhile he's ruining everything as fast as he can.
What's illegal about it? She was (still is, as far as I know) the Director of the Hawaii Department of Health and was asked to certify a document produced by her department. Which she did.
What part of "the Director of the Hawaii Department of Health ... was asked to certify a document produced by her department" do you fail to understand?
You keep making ambiguous claims and keep failing to provide the least evidence to support them. Give us something besides the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind.
"Bird, both the director of the Dept. of Health, and independent investigators, have seen, touched, examined, and photographed the document, including verifying the embossed seal: See @301."
What document? Don't link to yourself. Don't hide behind links. Make clear what document you are talking about.
It's really pretty good, actually. If you can get past the awful voice acting and the incredibly obnoxious characters.
BUT! The combat and the leveling systems are so unbelievably fucking awesome that it's worth the petty annoyances.
Who made this statement, and how (or why) was it illegal?
Dr Chiyome Fukino, the director of the Dept. of Heath, is (presumably) a “medical person”, so I presume that is who Bird is yammering about (since, in @341 Bird yammered “she's [the person making the statement] a medical person”).
Lol. 'Don't hide behind supporting your claims.'
Rarely do you encounter stupidity of this caliber.
"the Director of the Hawaii Department of Health ... was asked to certify a document produced by her department"
What part of "WHAT DOCUMENT" don't you understand?
A document? A birth certificate?
Can you not see you blockhead, that everything is worded ambiguously. To PERSISTENTLY word things ambiguously is to lie with premeditation.
We'll try again.
This time make your claims explicit. And if you start seeing a pattern forming with pronouncements from Hawaii do let me know you dim bulb.
What a fuckwit. Try reading the law...
What a fuckwit. It doesn't matter, and none are coming forward and saying anything against the state document. What a loser...
Yep, you are an ignorant loser, and we know it. What the state says is the only thing that matters. And it say Obama is birthed in Honolulu. What a loser...
Mr. Bird, time for a short lesson in the legal system here in the United States. If you are the plaintiff-that is, the one making the complaint-you bear the burden of proof. Essentially, you have to prove to us, the defendants (and jury), why you are making your complaint. You must show us the proof that we are 'guilty.' You can't ask the defense to go dig up material on why the defendant is guilty. We've given you links, now you give them to us. Fair's fair.
You keep telling us that we are stupid. Perhaps we are, but at least we've thought about what we're saying rather than parroting Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
It hasn't occurred even once to any of you committed irrationalists that this is not the way things are done.
What happens is you got to sign up for little league, and to be eligible you hand over your birth certificate.
Its not up to Obamas three law firms, its not up to Hawaiians speaking a lot of double-talk. Its not up to me. Its up to this traitor to prove he is eligible in the first place.
You just hand over your documents.
You guys are thick. You are dumb. You are morons. You are dim. You get it?
So in fact one or two of you tried to prove he was born in Hawaii and you couldn't do it. Because you got landed with an immense amount of ambiguous double-talk.
But the problem is you were too stupid to comprehend what this ambiguous double-talk is telling you.
That sounds good OurDeadSelves. If I had a PS triple I'd give it a try.
No in fact you are an idiot Shala.
Oui yna y vilgehk lmufhcrua, yht E ryja ycgat fuimt oui gehtmo mayja drec pmuk. Fryd y vuum, duum, yht cduum ibuh syhgeht!
The simplified version of @301 for people with poor reading comprehension:
Dr Chiyome Fukino, director of the [Hawaii State] Dept. of Heath, [certified as genuine Obama's Certificate of Live Birth]. As did independent examiners [who saw, touched, examined, and photographed the actual physical document, including the embossed seal]:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html
Notice, Bird, I named names, gave links, and those links are to reputable sites. You have done none of this. You are a first class idiot.
I totally missed this. Shala, did you nerdgasm all over the thread?
Certificate of Live Birth, asshole. The fucking legal document that says Obama was born in Hawaii. The one certified as authentic by the Director of the Hawaiian Department of Health, the folks who issued the thing.
Don't play stupid, dumbshit. You've been given links to the document. Now it's up to you to show the document isn't authentic.
To return to the original post, there already has been violence. Senators spit on, threats left, bricks thrown through windows, a house vandalized. Sure sounds like violence to me.
Graeme Bird:
You're joking, right? You've made a claim that is contrary to a very large body of evidence, and you want me to provide evidence that I'm right? That's not how science works, and I'm not obligated to explain things to you that you're too lazy to look up, or too stupid to understand. But today's your lucky day, Zippy, because I'm feeling a bit magnanimous. But only a bit.
So what's your alternative explanation for the anomalously large measured muon flux at the Earth's surface? The predictions of Newtonian mechanics fail completely, while those of Special Relativity are consistent with experiment. (Note: this is an experiment taught to every freshman physics student. The fact that you are apparently unaware of it strongly suggests that you are talking out your ass).
There are many more corroborating experiments, but I'm not going to play your little game. You'll try to dismiss the evidence I present while refusing to present any of your own, in an obvious attempt to put the rational side of the argument on the defensive. That's not going to happen. You made vague claims to the effect that SR is wrong. Defend those claims, or admit you've been bullshitting. Explain the large muon flux. Your explanation has to be consistent with all the other experiments whose results are consistent with SR. That's how science works.
If you can't do that, you're in effect admitting that you've been spewing nonsense. You can dodge and tapdance, attempting to reframe the argument or change the subject, jabbering the whole time about "reification," all you want. It's an obvious demonstration that, as they say, you got nothin'.
Hang on, I just have to do one thing:
Comment by Graeme Bird blocked. [unkill] [show comment]
Ah, that's better.
You just so thick Shala. You are really dim.
Now what is it about someone concealing his background that you don't find suspicious?
He's not eligible because he refuses point blank to prove eligibility. You cannot point to any situation wherein someone can be eligible behaving in this manner.
What? The claiment, you, always has the burden of proof. And you fail every time.
That has been done, as the state law of Hawaii allows. What is your problem fuckwit? That document is recognized by everybody except idjits like yourself. What a loser.
What a fuckwit. We understand exactly why you are wrong, and exactly why you are a fuckwit. The only double-talk is on the part of fuckwits like you...
Hmmm idiot?
*raises hand diffidently
I have a question. Why are you wasting time on this guy? Why am I wasting time reading what you have written to and about this guy? What we have here is one of two types:
1) Losers whose egos are so weak that they only way they can be happy is if they come up with some special knowledge that they have and you don't. This type of numbskull is heavily invested in this nonsense because he thinks it means he is not a loser at all. There is absolutely no way he will change his mind about anything. There is literally nothing you can say that will make a dent.
2) The game player. He doesn't believe the nonsense himself. He just likes to go to a site and make a bunch of statements that are clearly ridiculous and then see how long it is before everyone realizes that nothing they say will change his "opinion" and stop talking to him. It's just a game.
Given the evidence, I suspect we have a number one here, because all of his "beliefs" involve "knowing" more than the people who actually study this stuff as a profession.
Either way, nothing you say will change his mind about anything. And he isn't even entertaining,
So...
How about those kids at Butler beating Kansas State. Cool story, don't you think?
What's not the way things are done? Giving evidence as evidence?
Quite frankly, guys, the reason GB keeps telling us we are dumb is that he is totally freaked out by the fact that there are some major intellectual heavyweights over here and he can't compete, so he tries to compensate for his paucity of brain cells by frustrating us by not giving us his evidence (which most of you have already managed to sleuth out). It's the coward's way of fighting.
Why shouldn't Obama's lawyers speak for him? Lawyers handling a legal affair is what usually happens, even in Australia.
As for the "traitor" bullshit, that's a serious charge. The US Constitution has some specific verbiage about what is treachery and how it's proved. The proof requires more than some right wing liar making anti-Obama noises.
My goodness. You have no dignity. What goose-stepping sheeple you all are.
Now here is the situation. Supposing you get pulled over by a policeman. Can I see your drivers license he says.
I have one and I'm eligible to drive you say. But I'm not ever going to show you it. Talk to my three legal teams.
Is this normal behaviour in your view?
You show up to an international airport. You claim you have your passport and its valid, and the fellow cannot prove that it isn't valid. You claim you have a valid visa. But likewise you won't present it. Talk to my lawyer you say. And you claim that you have in fact a pair of pants and that though you won't wear anything to cover your private parts, the fact that you have pants, and valid pants at that, well that makes it all Okay.
You stupid stupid stupid stupid blockheads. It just doesn't matter what this fellow does. It just doesn't matter. Because you are not rational human beings. You are mindless sheeple.
otrame #368
We know we won't change his mind. However he's the first troll to wander by in a while. He's keeping our teeth sharp and our coats sniny.
I don't follow minor league basketball.
Bwahahaha, nice way to describe your paranoia. As sheeple. Deluded illogical sheeple. Fits.
Here you go again describing yourself. Personally, blockhead is too mild, ignorant idjit fuckwit is closer to the truth.
I doubt if you will see a blog with a higher collective IQ than here. Again, showing yourself to be a paranoid fuckwit gets you nowhere. Evidence is required, and you fail miserably at producing any. What a loser fuckwit.
Pot calling for kettle! *clang cxlang clang*
Wrong. You say "Sure, officer, here it is. In fact, here's the certified document, and here are the people in charge of verifying the documents to re-verify them for you, and here are some other corroborating documents as well."
And then the officer says "No, that's really not good enough, because I refuse to believe that the documents you have handed me are real and that the experts you have right here are telling the truth."
Is that normal behavior, or paranoid denialist behavior?
I think that "Valid Pants" would be a great name for a band.
How about this one: You get pulled over, cop asks for your drivers license, you give it to him. Some random douche walking by says 'that's not a real drivers license' even though it looks the part and even has the hologram. The cop is still convinced it's real. The random douche says 'prove it's real'. You and the cop ignore him, so he throws a fit and claims you're hiding something and the cop is in on it.
Does that sound like normal behavior to you?
You're a stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid* blockhead.
*I said it five times, that beats your four!
OMG. Aren't you gone yet?
Oh fuck, sheeple alert!
Obama DID hand over his birth certificate. It's in the links that blf and I (and others, I'm sure) provided. If you don't care to read them, then it's totally on you, not us.
We know that the state of HI confirmed that the certificate is valid and several lawsuits disputing the birth certificate have been thrown out of court due to lack of evidence.
Consider this: If you want a job for the federal gov't, you generally have to go through some very thorough back ground checks. You honestly believe that the FBI/CIA/whatever can't figure out if a presidential candidate is eligible for office?
I think he's waiting for someone to validate his pants, or he's trying to virtually flash everybody, or something. Makes about as much sense as anything else he's saying.
"Exactly. I have looked around, and it all checks out..."
No none of it checks out. You go to check it out and you run aground with ambiguous statements and statements that are ambiguous in a way that implies pre-meditated dishonesty.
And it doesn't matter if it does check out. He's ruining your country and yet you sheeple just cannot get it together to demand proof of eligibility FROM HIM. Not from the media or the factcheckers. But just from him as if he were a normal human being.
To Pharyngulites:
There's something I just don't get, and I need your hypotheses. For the sake of argument, please leave aside the legal requirements for citizenship for the US presidency, and the arcana surrounding where one was born, etc.
Even if Obama were not born in the US (which we know is ridiculous), what actual, material difference would that make? What is it about the geographic location of a person's birth that so exercises the birthers? What are the specific evils they think flow from being born at one particular latitude and longitude? Seriously - I don't get it. John McCain was born on a naval base in the Panama Canal Zone, for instance, but that doesn't faze them. Why?
I mean, if there were genuine evidence that someone running for President had demonstrable conflicting allegiances to a foreign state, I could understand it. But they don't seem to be making that claim. It's as if there's something magical about the idea of being born over an arbitrary line on a map that's inherently sinister.
What am I missing?
"You're joking, right? You've made a claim that is contrary to a very large body of evidence, and you want me to provide evidence that I'm right"
You have no evidence in support of special relativity and you WILL NOT be coming up with evidence for this jive.
You're not scared of having a black man for president.
I totally missed this. Shala, did you nerdgasm all over the thread?
Yes, al bhed. I figure I should respond to lunacy with lunacy.
Yep, that is exactly what you are doing. What a loser.
Last I knew Hawaii was the US lying loser...
Logic, lack of paranoiaa, and basic intelligence, and not being a loser...
Larry Sinclair assures us he is not black. Where is his old girlfriends?
That never occurred to you did it OurDeadSelves? Too stupid to think it was strange that no-one claims to be an old girlfriend.
Said in response to a post that gave evidence for special relativity. Bird is a Grade-A idiot.
Pareidolius @70 FTW!
Um, no one asked me for a list of my ex-boyfriends when I interviewed for my current job.
And, so what? Maybe he wasn't smooth with the ladies. Who the fuck cares?
Nerd, #386 - I think you mistook some of my writing to be from the Bird. Please go back and read my #382. I was positing hypotheticals, and I'm not the Bird:)
Yeah, that's basically it. Obama is foreign. He's international. He's not a good-old white boy, so he's not a *Real Amurican*.
Of course, these a deeply delusional people who think that 9/11 was an inside job, and Einstein and global warming are hoaxes; they see very sinister powerful conspiracies everywhere. (I mean, forging a birth certificate is child's play, compared to forging the validity of the Lorentz transformations.)
His blog (@223, @237, @247, ...) is no different. I haven't tried posting a comment over there, but the paucity of comments, and the frequency with which Bird seems to counter-comment, combined with the general lack of citations and links, and the overwhelming amount of arrogant assertion, generally supports your hypothesis (and also otrame@368 (number 1)): “Losers whose egos are so weak that they only way they can be happy is if they come up with some special knowledge that they have and you don't. This type of numbskull is heavily invested in this nonsense because he thinks it means he is not a loser at all. There is absolutely no way he will change his mind about anything. There is literally nothing you can say that will make a dent.”
Kristjan Wager@215 points out this nutter has lost at least one election. Rather badly lost, in fact. And dexitroboper@244 points out it's been banned from multiple blogs, including some at SciBorg. (Indeed, there are attacks on other blogs at the nutter's blog.)
DOH *headdesk* You are correct Josh, OSG, I included both your post and the one above. My apologies for any snark directed at your comments. The loser idjit fools comments though...
"Even if Obama were not born in the US (which we know is ridiculous), what actual, material difference would that make?"
It may help you stop him from getting lots of people killed and bankrupting the Republic, leaving millions in poverty and enourmous bloodshed in his wake.
Barry has released two documents of his own free will to the public. Both of them fakes.
Here is just a little warm-up. But you ought to check this matter out yourself in the spirit of scientific humility and make a good faith effort. I'll leave the professionals out of it. Just go with an amateur analyst then move on from there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIsQJNTvlUE
craig @106,
Shame, because the more, the merrier.
Fair enough, though, if your SIWOTI is in remission.
Pure beauty, Physicalist!
To Pharyngulites: FYI, I won't be engaging Teh Bird directly, so don't be puzzled if I don't respond to posts he makes directed at me. He's just too insane to bother with.
I asked you this before, but I'll ask again since I'm curious: All these subjects that you reject (AGW, physics, cosmology and whatever else it was) - do you realize that they are supported by decades of research? Have you actually read any of the real peer-reviewed research? Or are you basing your "there's no evidence for it"-judgment solely on things like summaries from the popular press?
It doesn't matter much at this point, but I'm still curious about how you deal with things like that. I'm sure you know that there are thousands upon thousands of pages about every single thing you've deemed complete hoaxes here, but what do you do with that knowledge? Do you just ignore all that research and think that it can't possibly hold any good information, or have you ever tried to read some of it?
What would you think is the more rational thing to do?
Wow, I never thought of that! I just realized that I have no idea if our prime minister has any old girlfriends. I have heard NO claims from anyone saying that she is an old girlfriend of our prime minister!
This is such a revelation to me! But what does this all mean, oh wise Bird? Please tell me! Does it mean that he is an alien? I'm afraid that I haven't figured out your point, but I'm sure you'll get there eventually...
Hey, Bird. That isn't an expert in that video.
Nice try, though. You're learning how this works!
Guys, I'm pretty sure the G-Turd is typing one-handed. He's such a complete loser that his only pleasure, sexual or otherwise, is trolling the net and screaming insults at the people (specifically, all of humanity) that consider him too repulsive to address in person. It's pathetic in the extreme that the only way someone can get off is not only to seek brutal dominance over others, but to publicly do so in one's own imagination because he's incapable, both mentally and physically, of doing so in reality. Yet I suspect that's just what's happening: He's spent hours humiliating himself before us all, and while he's surely deranged, even the unhinged usually don't do that so thoroughly and consistently unless they're extracting some perverse pleasure from their twisted perceptions. To put it bluntly, the more reality beats him up, the higher his hopes of successfully beating off.
Idjit Assclam Fuckwit, they are real until you prove with physical evidence otherwise. We are waiting for true physical evidence on your part...And we will be waiting forever since you are an assclam idjit fuckwit, and have nothing but your lying, bullshitting, and attitude...
"Now where is the nurses who helped deliver young Obama."
"Where is his old girlfriends?"
Where is the English teacher who failed to teach the Bird about subject-verb agreement?
I think I see the problem...
You're thinking of the last guy and confusing the past with the future.
@ Nerd,
No problem. It's easy to get confused when Teh Stupid comes in so thick and fast!
And as far as a birth certificate goes, RE the youtube video: my own birth certificate is nothing like the one that is presented in that video*. Does that mean I'm a Kenyan, too?
*(I can't get my hands on the original document. New York, like Hawaii, has gone to a digitized system, so basically mine's a print out with an official seal affixed.)
While I find the birther inanity quite amusing, my favourite Bird dropping on this thread so far has to be;
For someone to turn up on a science blog abusing scientists for not following the scientific method, and then post that. Awesome.
Graeme Bird: I'm totally with you on all this.
Some additional things about Soetero. HE DOESN'T ACTUALLY EXIST. I mean, if he can't produce a birth certificate, HOW CAN HE EXIST???
Also, 9/11 was CAUSED by Soetero. Where was he on that day? No-one has EVER bothered to check before I made that assertion just now, and in the almost ten years since that tragedy, he has had plenty of time to fabricate alibis, eliminate body-doubles, and mindwipe anyone who ever came into contact with him. It's up to the doubters to prove otherwise.
Special relativity: indeed a scam. I see people breaking the light barrier on Star Trek all the time. When people tell me "it's just a show", I look them in the eye and ask, "Well, how do they make it look so realistic, then?" The louder they laugh at me, the more terrified they are on the inside.
Global Warming is a TOTAL scam. I can prove it right now. I mean...there! Why is it so fucking COLD in my freezer? Answer THAT, BABYKILLERS!
----------------------------------------------
OK, Graeme - that's just to establish that I've got your back. Now you know I'm one of the good guys, here are a few other things I'd like to share with you:
*A tree falling in the forest with no-one around to hear it DOES make a sound. How do I know? I was there.
*If you stand in the right place at the right time, the 'invisible hand of the market' actually becomes temporarily visible. And guess what? It's flipping the bird at all of us.
*Though I haven't yet gone faster than light, I HAVE broken the sound barrier - but you must NEVER ask me how.
*I don't believe in the moon - I think it's just the back of the sun.
Despite these personal revelations, though, I still envy YOU. I wish I could make a career out of it the way you appear to have done. In fact, when I see you in action, I'm reminded of my favorite line from my favorite movie, The Terminator, where a police psychologist comments on soldier-from-the-future, Kyle Reese:
Oh, the irony. He actually WAS from the future, as we all know!
Doh! Blockquote failure!
The third and fourth paragraphs are the troll's too.
This is a bit of a puzzler, actually. Bird is (apparently) in convictland, and apparently was eligible to stand for election there, so the assumption is Bird is an Asstralian. Hence, its birtherism seems puzzling, nor is it clear why it's scared that a (gasp!) black man is the President of a completely different country on the other side of the world (I concur that that's probably part of what's going on). The rest of its (known) kookiness isn't confined to the USA, so the fact it has those non-rationalities as well isn't a puzzle.
Mr Fire @408, you took the words right out of my mouth. Nobody ever takes me seriously when I insist that the world is actually flat, and that Magellan just appeared to have sailed around the world by crawling across the underside! "Show me the evidence", they say. No, show ME the evidence that he didn't.
..to be fair if YOU had dated Kevin Rudd would you admit it publically either?
Mine's also nothing like that shown in the video (or other sites), and I do have the original, plus (this is a bit unusual) proof that it is the original. Therefore, I must be Kenyan.
Isn't NutterLogic fun?
No, no, no! Magellan's voyage was all faked in a movie studio. Just like the moon landings, JFK assassination, some twerp in Galilee, and the Egyptian Pyramids. I know. I went to Atlantis and talked to the cameraman.
Oh great. You're one of those 'multi-dimensional' types. The world is A ONE-DIMENSIONAL LINE, you stupid stupid stupid blockhead.
You sound just like my closed-minded physical chemistry teacher, going on about wavefunctions and particles in a "one dimensional box". As if. He also believed in the religion of special relativity. Deluded fool.
So it doesn't matter if he is in fact a natural born citizen, you're going to keep these lawsuits up anyway because you hate him.
That was refreshingly honest of you.
Graeme Bird:
Now you're just lying. I've given you evidence. You haven't addressed anything I posted, other than to pretend that none of it exists. You're simply proving that you have no coherent argument against what I posted. You can keep shouting "Did not!!!" as much as you want, and you (and whatever little cadre of cranks and whackjobs form the self-reinforcing alternate reality in which you live) will, no doubt, convince yourselves that you're all a shining beacon of truth in a hostile world gone terribly wrong. You aren't. If this--denial of things for which there exists ample evidence--is the best you can do, all you've done is demonstrate that your only useful function in the universe is to fill in the extreme left-hand side of the bell curve.
So it goes. But here's another little problem for you RE Special Relativity. Go look up the kind of experiments they do at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. Find out what kind of accelerating field strengths are available, and find out the maximum kinetic energy attained by the accelerated particles. Use that information to calculate how long the accelerator needs to be, according to Newtonian physics. Then get a grown-up to do the relativistic calculation for you, or just look up the accelerator's length. By how large a multiplicative factor do the answers differ?
Really, you're just embarrassing yourself now. All the "sheeple" here--the ones who respect knowledge, understand how science is done, and value rationality--are laughing at you, because you're an almost-too-good-to-be-true personification of a paranoid crank. You've demonstrated repeatedly that you have no clue about something you've strongly asserted. That doesn't necessarily prove that you're equally clueless about the other things you say. But that's the way I'd vote.
Obviously, the first 3 years of any US presidency should be spent by the President going door-to-door showing everyone his/her birth certificate, 2 forms of photographic ID, and a couple of pictures of ex-lovers.
Otherwise, how can anyone know that they can be trusted?
Crikey blogged about contenders for the seat of Dobell. Commenter No 6 provides a link to Bird's platform and kindly includes several of the non-negotiable demands. This inclusion is fortunate because the demands don't seem to be available at Bird's blog anymore.
There is also, I note, an entire blog dedicated to Bird's inanity. (Other than his own one, that is.)
Jessa, I see you're not even trying to be a completely one-dimensional character, like me and Graeme Bird. I have little hope for you.
MrFire: I'm sorry you feel that way. I thought that I had found a fellow believer. I guess I was wrong. I suppose you're also one of these people that believe that this mythical place called "Australia" acutally exists.
Pretty awesome, IMO. Voice acting is kind of meh, and I'm getting annoyed at Sony of America's insistence of English because of it, but other then that.
Oh, and to the guy who asked "What am I missing?"
Being a natural born US Citizen is in fact in the constitutional requirements to be President.
Obama is, so it's immaterial, but it is in the requisites.
Alright Bird, you've got us. I'll come clean about our President if no one else will here. Barack Hussein Fidel Sotero Cubano Obamo was born in a small fishing village on the north coast of the largest continent on the planet Klingon where his family made a meager living selling black market phasers to gangs of young thugs involved in the drug trade. After the Federation and the Klingon Empire made peace his family quietly emigrated to Hawaii using false papers. He later moved with his harem of underage Thai concubines to Chicago where he became a political activist and clandestine Klingon agent. To this day he runs a Klingon spy network out of the whitehouse and uses his "wife" Michelleo to move kilogram quantities of "ghack", a highly refined version of the Klingon delicacy "ghaa" directly out of the whitehouse basement.
Oooooooh! This is the gift that keeps on giving. Besides talking about/documenting Less-Brains-Than-A-Stuffed-Turkey's rantings, Less-Brains-… itself comments on that blog. A classic “almost-too-good-to-be-true personification of a paranoid crank” indeed!
Wait, special relativity too? Are you guys sure this isn't a pure troll now. I mean I had my doubts but fuck me, a special relativity denier too? reminds me of when I met a neutron denialist. Seriously, he didn't think there were neutrons, all a conspiracy, Jews, Freemasons, Illuminati, Al Gore, etc...
Meathead, you forgot the part about the Obamo family bringing Klingon time-travel technology with them so that they could go back to 1941 and insert Barry's name into the Sunday, August 13 issue of the Hawaii Advertiser.
Or was I not supposed to bring that up?
Time travel, yeah well corrupting newspapers is only the beginning. It's a little known fact that the Obamas also started the hundred years war and talked Hitler into annexing the Sudentenland.
Meathead: The Elders have informed me that you have disclosed too much. Please report to the hidden base ship at {redacted} for decommissioning.
Graeme Bird, you stupid racist piece of shit.
You know that the document produced is valid. If you paid any attention at all, you would know that Hawaii converted to electronic records decades ago and ANY person born there requesting a birth certificate will receive exactly what Obama released.
If you had looked into it even the slightest bit, you would find that tens of millions of Americans have similar birth certificates. Birth certificates that lack features that racists like you and Loud Dobbs never gave a thought to, never worried about, never required for one second until suddenly confronted with the horror of a non-white president.
Here is a copy of MY birth certificate. You'll see that it doesn't include the things you racists suddenly demand.
No doctor's name, no name of the hospital.
If I had run or president, you would not have demanded it... and if inadvertently confronted with it you would not have seen anything wrong, would have had no objection.
Because I'm white.
There are two reasons why all responsible people have rejected your idiotic arguments.
1. Because, not being blinded by racism, we're able to see the facts clearly and see that they are not only baseless, but preposterous.
2. Because, not being blinded by racism, we're able to SEE racism, smell the stench of it, a mile away.
This is a place where people congregate who evaluate evidence and try to come to a reasoned conclusion. You aren't going to win any converts here.
Want a receptive audience? Go to your local KKK or White Citizens Council meeting, you disgusting piece of scum.
craig.perko, just wondering if you are one of those who learned from the 'news' media that Greenpeace was responsible for blowing up and sinking some ship?
This is apparently quite a widespread belief in the USA.
Jessa, I knew the Elders would come for me. That's why I'm already at an undisclosed offworld location. They'll never decommission me. My positronic brain was guaranteed for a million years and I intend to make use of all of them!
Graeme Bird OMG, it's the actual editor of The Quibbler! I want to know more about how Stubby Boardman, lead singer of the Hobgoblins, misled us all into thinking he was actually Sirius Black, I mean Barack Obama. Do tell!
I just don't get this birther argument. President Obama has a U.S. passport, and the U.S. Department of State is scrupulous when it comes to issuing one of those. No legitimate documents = no passport. So years before Obama ran for president, his citizenship had been examined and verified. Oh, wait: the Department of State must have been infiltrated with agents who conspired to cover up the truth, having been visited by Dr. Who, who arrived in the Tardis to inform them that in the future Barack Hussein Soetero would run for president and they needed to establish a cover for him. Okay, I got it now.
"You know that the document produced is valid."
No you are lying its a fake. Yes you'd wonder how he got his passport and all that. Its not for me to say. We still have the problem that he's concealing his documents and has taken a wrecking-ball to the finances of the US.
This new bill is costed at 2.6 trillion in the next ten years before rationing. So its a killer bill. It will kill people and destroy the budgets utterly.
The usurper knows this. He knows he's destroying the Republic.
Is it too late to comment on this thread? 'Cos now I am totally and completely belligerently drunk and now I REALLY REALLY REALLY need to say my piece:
Bird: Fuck you. Fuck you in the ass with a rusty chainsaw. You have evidence of Obama's "legitimacy" and you refuse to accept it for what it it. Plus, you're a mother fucking Australian and I'm not at all sure why you care in the least bit.
2.6 trillion is not a game killer for the American people. WE HAVE THE MOST PRODUCTIVE ECONOMY IN THE WORLD. We're not some fucking island nation built on the back of convicts-- we can handle the costs. Plus, you have yet to tell me where those figures are coming from.
So, in conclusion: fuck you. Fuck you very much.
p.s. To all of the regular Pharyngulites: I am really really really drunk right now, so if I've offended anyone but Mr Bird, my apologies. I'm pissed off and full of beer.
OurDeadSelves, nah, no offense taken — either as an Aussie or as a regular.
--
PS What is the opportunity (not just fiscal) cost of the Iraq war to Americans?
(Yes, that last was rhetorical.)
Birther Bird is still there?
Firstly, $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years represent about 1.5% of GDP
(compare this with "a totalitarian takeover of healthcare", 16% of GDP)
Secondly, this is not an incremental cost. As a matter of fact the CBO calculated that this bill will save Americans money.
If you want an example of something that really "kills people" and destroys the economy, think of the military expenditure and the Iraq war.
Birther bird, you are loon. You are utterly ignorant, you can't even calculate, you don't know what words mean. You don't know what is a "cost", what the verb "kill" means, what the word "fact" means. You are also a delusional paranoid fool. These are all facts.
Mands @245
Well, I must say your excellent universal Australian health care system has done a piss poor job of treating of Graeme Birdbrain's mental illness(es).
Orac likes to refer to crank magnetism resulting a a trifecta of woo, but this character gets me an instant blackout on my whackaloon bingo card.
I hope he is not sent to the dungeon as he is a such a shining example of evidence and reason oppositional defiance disorder (If it isn't in new DSM V, it should be). I think seeing his full on fucknuttery might convince the odd crank to reconsider their position when the see the sort of company they are keeping.
No Epikt. You haven't come up with any evidence that can support special relativity.
Prove that "space-time" exists.
Overcome the Dingle refutation.
Show that time dilation exists without reference to alleged microscopic entities.
One may have relativistic effects. But these alleged effects are not going to prove special relativity. Which brings in all sorts of religious-like examples of reification into science.
JESUS CHRIST, GRAEME, GO TO BED!
"Firstly, $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years represent about 1.5% of GDP"
I doesn't matter. The Americans will not be paying this. So whose going to pay? The Chinese?
See this is just all delusion.
"Now where is the nurses who helped deliver young Obama."
"Where is his old girlfriends?"
Where is the English teacher who failed to teach the Bird about subject-verb agreement?
Again. Where are the other young Mothers who remember being in the hospital with Ann Dunham. Where are the nurses who remember her there?
Scroll forward 18 years. Now this basketballer. Good-looking kid. Where are all his girlfriends?
You people know nothing about this fellow. And he's the first person in world history wherein third parties are expected to prove eligibility for him.
You guys are not smart. This is what you have to remember. You are blockheads.
1) I'm wasted and I'm typing better than you
and
2) < 2% GDP is a piffling amount. It may be a lot to you, ass hat, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the American economy. And as I have said before, I (and many other Americans) don't mind the extra cost if it makes things a wee bit easier for the poorest in our nation.
2) Okay, maybe not. Anyway, > 2% of our economy is a piffling amount. 2+ trillion may seem like a lot to you in you small mindedness, but trust me, it's a drop in the bucket compared to American GDP.
People here really should listen to Graeme Bird. This guy is so intelligent that he can spot the flaws in modern cosmology that is eluding those so-called experts. And keep a look-out for him showing where abiogenesis research is failing. Mere mortal minds like mine didn't think there was much between the big bang theory and DNA formation, but this is why we need the likes of Graeme Bird to show where the flaws in our thinking are.
This man is truly among the greats, and when a mind like that calls people blockheads you know that's a generous appraisal. We are but ants to the greatness that is Graeme Bird.
You are an idiot. Your typing skills have been noted.
Imagine supporting a bill that you will not be able to pay for. And its a eugenicists bill as well. This is explicit in Ezekial Immanuels writing. He's the key architect of this monstrosity.
You are broke. You are skint. You cannot pay your bills. To even suggest that you can shows delusion and financial ignorance. Your financial situation is laughable.
And you cannot bring yourself to accept that this fellow is effortlessly bringing your Republic down.
:-D :-D
Its getting to the point where you people cannot go to the "bathroom" without the Chinese lending you a penny.
And you just wanted to have a brand new health care system that increased and did not bring costs down.
Is this idiot still going? Good grief. Still, seeing this makes knowing he's here less painful:
Comment by Graeme Bird blocked. [unkill] [show comment]
Squawk away, shithead. I won't see a word of it.
I lie?
Because I have a birth certificate that is similar to Obamas?
That means I'm in on the conspiracy. As is my aunt who was the town clerk where I was born. As is the state of new york which issued it, and declared it valid when they issued my ID.
And the state of Florida which validated it to give me ID there.
And the state of California which validated it to establish me here.
It couldn't be that there's a battle for supremacy in Graeme's head between the cretinous half and the pathetic cowardly little racist half.
No, there's a conspiracy of millions to install a man as president just to make one pathetic cowardly little australian fuckwit shit his pants due to a glimpse of a touch of off-white.
Graeme, you are an entertaining little reminder that you can NEVER underestimate the ability of a person to be delusional, stupid and hateful.
You are just a delusional idiot mate. You are in fact a big bang believer right? There is no end to the unreason of you people. Since you have rejected reason, and are stooging yourself about that fact, your views on many subjects appear to be utterly predictable.
Your belief in the big bang, and pretty much everything else, is simply an issue of faith. As I said Scienceblogs is just a church where leftist projection is part of the schtick, by which you blame your own antipathy towards the scientific method, onto your opponents.
Dear Graeme Bird @ 440,
thank you for asking commenters on an internet blog to prove to you personally that space-time and time dilation exist.
If you would be so kind to look up "argument from personal incredulity" on said internet and then get back to us, thank you.
On second thought, don't get back to us.
Okay, you've repeated this particular bit of bullshit about 20 times today, and nobody's commented on it yet. Where are the other young mothers and nurses who remember being in the hospital with -your- mother, Graeme Bird?
Obama's mother wasn't anybody particularly special or memorable, was she? Why would you expect an expectant mother, someone about to go through or just having gone through the most painful experience of her life, to remember a single woman who also happened to be giving birth and that they knew for maybe a day or 2? And the nurses see thousands of expectant mothers a year. They're certainly not going to remember a specific woman 48 years later.
Tell me, birdbrain, what was the name of the person who sat next to you during english class in 5th grade? I'll bet that was probably less than 48 years ago. You can remember that, right? No? How about the teacher's name? Still nothing? Huh... guess we shouldn't expect nurses and fellow mothers who happened to share a hospital with Ann Dunham in 1961 to remember her either, should we?
In the same way I'm a believer that the earth orbits the sun. When a theory is able to predict previously unobserved phenomena such as the cosmic microwave background radiation, or the ratios of hydrogen to helium to lithium present in nature - then there might actually be something to the theory.
So what's your argument against the big bang theory? What is the problem with the science of it? I'm betting that you don't actually know much about the theory, so instead of demonstrating its falsehood you attack those who support it. Yet that's not how science works. You blockhead...
OK Graeme... if the universe was "poofed" into existence by God relatively recently... answer me this - do you believe, as Ken Ham as others of your ilk do, that non-whites are the "children of Ham" who are cursed and all that shit?
That couldn't possibly have anything to do with your upset at a president with African heritage, would it?
G_Bird: Get some perspective.
What don't you understand with:
Secondly, this is not an incremental cost. As a matter of fact the CBO calculated that this bill will save Americans money.
That this bill doesn't represent more than 1.5% of the economy is a refutation of your foolish claim that this is a totalitarian takeover of healthcare, which represents more than ten times that amount.
You are a complete nutcase. Anybody who brings up the Dingle refutation is a complete nutcase. Anybody who asks whether spacetime, a mathematical model, exists is a complete nutcase. Anybody who thinks Obama wasn't born in the USA is a complete nutcase. Anybody who thinks this isn't his real name is a complete nutcase. Anybody who believes that Reagan's "strategy" was to bankrupt the USSR is a complete nutcase.
You are completely nuts. Go and see a doctor, Get help soon. Take the appropriate medication.
Link to his blog sent to his Sheriff's Department.
Graeme Bird is an insane fuckwit. It is pointless to argue with him.
Yep, it's all faith.
That my computer uses semiconducting atoms particularly arranged in order to create logic gates - faith. Scientists don't know anything, you can easily explain the computer with magic smoke as you can with electronic circuitry. And planes? They may seem to work according to Newtonian physics, but angels flapping their wings to hold up the metal works just as well. It's a matter of faith...
Meanwhile back in reality, science as an empirical measure of the universe has a proven track record. The fact that we are having this conversation now is testament to that. Science works, and you know this as much as me otherwise you're a fully-fledged hypocrite for using a computer. The fact that you don't understand how Big Bang Theory works as a successful falsifiable model for many observations about the universe. Do you even understand the significance of the discovery that led to the 1978 nobel prize in physics? Do you understand anything about the ratios of atoms in the universe? Do you understand anything about red shifting? There's reasons why physicists hold the Big Bang Theory, and if you're going to dismiss that then you need to demonstrate scientifically the invalidity of it.
Attack me all you want, it doesn't change the fact that The Big Bang Theory is the currently accepted model of cosmology among those who actually know about the topic. What have you got to show otherwise? I'm betting you've got nothing. Care to show otherwise?
Where were you 5 minutes ago? I just wasted 5 minutes I'm never getting back...
scary thing about his blog is the number of comments he gets.
And here I thought the worst thing about Australia was the venomous nasty NON-human creatures.
Well, I must say your excellent universal Australian health care system has done a piss poor job of treating of Graeme Birdbrain's mental illness(es).
He gets his pills for free; we can't always be sure he takes them, can we?
Oops - no beer, just red wine!
Mental illness is one area of health that our government has really failed on.
@459
In NSW?
@463
Most of them are his. He's quite Davison-ian in the magnitude of his commenting.
Birther Bird,
it has been demonstrated that Dingle's refutation is equivallent to adopting the Newtonian concept of universal time, which has been proven wrong time and time again. Check the error it makes in the calculation of the perihelion precession of Mercury's orbit as the first historical evidence (90 years ago!) and compare with the extremely precise result from Special Relativity.
Dingle's refutation is typical of nuts like you: it pressuposes that a theory is wrong and proceeds to demonstrating that it is wrong. Circle reasoning is what nuts like you seem to relish with everything. Faithheads do the same with God's existence, they assume he exists and demonstrate that he exists. You do the same with everything : you assume healthcare reform is a bad thing and proceed to demonstrate that it's a bad thing. You assume that Obama wasn't born in the USA, and proceed to prove to yourself that on this basis, he wasn't born in the USA.
You are a dangerous nutcase. That's why when you saw that this thread was about dangerous nuts you felt the need to entertain us and provide us with further evidence that these people do exist. Thank you, it has been fun.
But really, go and get help. Seek medical advice. And don't forget to take the medications that will be prescribed to you.
Oh this Bird is really really nuts.
He's got this thread
http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/special-buoyancy/#comments
with 73 comments ! Seventy three.
And almost all of them are his own. He must spend so much time writing comments to his own comments.
Poor chap. He really needs to get medical advice fast.
What? Sheriffs in Australia, and most other countries in the Commonwealth, are not police; they're civil court officers who are responsible for enforcing court judgments and providing security for the courts (similar to "bailiffs" or "marshals" in the United States). Any suspected criminal activity in Australia should be reported to the state police force, not the sheriff's department.
This has been an interesting train-wreck. Bird-brain is completely nuts (something I already knew from Deltoid), and he seem to have a fundamental lack of understanding of the concept "burden of proof". Personally, I wouldn't miss him if he was banished to the dungeon until he provided evidence for any of his claims.
bah, I think Bird-brain felt compelled to comment on this thread when he saw PZ was talking about dangerous nuts. He wanted to provide us with a practical example.
I doubt he knows just how well he succeeded.
"seem to have a fundamental lack of understanding of the concept "burden of proof""
Proof of total irrationality on your part. Here you are actually pleading for a handicap for your pathetic ideas. Its true you dumb leftists need a handicap. But I'm not inclined to give you one.
There is no burden of proof. Epistemological failure by your moronic self. When we compare hypothesis in parallel nothing gets a special head-start just on account of leftist whining.
"it has been demonstrated that Dingle's refutation is equivallent to adopting the Newtonian concept of universal time, which has been proven wrong time and time again."
No thats wrong. The Dingle refutation stands. Special relativity is incoherent and inconsistent. Since velocity is relative we have no right to claim which object is stationary and which object is moving.
"thank you for asking commenters on an internet blog to prove to you personally that space-time and time dilation exist."
How about space-time? There is no such entity. What a moronic notion. Whereas every waking moment proves the existence of space, no evidence has ever emerged for such a thing as space-time. There is no such unicorn.
But hey? Its your irrational religion. Perhaps I ought to be more sensitive.
Since velocity is relative there can be no such thing as time dilation. Hence any relativistic effects that seem to be causing this phenomenon, must be due to something else other then velocity alone. It is a failure of science therefore for these public servants to not have found out the real cause of what their instruments are telling them.
Wow, the Bird-spew is coming thick and fast.
Heh.
Thanks again for demonstrating your complete lack of understanding of well, anything. Bird-brain -> killfile
A question for the Australian commenters here - is Bird-brain representative of the Liberal-Democratic Party? If he is, I might just have to register to vote in the next Aussie election, and vote against that party (I am actually considering this anyway, given the fact that one of the major parties is now run by AGW-denialists).
"Dingle's refutation is typical of nuts like you: it pressuposes that a theory is wrong and proceeds to demonstrating that it is wrong."
You religious moron. You ought to castrate yourself now to be sure that the dumb gene doesn't get passed on. You are assuming a theory to be right. And you go on assuming a theory is right even after it is proved wrong on totally unassailable logical grounds.
Dummy. Like everyone here caught up in total delusion and projection.
Donkey of the year goes to Kristjan. On account of his gutlessness and unreason in reaching for the mindless burden of proof prejudice. Proving he is no better than the most stupid yokel religious devotee.
Hey, Graeme Bird - your clock is chiming eight o'clock: Loon, loon, loon, loon; loon, loon, loon, loon!
negentropyeater @ 472:
Having read some of its overwhelming idiocy, I agree.
"OK Graeme... if the universe was "poofed" into existence by God relatively recently... a"
Goodness me. This really is a morons congregation.
Birthers are the smartest people in the world. No question about it.
No-one in the Illinois legislature at the time that Obama became a senator picked up that he's not an American.
No-one in the state department/FBI realised he's a danged furriner when he became a federal senator.
Hillary Clinton's team never dug up this damning piece of evidence against him during her legendarily bare-knuckle campaign for the Democratic nomination.
And the entire Republican party aparatus with all its muck-rackers and swift-boaters failed to notice his non-American-ness when McCain was running for President.
Yet the Birthers spotted it right away. Such clever little racists political operatives! (You'd think his alarming non-White-ness would have clued-in all the others,though.)
You are the moron, and you cannot have a congregation of one.
I will accept though that since you started posting here the average intelligence of the comments has decreased. If we remove your comments from the equation though, the normal high level of intellectual discourse is resumed.
It might be worth noting that
rearranges to:
Just sayin'
It's difficult to know. They're such an insignificant group.
What amazes me is he managed to find 181 other people to vote for him in Dobell in 2007. That's a whopping 0.2% of the vote. (There was an 8.7% swing to Labor in that seat.)
Someone in one of those links I posted earlier suggested that it would be entertaining to have the LDP debate the CEC (the Australian LaRouchites). You can't imagine how much I'd pay to witness that.
Argument by assertion. Obama's a Kenyan 'cos Graeme Bird said so. Relativity is a crock because Graeme Bird said so. Universal healthcare is a totalitarian take-over because Graeme Bird said so.
And everyone else is stupid because they fail to see the correctness of these statements. Because Graeme Bird said so.
Bird, you are one seriously deluded wackaloon. Unless you believe in the purest form of solipcism then you have to accept space-time exists.
Well, he does live in his own little world...
MrFire @ 487:
It also anagrams to these:
Dame Big Err
Bared Grime
Rabid Merge
Drab Regime
Marred Gibe
Brag Dire Me
Garbed Mire
;D
Goats on fire!!
I have nothing more to say.
Nope, you are the idjit fuckwit.
So speaks an idjit fuckwit without any training or cogency. Any scientist knows better. Assclam.
Again, you have no understanding of the scientific method, being the idjit assclam loser you are. You need to stop using the term, since you are not using the scientific method. You are the shithead loser.
No, that is when you look in the mirror, and see you and your family.
Still waiting for this minor thing called evidence, which is absolutely required to be presented by someone using the scientific method. And idjit assclam loser assertions by you is not evidence, only opinions. Bad loser opinions at that.
Wait, I've got it! It's not that he's a Kenyan...
OH MY GOD HE'S A CLONE. That's why there are no people who have come forward to attest to having run across him in their past! Obama was created in a laboratory! A secret government laboratory in the, um, Antilles, which is why he isn't actually an American and has nobody in Kenya who remembers him growing up either! He was made from a DNA mixture of Stalin, Marx, Hitler, and some random black guy so he wouldn't look too Hitler-ish, and incubated in a tank of nutrient goo until he reached full adulthood. IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW.
WHERE ARE THE TRANSITIONAL FORMS?
Bird, here's a chance to demonstrate you can engage in productive discussion:
▶ Do you know what the word “evidence” means?
▶ If not, do you what what a “dictionary” is?
▶ Please give an example of evidence for (or against) the following claim: “Graeme Bird got 182 votes in the 2007 Australian federal election.”
Simple. Three questions. And your answers are…
Having read Mr Bird's cogent and enlightening comments I have come to the conclusion that maybe we're all just like brains in jars, man, or maybe it's just like The Matrix, yeah? And I hereby proclaim that Mr Bird is a credulous loser brainwashed retard sheeple until he can conclusively prove otherwise.
Thanks Carlie - it really does make sense. In fact, we're ALL CLONES CREATED BY THE GIANT SUPER-COMPUTER.
On a side-note, I'm half-Australian and half-American. Is there any hope for my sanity with these wing-nuts running around?
Graeme Bird:
See, this is why people laugh at you. The equivalence of inertial reference frames is the foundation of the whole fucking theory. You've just said that special relativity can't be right because its foundation is correct. Special Relativity is constructed precisely so that the concept of an absolutely stationary reference frame has no meaning. Ferfucksake, read an elementary physics book and stop humiliating yourself.