Prozac
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Everything posted by Prozac
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Unfortunately, through his incompetence he’s showing the next would-be strongman how to mount an effective coup. And newsflash conservative friends, that strongman could come from either party.
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I guess LM trusts the Herc wing boxes now.
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Sure they have. Many state governments have banned smoking in public spaces because it’s been proven that one person’s second hand smoke can harm a non smoker.
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Might’ve been the best thing that ever happened to him. WOs are the happiest military aviators I’ve ever met.
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I wonder if the polio vaccine would’ve been successful if the internet existed back then. 🤦♂️
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Sigh.... The analogy was simply to make the point that we are not experts and that experts exists for a reason and that one of the hallmarks of society is that we can and should rely on each other’s expertise in various walks of life. Here is an article by Tom Nichols on the topic titled The Death of Expertise. He also wrote a book by the same title and many others have written about the same general idea lately. https://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/
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Dude, this is why people think you’re a troll. An analogy is just that, an ANALOGY. No analogy will be perfect but you choose to nitpick banal facts rather than see the overarching intent of the comparison.
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I absolutely believe it’s the former. Look at the current challenge in Michigan. They want to wait to certify Wayne County pending an audit. Wayne County is heavily Democratic and it would be very hard to believe Trump ever had a chance there. The tactic is obviously to slow down the process and delay certification. Same in Georgia where they will do a second recount. The chances of a third count of the votes in Georgia tipping it to Trump are extremely low and the campaign knows it.
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For the record, I’m not calling you a conspiracy theorist. There seems to be a lot of that going around though, and some of your arguments appear to be similar to ones the tin foil hat crowd leans on to support their reasoning. As I said in my last post, I apologize if I lumped you in unfairly. As far as seeing how the sausage is made, I prefer to defer to the experts. Why? It’s not because I’m not curious or lack healthy skepticism. It’s because this is a complex subject that I’m not an expert in. I’m sure you can appreciate the idea that a commercial 777 flight wouldn’t go very well if the non-pilot passengers in the back were constantly googling the CFRs and demanding the crew provide justification for every small action they make. The safety of that flight depends on the professionalism of a crew that has dedicated their lives to the profession and at some point, the passengers will have to sit down, buckle in, and have a little faith in the fact that there is an exceedingly high probability that the crew will get them to their destination safely. We can sit here and try and peel back the election security onion ourselves. I’m in layover hotel quarantine right now so I’ve got plenty of time. But frankly, I’m not interested in doing that. Yes, I’ve got google & Facebook & Wikipedia at my fingertips, but those things do not negate the fact that I am not an expert in this field, nor am I a statistician that knows how to parse and collate the reams of information that are available. You seem to want to take on that role here in this forum which is the reason I disengaged with you earlier. We all believe we’re smart people, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this career it’s that pilots, while they will proudly proclaim otherwise, are shitty investors, relationship advisors, medical prognosticators, and lawyers. In fact, most of us really aren’t that good at things outside our respective fields of expertise. So, when the experts, authorities, and the (gasp) mainstream media report that there wasn’t widespread fraud and the President’s court challenges uniformly go nowhere and the President’s last investigation into widespread fraud came up with nothing and every recent investigation into widespread fraud has come to the same conclusion, well, that’s good enough for me.
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Torqued, it seems to me that you’d like to do all your own research on the subject. That’s fine, but realize that there are experts who have dedicated their entire careers to the subject. This research has been done and large scale voter fraud has been debunked. Here are a couple resources that might help you in your journey: https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote/vote-suppression/myth-voter-fraud https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud Here is what Trump’s own CISA director had to say on the topic before he was fired: https://www.cisa.gov/rumorcontrol Here’s what factcheck.org has to say about various claims that have been made regarding the 2020 election: https://www.factcheck.org/issue/voter-fraud/ And the commission that Trump himself put together after the 2016 election was unceremoniously disbanded after finding no evidence of widespread fraud: https://www.propublica.org/article/kris-kobach-voter-fraud-kansas-trial So you ask: What’s more dangerous? “Blind” faith in our election system or making dubious claims? Well, public faith in our elections is integral to making the system work, and there are mountains of evidence that should give Americans that faith. The tack that the Trump administration is currently taking aims to undermine that faith without evidence and WILL make the United States weaker and less effective as a result. So the answer to your question is no contest. Those of us who have faith in this election are not “blind”. The claims the Trump administration is making are flat out false. That’s not my opinion, but the opinion of the courts. There’s a good chance you and others will look at the sources I cited above and question their motives. You might look at the data and say it’s skewed to support a certain narrative. Some might believe that it’s all part of a larger conspiracy where “so called experts” have an agenda that Trump is standing in the way of and the “MSM” actively enables. I’m not necessarily talking to you specifically torqued and apologize if I’m unfairly lumping you into this group, but if this is your viewpoint, I’ve got nothing for you. There’s a fine line between healthy skepticism and outright conspiracy theory.
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You’ve got some fair points & the Dems certainly have a history of overestimating and overplaying their hand. I think the Kavanaugh thing stemmed from McConnell’s refusal to even give Merrik Garland a hearing. Not saying it’s right, just that the one-upmanship has been going on for a long time and both sides are complicit. As for the impeachment, well it’s hard to argue they didn’t overplay that one too. I think there were some legitimate points regarding the 2016 campaign’s connections to foreign would-be influencers, but they were never going to get the needed buy-in from the other side. Of course they relied heavily on the outrage of their base. They don’t get a free pass from me on that. The one thing I’ll say that’s a significant difference, & the thing that has me fired up right now is that the Dems actually conceded in 2016. At that point there were actual serious questions about the security of the election and whether there had been foreign interference in what was a very close race. Clinton would’ve been well within her rights to litigate (and many of her allies pleaded with her to). Yet she didn’t. She didn’t because she knew that the potential damage that could be done to the country far exceeded her own desire for power. Same in 2000 with Al Gore. Same in 1960 with Nixon. Trump has no such compunction. I really believe that he is doing lasting damage to the country right now.
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I think it’s obvious at this point that you and I aren’t going to get each other to budge from our prospective positions. Cheers. 🍻
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Of course fraud exists. It always will. Guess what? The one solid piece of evidence I’ve seen so far in this election was a guy who voted twice in Pennsylvania......for Donald Trump! Of course there are more cases than that, and there will be Democrats who committed fraud as well. The question of whether fraud exists is irrelevant. The question in play is whether widespread fraud exists at a scale that would affect the election. It doesn’t. The Right has claimed it does for a long time and never produced any evidence to back that claim up. This election is no different. The Trump campaign knows widespread fraud didn’t take place. His lawyers are taking great care to avoid claiming actual fraud in court. His endgame is to torpedo America’s faith in the pillar of our democracy without proof that it is broken. He is doing this because he is a petty, pathetic human being. And it is working. The damage being done right now, today, will be felt by our children and grandchildren. You say I’m deranged for calling him a shit slinging orangutan, but I think that’s probably too good for him at this point. He’s actively subverting our system from the inside. There’s a word far worse than orangutan for people who do that.
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Here’s what Sydney Powell said at the press conference: WHAT WE ARE REALLY DEALING WITH AND UNCOVERING MORE BY THE DAY IS THE MASSIVE INFLUENCE OF COMMUNIST MONEY THROUGH VENEZUELA, CUBA, AND LIKELY CHINA AND THE INTERFERENCE WITH OUR ELECTIONS HERE IN THE UNITED STATES. THE DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS, SMART-MATIC TECHNOLOGY SOFTWARE AND SOFTWARE THAT GOES IN OTHER COMPUTERIZED VOTING SYSTEMS AS WELL, NOT JUST DOMINION, WERE CREATED IN VENEZUELA AT THE DIRECTION OF HUGO CHAVEZ TO MAKE SURE HE NEVER LOST AN ELECTION AFTER ONE CONSTITUTIONAL REFERENDUM CAME OUT THE WAY HE DID NOT WANT IT TO COME OUT. She certainly seems to be insinuating that communist money paid for voting software produced in Venezuela at the direction of Chavez to be used in US elections. For proof, she offers, you guessed it, an affidavit from some guy who’s apparently seen this trickery at work.
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Huh? You make whatever deductions you want man. Fact is, if you’re going to make claims about widespread fraud, it’s up to you to prove them. We’ve seen how the courts have treated the Trump campaign’s “evidence” so far and it’s claims have become no less dubious over time. It’s pretty obvious that they’re just saturating the system with garbage at this point in a blatant attempt to delay certification and try and steal this thing in the House of Representatives. The fact that you and about 70 percent of Republicans are rooting for the shit throwing orangutan worries me.
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Ok, I’ll play. Which one of the claims in the Medium article actually supports the narrative that Hugo Chavez had a hand in the 2020 election? I read the article. It looks to me like a very loose association of “facts” are being used to support a claim that voting machines used in the US “could” be compromised. Much of the information dates back to the early 2000s. So again, which facts, exactly, point to fraud in 2020?
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Oh btw, the article you posted was written in January of 2018 and Medium is leading off today with the headline: I Refused to Accept My Child’s Apology, and It Made Everyone Happier. In fact, I don’t see a single article regarding this year’s election on their website. It appears that the amateur journalism website has wisely chosen to stay out of politics. I wonder if they would stand by the nearly three year old article you are using to make your case?
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Yes. https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9740535009 CLAIM: Dominion Voting Systems, one of the most widely used election technology firms in the United States, is owned by the company Smartmatic through an intermediary company called Indra. AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Both Dominion and Smartmatic have released statements saying no ownership relationship exists between the two competing firms. Indra Sistemas, a Spanish company, told The Associated Press in an email it has never developed any project or had a commercial, contractual or corporate relationship with either firm. And yes, I chose to trust AP over the “community journalism” of Medium.
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The threat is believing it is flawed when it actually isn’t. At least not enough to affect an election. Imagine a situation in which your Wing Commander calls out your life support shop for improperly packing chutes. Now, let’s say they’ve passed every inspection, the MSG Commander was personally hired by the WG/CC, and despite the fact that they are human and occasionally make mistakes, there is no reason to believe they aren’t doing their jobs to the best of their abilities or aren’t meeting established standards. Yet the WG/CC still believes there is a problem. Is he within his rights to order additional inspections? Sure. Let’s say he does that and they still find the life support shop meets standards. Would it be good for the organization if the CC then publicly lambasted the entire process? Would it be appropriate for him to fire the MSG/CC without cause or to call individuals within the life support shop to demand evidence of wrongdoing? How about incessantly posting about the whole situation on Twitter or sending several base-wide emails a day complaining about how he hasn’t been treated well by the organization he’s supposed to be running? That there’s some deep seeded conspiracy amongst CGOs that’s hamstrung him since he showed up? Do you think his actions might have a negative effect on the Wing’s mission? Do you think he might be poisoning the trust of his airmen for years to come? That’s exactly what Trump is doing on a nationwide scale. Maybe things have changed, but the people I worked with in the Air Force would have never accepted this kind of “leadership”.
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So I admittedly didn’t watch the whole press conference but HOLY SHIT, Rudy and the gang are claiming that Venezuela, with help from the Chinese and the Cubans, designed and built rigged American voting machines, and that the whole scheme was masterminded by none other than Hugo Chavez (who, last time I checked, was dead)! No shit, I’m not embellishing here, that’s actually a claim they’re making. It’s time for Republicans to distance themselves from this clown show. Sim, I know you’re about to tell us all about this is all true and how Chavez is still alive and has taken over Epstein’s island and is hosting the Clintons and Soros there as we speak. Cool. The scary thing is a good chunk of the country would believe all of this. If it weren’t for that fact, I’d find this fucking hilarious.
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How far from the dildo store was Rudy’s latest press conference?
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Just a reminder that the “leader” we’re talking about led his businesses so well that he was once reduced to selling overpriced meat at the mall...
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I never watched the 80s movie. Never read the book before now either. Not sure why but I was always had an aversion to the story for some reason. I think a lot of the people who were into it when I was growing up were part of the d&d/fantasy crowd and that never interested me (not that I don’t admit to harboring an inner nerd). All I can say now is that the book is great so far and I wish I would’ve read it at about 15. I know the original movie was widely chided, but being somewhat familiar with Villeneuve’s work, I’m hoping the new movie will do justice to the novel.
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This. This is the most coherent argument against the Left. Those of us who are left of center need to internalize this message. If you’re on the other side, don’t worry, you’ve got plenty of your own wackos to recon with (see pretty much all of Sim’s posts above).
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The evidence suggests that we have a pretty tight system. Should we strive to tighten it up more? Sure. But the idea that the system is compromised to the point that the results shouldn’t be trusted is just another one of Trumps dubious claims that is not remotely grounded in reality. Remember 2016 when he won and STILL insisted that there were millions of illegal votes (because his fragile ego couldn’t deal with the fact that he lost the popular vote)? There were investigations after that election and they found the same thing that every voter fraud investigation has: it simply doesn’t exist on a large enough scale to sway an election. Yet it’s a topic that Trump has pushed for years. If election security is such a problem, what has the administration done over the last four years to address it? Not much. You know why? Because it’s an easy trope to fall back on (especially when you lose) that plays well with the base.
