Radiorum

Oh wow, you guys just keep on supporting my point. This is not true, I made many sound points.

Look, I am quite satisfied I make my points soundly. If you have trouble with them, read more carefully. I'm done with this.

RFK Jr. spouts nonsense about the “threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors,” or SSRIs. SSRIs are anti-depressants, and their use has saved thousands of lives. But Kennedy calls people who take them “addicts.” His buddy, Elon Musk, falsely claimed that there is “tremendous circumstantial evidence” that individuals who take SSRIs are more likely to become school shooters. When questioned about it, RFK Jr. would not deny it: No, there is no causal link between school shooters and SSRIs. Medicaid pays hundreds of millions of dollars on SSRIs and I guess they want to cut that out.

Okay, your last accusation leveled at me was that I did not provide evidence that science was being hurled into chaos by Trump policy, but I had quoted and linked THREE separate articles saying just that. https://blog.ucsusa.org/pallavi-phartiyal/the-trump-administration-playbook-likely-to-target-science-and-scientists-were-ready-to-fight-back/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-trumps-first-days-say-about-science-in-the-new-administration/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-trumps-executive-orders-mean-for-science/ I don't know what your problem is, but it isn't me.

All of my assertions have been well-supported. Thanks for stepping up and being my exemplar.

Quit sniffing yourself. It's gross.

I have never expressed an opinion about the Democrats in these forums.

You can’t win with MAGA because they don’t care whether they are wrong or right. They have abandoned truth in favour of the fight. All that matters to them is “getting” the other side. (I’ve seen this attitude in these forums.) That’s why they respond so favourably when Trump posts something hate-inciting like this: Jul 20th 2024 - 10:12:25 PM EST Consider Musk’s recent post below Musk’s claim that these people are collecting social security is so obviously untrue (to anyone with a grain of intelligence, which I assume Musk has) and easily disproved. Simple math with these figures shows that if these payments in the table were being made, Social Security would cost about $1 trillion dollars more a year than it actually does. The numbers just don’t work. So why is Musk lying? And not caring if he does? Because he knows MAGA will respond, without regard to whether it’s true or not. Musk baits MAGA, who will use this as ammunition in their manufactured “fight.” They don’t care if the numbers are wrong - just like they don’t care if Trump is a dictator. The outrage of the “other side” is the goal. (As one MAGA member here said – it’s about freaking them out.) Like Trump, Musk manipulates with lies, and it causes me great concern for the country that many are susceptible to this manipulation.

No, lol, I think that was your best effort.

I know, it's tough, because they are listening to a bunch of liars.

That's it? That's all you got? How am I supposed to take you seriously?

the correct figure is 57% - 93% of Republicans and 17% of Democrats And that shows that the Republicans fell for the conspiracy theory

You are the one that posted that Trump is Hitler, and I presented the features of fascism from a renowned expert on fascism, which supports your position, and anyone with a modicum of understanding about what is going on the the US can see that many those features are happening there now, and you turn around and answer with an attack on the Left? Talk about a lack of self-awareness.

These are two unrelated propositions (and no, a sizeable chunk of Democrats did not), as my main point (that you did not address) makes clear In any case, Trump got due process and a fair trial. Trump’s defense was present at jury selection and signed off on every juror. They had every opportunity to challenge jurors, introduce evidence, question prosecution witnesses and call their own. He was convicted because he was guilty. What was political was the wholesale rejection of the American judicial system (not to mention the electoral system) by Trump and his sycophants, all of them “suggesting without evidence that it was the result of a push by President Biden and federal Democrats to prosecute Trump.” “This is not the United States of America,” (Lara Trump) said. “This is the kind of thing you would expect to see in the communist U.S.S.R.” Ted Cruz posted that the trial was “the kind of thing you see in a Banana Republic.” Rubio compared Trump’s trial to a Cuban “show trial.” Several Republican senators signed a pledge of non-cooperation with the Democrats that begins with this statement: What a load of bullshit propaganda!

Well, I can think about a few things that contradict this ridiculous assertion. Consider: On Jan. 13, 1982, a plane taking off in Washington crashed into a bridge over the Potomac River. Reagan’s reaction was diametrically opposed to Trump’s reaction to the recent Washington crash. Consider Reagan’s quotes about trade and Canada: And I wonder what Reagan would make of Trump’s recently announced plan to meet with Putin and Xi in order that they enter into a defense deal requiring the US cut their defense budget by half. Reagan would not approve. You apparently know very little about Reagan, and understand even less about Trump.

I have linked several articles

It's not up to me to give you your education. It's not up to me to write you a book. Get out of your bubble and educate yourself.

Trump is a homegrown, American fascist. Philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco, drawing on his personal experiences growing up in Mussolini’s fascist Italy, as well as extensive research, penned the influential essay “Ur-Fascism” or “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt” His insights on fascism – the features of fascism: 1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.” 2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.” 3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.” 4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.” 5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.” 6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.” 7. The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.” 8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” 9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.” 10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.” 11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.” 12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.” 13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.” 14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

Wow, you reveal how far you have fallen, and how muddled your thinking is, when you call attempts to maintain legality in the US and prevent Trump from crowning himself a king “lawfare”

I’m not sure why you think a wrong-headed ideological backlash is grounds for plunging the scientific community into chaos, that the cries of the uninformed justifies stopping the science. In fact, you are revealing the weakness and the wrongness of the position – in your estimation, science should bend to the will of hysterical ideologues. In any case, that position is a total ruse. How to explain cutting in half the workforce at The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a world-renowned scientific agency, providing research funding and weather monitoring? How to explain that under Trump’s new directives, travelling for international meeting or even joining a call with Canadian counterparts has become impossible for some U.S. government scientists? Canadian ecologist Aaron Fisk says he recently tried to set up a virtual call to discuss plans with American colleagues, including a government scientist, around sampling fish. "We tried to have a quick meeting with one of our collaborators … and they were denied access," Fisk said. Trump has taken a wrecking ball to American science in what amounts to an existential threat on its future. His orders have even resulted in censorship of terms like “biodiversity” and “social justice” There is a broad scientific consensus on climate change, but American scientists are banned from using the term??

This is false (I notice you rarely cite your sources). In fact, 57 % of Americans felt the charges were politically motivated (the word "purely" is yours - and is not reflected in the poll) - 93% of Republicans and 17% of Democrats. This does NOT prove the charges were politically motivated, only that Republicans fall for Trump's BS. In any case, there is no logical connection between this and the steps Trump is taking now to effect regime change in the US. By your logic, a criminal should be entitled to take over the system that held him accountable.

The evidence tells me otherwise.

Oh, so , science is being decimated in the US because scientists use the term cisgender. Oh, okay. Tell me again who is the rational ones?

if you can't see the difference, I can't help you

Following the financial crisis of 2008, the responsibility for enforcing that financial companies obey consumer-protection laws, previously split between six regulatory agencies, was concentrated in one agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (C.F.P.B), which brought consumer protection—regulation, supervision, and enforcement—under one roof. Created to defend the interests of mortgage holders, savings depositors, credit-card holders, and anybody else who was obliged to deal with banks and other financial companies, the CFPB has been shuttered by Trump and Musk. A week ago, Elon Musk tweeted, “CFPB RIP.” Why would Musk want to fire the financial cop on the beat? The cop that has found more than twenty-one billion dollars in fraud and scams, and scooped up that money and returned it directly to the people who were cheated. Musk claimed that slashing spending and downsizing the federal government is necessary to prevent the United States from going bankrupt. But the CFPB budget is only about 0.01% of federal spending. Oh, there is this: Closing the CFPB will hurt the very people Trump promised to safeguard, but it will sure help Musk.