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Everything about that was a farce. From the "Poop swastika" to the claim of getting "run over". It was all lies.

Well, for just one example, it's pretty obvious Trump has had repeated dealings with the mafia. Even the conservative sites are calling him out on it:

http://thefederalist.com/2015/...

When asked about people who he has known for years and even been seen with, he feigns ignorance and says he "can't remember". Really? Someone with a self-professed "perfect memory" and "genius level IQ" can't remember someone they have had dinner with a half dozen times?

Wow that is a great attitude to have. Good on ya. /notsarcasm

Thank you.

The US is so lucky to have a licensing system in place that guarantees all gun owners have the same do no harm philosophy and basic competency in handling firearms. Oh wait, I'm thinking of the license required to cut hair (http://www.beautyschoolsdirectory.com/faq/state_req.php).

Well in fairness, that is a licencing system, not a "guarentee" of anything much. :)

Pretty much anybody not recently incarcerated can have as many guns as they want in the US which is why we need our politicians to spend so much time and effort fighting gun control. /sarcasm

I get that feeling, and I understand the point of view that comes behind it...

On the other hand, you should consider the reasons behind the 2nd amendment and why we have it (and hunting wasn't it). The far right doesn't trust our government, and frankly it shouldn't, no one should. The US government has done many of the things that people complain about third world countries doing, including spying on its own people.

If you allow the US government to register all guns, it isn't much of a step to this:

http://thefederalist.com/2015/...
http://www.nationalreview.com/...

So what is the answer? That is a good question, all I can say is that many of the problems the US faces aren't the same as faced by nation states such as France or Germany (but that might change if they keep letting people in). We also don't have a unified public care system, either in benefits or healthcare, which is not the case of any other first world nation.

In some respects, the USA is the richest third world nation on the planet (unless you have money, then it is wonderful!)

Also see number four in this: http://thefederalist.com/2014/...

You picked the wrong scientist.

The Clinton Foundation seems to have figured it out. End up spending 10% of your income on charitable grants, and the rest goes for "overhead" including private jets and the like. Real easy to live like you have balls-ton of money if you do that!

The late jazz critic Whitney Balliet wrote, "All first-rate criticism first defines what we are confronting."

With that in mind, perhaps the AGW alarmists would be willing to confront popular criticisms of their ideology, as opposed to making the usual straw man arguments.

"Climate Change Is Real. Too Bad Accurate Climate Models Aren’t." would be a good starting place.

That graph by Roy Spencer has a huge problem in that all of the traces he shows of climate model runs and the HADCRUT and UAH temperature series all start from the same zero point in 1983. In order to achieve that Spencer had to shift all of the graphed lines up or down so they all lined up at 0 in 1983. That is not a valid scientific technique and makes the whole graph bogus.

The late jazz critic Whitney Balliet wrote, "All first-rate criticism first defines what we are confronting."

With that in mind, perhaps the AGW alarmists would be willing to confront popular criticisms of their ideology, as opposed to making the usual straw man arguments.

"Climate Change Is Real. Too Bad Accurate Climate Models Aren’t." would be a good starting place.

As far as we know, ONLY Hillary Clinton used her family email server.

You are mistaken. Hillary Clinton's top aides also used her private server.

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/11/video-oh-by-the-way-hillarys-top-aides-used-private-e-mail-too/

The situation is perfectly clear. As Secretary of State, she was provided with a government email account that would archive her emails. She didn't use it, meaning she was free to delete any embarrassing emails with no check other than her own conscience.

She absolutely violated government policy by doing this. The State Department forced an ambassador to resign specifically because he violated this policy. Who was the head of the State Department when this happened? Hillary Clinton.

http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/05/hillarys-state-dept-forced-the-resignation-of-an-ambassador-for-using-private-e-mail/

I'm not saying that I agree with her using her own personal email server, but I also don't think this "controversy" rises to the level of me really giving a rat's ass about. Actually it rises to the level of "She should have known better... but meh".

Really? An elected official, a public servant, took affirmative steps to make sure that you and I cannot use FOIA to look at her official correspondence during her time in office, and that's "meh"?

Tell me, do you have one standard for Hillary Clinton and another one for Richard Nixon? Because IMHO what she did was far worse. No federal law required Nixon to record conversations, so he wasn't violating the law when he erased parts of the tapes. She was violating the law multiple ways, and knew she was doing so, and her actions took place over a span of years.

What does concern me is that the right decided to use this low grade political material so early that it will be forgotten by the time the election season actually hits full stride. So the more important question is what's going on that requires the gullible media's distraction on something as trivial as email usage by a retired secretary of state?

You are speculating that the Republicans are trying to distract the media? Do you think that would actually even work? Given the choice between publishing dirt on Republicans and publishing dirt on Hillary Clinton, the media will publish the dirt on Republicans 99 times out of 100, and the other time they will publish dirt on both.

There is a group trying to get records related to Benghazi, the incident where a US Ambassador and several other people were killed. We have reports that Hillary Clinton personally refused to beef up the security when the ambassador requested it. It would be nice to check the email records to see if this is true or not, so there is an FOIA request to see her email. It turns out that the State Department cannot turn over emails that they don't have.

This is a big deal. Hillary Clinton is not complying with the legal requirements of discovery during a lawsuit. She handed over 55,000 printed pages and claims that it's everything, but we just have to trust her on whether it really is everything.

We have no record of any emails from the Secretary of State for a period of months that includes Benghazi. And we have photographs of her using a Blackberry during those months, and a Blackberry is useful for exactly one thing, email.

Also, does it bother you that she is just straight-up lying about this? She said nothing for a week, and then came up with this weak-sauce excuse that she just didn't want to have two devices. Just two weeks previous to this blowup, she said on television that she uses both an iPhone and a Blackberry.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2561329

What she can't avoid is the memo's she sent out to her own staffers that detailed using private email for public business is a no no.

She even forced out an ambassador in 2012 in part for doing what she did:

http://thefederalist.com/2015/...

The inspector general’s report specifically noted that Gration violated State Department policy by using a private, unsanctioned e-mail service for official business. In its executive summary listing its key judgments against the U.S. ambassador to Kenya who served under Hillary Clinton, the inspector general stated that Gration’s decision to willfully violate departmental information security policies highlighted Gration’s “reluctance to accept clear-cut U.S. Government decisions.” The report claimed that this reluctance to obey governmental security policies was the former ambassador’s “greatest weakness.”

So did she wrongfully remove the ambassador, or did she hold him to a standard she knew she was violating herself?

In fact what we really do need is more scientists expressing their political opinions and backing them up with hard facts and of course working to dismantle the lies put out by professional politicians.

Of course they often don't back up their opinions with facts. In fact, many of the "facts" they offer up are often myths themselves.

https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2...
http://thefederalist.com/2014/...

Take a quick read to learn about some of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's penchant for mythology, then let's talk about whether or not he's expressing his political opinions and backing them up with hard facts.

Some conservatives seem to hate him just for being a smart black guy who is associated with science.

I don't know anyone who feels this way. And I read a lot of conservative blog stuff, and none of the top conservative bloggers feel this way.

However, the top conservative bloggers have pretty much written Mr. Tyson off as a self-important troll.

His version of Cosmos seems to be as much about trashing religion as it is about science. Right in the first episode of his version of Cosmos there was a weirdly slanted retelling of a historical incident, as if he had to go out of his way to slam religion.

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/historians-of-science-poke-holes-in-new-cosmos-series

Just recently the blogs were mocking him for his tweet speculating that the Bill of Rights would probably have had 12 things in it if humans had 12 fingers. The actual history is so easy to check and clearly he didn't bother. (There were actually 12 Amendments proposed, and after the debate 10 of them got passed. Hey, maybe if humans had 10 fingers only 10 Amendments would have been proposed and 8 passed? Um...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/12/23/if-we-had-12-fingers-i-wonder-whether-the-bill-of-rights-would-have-been-12-amendments-long/

But the thing that catapulted him to prominence and made everyone write him off as a troll was when a blogger started trying to track down the actual history of stories Mr. Tyson said had happened to him. In one story, he said that he was serving on a jury, and he smugly pointed out that the amount of drugs at issue in the case was listed as a trivially tiny amount; but worse was his claim that George W. Bush invoked astronomy in an effort to be religiously divisive. The blogger couldn't find any evidence that these stories actually happened, and found persuasive evidence that they were fabricated. Then, when he was called on this, Mr. Tyson doubled down. Finally, he issued a non-apology apology.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/16/another-day-another-quote-fabricated-by-neil-degrasse-tyson/

http://thefederalist.com/2014/10/02/neil-tysons-final-words-on-his-quote-fabrications-my-bad/

I must confess that before the above-listed events occurred, I considered myself a Tyson fan. Looking back, I knew very little about him, other than that he seemed to know a lot about science and seemed to be able to communicate it. Now, having read those stories, he seems to me more like a self-promoter who is using science as his "in" to make people pay attention to him.

P.S. If you have any actual evidence to support your claim, that some conservatives hate Mr. Tyson because he is "a smart black guy who is associated with science," please provide this evidence. URLs to hateful blog posts would be a good start. You get a gold if you can find a top conservative blogger (Drudge, Ace of Spades, Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, etc.) who holds this position; but I'll still give a bronze if you can find anyone.

Some conservatives seem to hate him just for being a smart black guy who is associated with science.

I don't know anyone who feels this way. And I read a lot of conservative blog stuff, and none of the top conservative bloggers feel this way.

However, the top conservative bloggers have pretty much written Mr. Tyson off as a self-important troll.

His version of Cosmos seems to be as much about trashing religion as it is about science. Right in the first episode of his version of Cosmos there was a weirdly slanted retelling of a historical incident, as if he had to go out of his way to slam religion.

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/historians-of-science-poke-holes-in-new-cosmos-series

Just recently the blogs were mocking him for his tweet speculating that the Bill of Rights would probably have had 12 things in it if humans had 12 fingers. The actual history is so easy to check and clearly he didn't bother. (There were actually 12 Amendments proposed, and after the debate 10 of them got passed. Hey, maybe if humans had 10 fingers only 10 Amendments would have been proposed and 8 passed? Um...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/12/23/if-we-had-12-fingers-i-wonder-whether-the-bill-of-rights-would-have-been-12-amendments-long/

But the thing that catapulted him to prominence and made everyone write him off as a troll was when a blogger started trying to track down the actual history of stories Mr. Tyson said had happened to him. In one story, he said that he was serving on a jury, and he smugly pointed out that the amount of drugs at issue in the case was listed as a trivially tiny amount; but worse was his claim that George W. Bush invoked astronomy in an effort to be religiously divisive. The blogger couldn't find any evidence that these stories actually happened, and found persuasive evidence that they were fabricated. Then, when he was called on this, Mr. Tyson doubled down. Finally, he issued a non-apology apology.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/16/another-day-another-quote-fabricated-by-neil-degrasse-tyson/

http://thefederalist.com/2014/10/02/neil-tysons-final-words-on-his-quote-fabrications-my-bad/

I must confess that before the above-listed events occurred, I considered myself a Tyson fan. Looking back, I knew very little about him, other than that he seemed to know a lot about science and seemed to be able to communicate it. Now, having read those stories, he seems to me more like a self-promoter who is using science as his "in" to make people pay attention to him.

P.S. If you have any actual evidence to support your claim, that some conservatives hate Mr. Tyson because he is "a smart black guy who is associated with science," please provide this evidence. URLs to hateful blog posts would be a good start. You get a gold if you can find a top conservative blogger (Drudge, Ace of Spades, Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, etc.) who holds this position; but I'll still give a bronze if you can find anyone.

We're talking about a guy that makes up facts and quotes that fit his 'message.' This has been detailed before

Yes, he is very, very smart... LOL.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/17/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-the-science-of-smug-condescension/

Do Democrats Always Win Close Statewide Elections?

. For whatever reason, when statewide races are decided by less than 1 point, Democrats win almost three-quarters of the time. When the margin opens to 1-2 points, that advantage dissipates, and the Democrats win only half the races:

You (The US) already spends the most on education per student then any other nation and yet have some of the worst test results.

That may be true, but it's not going to teachers!. (Link describes North Carolina, but I think the same is true elsewhere.)

I don't think "throwing money at it" will make it better. Sure, teachers will take home more money but the test results clearly show this doesnt improve the quality of education.

This study disagrees.

Also, the core claim that the US spends the most per student - if we are talking about primary and secondary students - not college - is not true although it is on the high end. Switzerland, Norway and Luxembourg spend more, and Austria and Denmark are almost same.

You (The US) already spends the most on education per student then any other nation and yet have some of the worst test results.

That may be true, but it's not going to teachers!. (Link describes North Carolina, but I think the same is true elsewhere.)

I don't think "throwing money at it" will make it better. Sure, teachers will take home more money but the test results clearly show this doesnt improve the quality of education.

This study disagrees.

>Your claim that Tyson said something in an episode of Cosmos is not a citation.

It's hardly difficult to verify.
And here is a description of the episode and the opening sequence I was talking about:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2...

And here is some deniers complaining BECAUSE he said it:
http://thefederalist.com/2014/...

>Common sense had better apply to most theories
It doesn't because common sense was evolved to deal with extreme macro-level abstractions based on extremely imperfect measuring devices known as "human senses" after being passed through a network of filters and prejudices in the brain before we're even aware of them.
There is no common sense to the idea that if I run faster my watch will run slower that's why Newton never considered such a thing and nobody else did for 500 years - until Einstein proved it.
Now on my pocket watch at the rate I can run, the difference is too small too measure, but stick an atomic clock on a plane and another perfectly synced one on the ground and compare them after a supersonic flight - guess what, the one on the plane is now behind, because time runs slower as you accelerate.
And thats one of the *EASY* ones.

>If you hold your hand closer to a light bulb or a heating element, it will get warmer.

And if you wrap one hand in reflective foil and hold it even closer it may STILL not get as warm as the bare hand.
Many, many things determine how much heat something gets beyond distance. It's quite easy to believe that with just a few variables right, Venus and Earth could have receive about the same amount of heat at some point. At least, to people who are versed in science.

"Common sense is the greatest enemy of science" - Albert Einstein (a man who, coincidentally, is famous for theories that are all completely and utterly in violation of common sense).
Many scientists have remarked that the most amazing thing about the universe is that it makes any sense at all - expecting it to make COMMON sense, a silly set of human abstraction devoid of critical thought... that's asking WAY too much.

I see you're using "special" terminology in which "fraud" more or less has the meaning of payments for care to the elderly. In that case it has been a "marvelous success" which in ordinary language is commonly known as a minor disaster. But chin up, worse is yet to come.

After One Year, Obamacare’s Biggest Achievement: Hiding Its Cost

And a minor clarification is needed, Obamacare was written by Progressive lobbyists and Democrats, not think tanks on the right. Even if there are some similarities there are also substantial and important differences.

But now I'm curious, are you truly so uncurious that it never crossed your mind to investigate why think tanks on the right abandoned those policies, why they decided they were in fact bad ideas?

Also, you can thank the Democratic party in general, and Ted Kennedy in particular, for blocking one or more generally similar schemes in the past. The Democrats did the right thing for the wrong reason then. Now they did the wrong thing for the wrong reasons and we'll all be paying.

What vocal feminists in the last 5 years are you referring to?

When I discussed with another feminist this same line of thinking by pointing out a self-proclaimed feminist on Twitter who said some extreme things (and got a favorites and retweets for the extreme things she said), her response: "But that's just one example!". I get the sense that if I gave you an example, you would then try and come up with reasons why the example is not invalid or say "but I need no more examples".

In order to try and stop this line of thinking, here's a useful article documenting some of the extremes modern feminists engage in http://thefederalist.com/2014/07/28/irony-thy-name-is-feminism/.

What do you think it's like to play as a young girl and be told that the only characters you can play are men?

There are plenty of video games which do not give the characters gender at all: Card games, of course, as well as games like Tetris and Candy Crush. The type of games I enjoy, strategy games, usually allow people to play female characters which do not look like DDD Barbies. HOMM3 has a number of female as well as non-human heroes you can play; likewise with Civ 4.

The only games I can think of which only allow you to play a male lead are some really violent First Person Shooter games (Doom forces you to play the anonymous "Doom guy"). But, there is nothing forcing a woman to play that kind of game, and those are not the kinds of games most women enjoy playing.

This says it much better than I could. Most students carrying 100k in debt, most parents sending kids to school, most everyone really wants a job from college, not the "higher goal". Not that the "higher goal" is bad or wrong, but it's not what's being sold by universities. I think you'd get few takers at the price for what you see as the primary goal, but if everyone were honest I think it would all sort itself out, and most people would go to trade schools, and that would be best for everyone.

No sir. Not one bit. Nobody doing shady things other than those mean old nasty ignorant rethuggggggggglicans. http://thefederalist.com/2014/...

Saw this doing the rounds today:

'The Death of Expertise'

The basic problem, is because the Internet has convinced dumb and ignorant people that their uninformed bullshit opinions stand on the same ground as those of people who have been studying the subject for decades. It stems from the metastatisation of the retards' confusion of democracy with "equal air-time for ignorance":

Today, any assertion of expertise produces an explosion of anger from certain quarters of the American public, who immediately complain that such claims are nothing more than fallacious “appeals to authority,” sure signs of dreadful “elitism,” and an obvious effort to use credentials to stifle the dialogue required by a “real” democracy.

But democracy, as I wrote in an essay about C.S. Lewis and the Snowden affair, denotes a system of government, not an actual state of equality. It means that we enjoy equal rights versus the government, and in relation to each other. Having equal rights does not mean having equal talents, equal abilities, or equal knowledge. It assuredly does not mean that “everyone’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s.” And yet, this is now enshrined as the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/