Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Edit: The most amusing thing about Gbaji's misuse of Appeal to Authority is that I'm not even the one saying that Haidt is correct.
You are saying that no one can have any opinion about the data generated by Haidt's study without having read his book though. Which is a position that is itself derived from an appeal to authority fallacy.
You should stop embarrassing yourself until you actually learn what an Appeal to Authority is.
I'm well aware of what an Appeal to Authority fallacy is. I'm also aware that there's a tendency for those who fully embrace this fallacy to project it onto others, resulting in them consistently rejecting any argument made that *doesn't* include an appeal to authority as part of the argument (fallacious or not). This is what I'm pointing out about you. Some of us understand that logical fallacies are often only the starting point in a chain of bad logic, not the entirety of it. Because you derive conclusions solely by finding an authority who hands it to you, you assume this is the only way to derive conclusions, and thus reject any conclusion that isn't arrived at via the same means.
Quote:
The shutdown was largely a nonevent. Happened on a weekend, was over by lunch on Monday. More people blame it on Republicans (Trump and/or GOP Congress) than on the Democrats.
It was such a non-even that the Democrats had to scramble from their own starting position, to another one, then when they realized that wasn't going to fly, more or less gave in. I get that the polls prior to the shutdown said one thing (and I suspect that's what lead the Dems to choose to filibuster the bill), but those polls were largely (entirely?) based on assumptions prior to the house passage of a bill, and senate Dems filibustering it. When those polls were taken, they were skewed to include an assumption that the shutdown would occur because the GOP would fail to pass any bill at all, and thus be "at fault". Given that the GOP passed a budget bill in the house (and Dems largely voted against it), and the Senate had the votes to pass in the Senate, the *only* reason the government shutdown was due to a Democrat filibuster, that completely changes those results.
And I suspect, that's what the Dems realized on Saturday, when their seemily pre-scripted language about how the GOP controlled both houses and the white house, so it was their fault, fell flat when faced with actual reality. I agree that it was largely a non-event in terms of actual impact, but you're way downplaying who actually "lost" that battle. Hint: It was the Dems.
Quote:
The next couple weeks will be more memorable in regards to DACA than last weekend.
Agreed. It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out. Trump has managed to put a plan on the table which looks to be opposed by both the far right and the far left. Which perhaps bodes well for it. We'll see.
Quote:
In other news, it's pretty much established by this point that Trump attempted to obstruct justice while president.
By whom? Repeating the same claim over and over doesn't give it any more weight. Even assuming one interprets Trump's firing of Comey as an attempt to derail the investigation rather than that the guy was just a lose cannon whom neither "side" could trust to be impartial anymore, the mounting evidence that the entire investigation, up to an including the manipulation of evidence to obtain an investigation in the first place, is rapidly painting this less as a president obstructing justice, as a president attempting to defend himself from an illegal and unjust investigation, levied by partisan's inserted into the justice department and FBI by the previous president.
If Trump is obstructing justice now, what was Obama doing back in 2016? It's hard to look at the actions of the FBI and DoJ during 2016 as anything other than partisan weaponizing of those agencies to go after the president's party's enemies (that was Obama btw), to do everything to help his party's candidate win, and then to delegitimize their enemy when she didn't. To ignore that, and then obsess over the extreme actions required to prevent this sort of miscarriage of justice requires a special set of blinders.
Fruit of the poison tree is relevant here. Again, we'll see how this shakes out, but it's looking a heck of a lot like Obama was so desperate to CYA regarding his administrations misuse of federal power, that they're pretty much willing to do anything to try to prevent the facts from being known. The entire Trump investigation looks a lot like the same kind of smoke screen that was the Plame investigation. Back then it was to protect the politically valuable false claim of "Bush lied, and our soldiers died". Today, it's about a host of abuses during the Obama era, which they had hoped would be swept under the rug (or even expanded on in a more permanent fashion) in a Clinton administration, and now they're in desperation mode.
Quote:
It'll be an interesting test if the GOP is willing to stand on the side of the law or will continue their assault on law enforcement so they can turn a blind eye to Trump's crimes and whistle while they deregulate.
It's not an assault on law enforcement to go after the bureaucrats placed in high positions over those law enforcement officers and who have consistently put their political agendas ahead of their oaths both as government appointees *and* as law enforcement officers. It's funny that the left trots out this whole "they're going after the good people who work at the FBI" language, but if you were to actually talk to rank and file FBI agents and officers, they see a cancer in their own upper echelon and are on board with this being rooted out. They were furious when Comey failed to recommend indictment of Clinton. Many of them are also very skeptical of the basis for the whole "Russia Collusion" BS. It stinks of made up political claim, and not so much an actual legal investigation.
When the sheriff is corrupt, going after him isn't a disservice to those who wear the badge. I can see how you might mistake this, but no one outside the liberal echo chamber actually think this. Most people see what was going on in the FBI and DoJ as gross political manipulation of the highest order and want it exposed.
Easy test: What exact crime (ie: actual code) does anyone think Trump may have violated here? Where in the law does "collusion with Russia" come in? No one seems to know. Which is your first clue that this isn't really a criminal investigation, but a political witch hunt.