"The CBO report provided a broad range of the estimated number of full-time jobs created because of the stimulus Ã" from a low of 500,000 to a high of 3.3 million jobs."
Yeah... largely government or government-sponsored, tax-paid jobs, all while the private sector was still LOSING jobs.
I hate to break this to you, but tax-paid jobs are not an overall economic "stimulus", no matter how you slice it. The numbers don't add up. It's nothing more than an illusion of success.
"For instance, if you followed the rhetoric, you might think that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney differ significantly on their desired health care policies, when in fact based on their track record they fundamentally agree on what's a good idea."
Not to mention that RomneyCare failed, big time.
This teacher thing might actually be a good idea... but it doesn't matter because it would never fly. Teachers' Unions do not want good teachers to be singled out. Rewarding good teaching was tried in New York and in fact many other places, and it was killed just about every time by the unions.
NYC even proposed a plan to give good teachers bonuses, nothing more. No scoring or ranking or judgment or salary scales, just a little cash bonus. The union said "Hell, no."
Correction: the papers that they were most famously trying to block were by Michaels and McKitrick. McIntyre did not step into the picture until later.
"All the claims made about the scientists where disproven in multiple investigations."
Absolute nonsense. What the "multiple investigations" found (5 of them so far by my count), was that they were not guilty of actionable wrongdoing. That is a far, far different thing than being proven innocent of "all the claims".
They very clearly, and by their own admission, engaged in conduct that most people would probably call unethical.
Technically -- and only technically -- they didn't quite break the rules. But that they did conspire to keep certain other parties they perceived to be "enemies" out of the peer-reviewed journals is not in doubt.
From Keith Briffa to Edward Cook, June 4, 2003:
"I am really sorry but I have to nag about that review -- Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting -- to support Dave Stahle's and really as soon as you can. Please
Keith"
Cook back to Briffa, June 4, 2003:
If published as is, this paper could really do some damage. It is also an ugly paper to review because it is rather mathematical, with a lot of Box-Jenkins stuff in it. It won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically...
The paper they were discussing was very likely this one. (pdf)
Phil Jones to Michael Mann on March 31, 2004:
Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.
Phil Jones (I don't know the recipient right now, I'd have to look it up) Jul. 8, 2004:
"The other paper by MM is just garbage -- as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well â" frequently as I see it. I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
However, as we know, although they tried Jones and Kevin Trenberth were not able to keep the Michaels & McKitrick (M&M) papers completely out after the first draft round.
Email from Phil Jones to several people, Jan. 29 2009:
"With free wifi in my room, I've just seen that M+M have submitted a paper to IJC on your H2 statistic -- using more years, up to 2007. They have also found your PCMDI data -- laughing at the directory name -- FOIA?... Anyway you'll likely get this for review, or poor Francis will. Best if both Francis and Myles did this. If I get an email from Glenn I'll suggest this."
Those are by no means all of the emails on the subject. No need to fill the whole page.
"You seem to have some difficulty understanding what "peer review" is about. Peer review serves multiple purposes. One is to improve papers before publication by getting their authors to revise them based on feedback. Another is to exclude from publication those papers which are not worthy of being published. It is both normal and ethical to discuss ways of keeping junk science out of journals."
You could at least find out what you're talking about before trying to refute somebody.
The emails showed that they conspired to prevent papers from ever being peer reviewed, or to rig that peer review.
I know full well what peer review is about, and that has nothing to do with the subject I was talking about.
"Oddly enough, none of you "skeptics" seem to be able to mount effective attacks on climate science, even after Climategate was supposed to have blown the lid off faulty science. Instead you're stuck just sniping at personalities, not the science."
Jesus Christ, man, read the thread! We were discussing whether there were BAD THINGS IN THE EMAILS, not the science!
"It is not. It's listed as a "speed related crash". There is no such thing as "suicide" as the cause of a fatal crash, so far as the federal government is concerned. "
The issue under discussion was MURDERS, and how they are reported, not suicides. Are suicides reported inaccurately in the United States? Maybe. But I never looked at those figures because suicide was not I was researching.
But as far as you thinking I am "a liar": have you given me any reason to care?
"As I look back at some of the things I have seen and heard, I realize I'm not the first to wake up (obviously)."
Yes, I have been one of those people for some years now. The problem that you often run into is that some people will try to knock YOU out (figuratively speaking), just so they can go back to sleep. Or maybe while sleepwalking is a better analogy.
"This is why I don't discount things like infowars.com which may be a bit over the top to people awake..."
Yes, Infowars may a bit over the top at times, but that doesn't mean that everything they say is wrong.
However, you get these sleepwalkers, again, refusing to believe ANYHING just because it's from a source like Infowars. Like those materials scientists who claim to have pretty unequivocally found thermite in the dust from 9/11... and not just a little, but a lot. Nobody would publish them. So they end up on Infowars, in order to get the word out any way they can. And now people are saying it's not believable because it's on Infowars. Wait, what?
"How is GATT and NAFTA not free-trade? Or at least freer than what previously existed?"
Because they treat apples and oranges (vastly different economies) as if they were the same. Well, as I said before, GATT much more than NAFTA. One of the things it does is allow money to walk across borders with effectively no exchange rate... which is a bad thing.
Let me give you an example that I have run into personally (I'll try to keep it brief):
A U.S. corporation posts a request for bids on a large programming job. You are a programmer in the U.S. You bid on the job at $10 per hour. Someone from a developing or disadvantaged country, let's call it Nation X, bids $5 an hour. Now, all else being equal, as a corporation you would be tempted to take the $5 bid, no? And that seems "fair"... straight-up, direct market competition.
Except that it's not. See, in the U.S., $10 USD buys about, let's say, 4 pounds of rice. But in Nation X, $5 USD buys 16 pounds of rice.
So in terms of the economy of Nation X, that programmer is actually getting paid the equivalent of about $40 per hour.
Doesn't sound quite so "fair" now, does it? When somebody can do the same work you do, and buy 4 times as much with their paycheck? It starts to look a lot less like real "competition".
And in addition, that money is also walking straight out of the U.S., never to be seen again (in any kind of direct way, anyway). This kind of practice bleeds our economy, just so that greedy corporations can save a few bucks. And sure... they do save a few bucks. But the cost is a lost U.S. job, and the loss of a good portion of that money to the U.S.
That's why it's not "free trade". In general, GATT may have more to do with products than with labor, but the same basic idea holds.
"we never remotely tried real gun control in the usa"
If you are really talking about "restrictions on the availability of firearms", then we most definitely HAVE tried it here, in different states and municipalities, to varying degrees, for over 50 years. Actually more, because many of the US firearms restriction laws date back to the 1930s.
"Good scientists try to keep papers out of journals if they think it's bad science. Good scientists don't welcome ignorant criticism or criticism in bad faith. Good scientists would be aware when some nutcase in the energy industry is firing billion dollar bullets at them, and good scientist will fight back."
But that isn't what they did. They made an agreement to try to block legitimate criticisms of their statistical methods by McIntyre and McKittrick, which have since been validated by statisticians.
So they were trying to block legitimate science, from people who knew what the hell they were talking about.
"I will bash the scientists involved. I have read all the e-mails and was appalled at what I saw."
Yes, I had them too. I don't claim to have read ALL of them, but I did read a significant portion and all of your allegations are true.
"As to them being "ultimately cleared them of wrongdoing"..."
It rather disgusts me when people say that. It is a gross distortion of the truth. Every one of the 5 completed investigations I am aware of questioned their methods or data, in one way or another. I count the House of Commons, which stated the scientists
"did not violate accepted practices, but those practices have to change."
"... found that there was no falsification of data and that the data and methods used were reliable and robust."
Ummm... not quite. Every investigation so far has questioned certain aspects of their data and methods. They found no wrongdoing, but they did NOT endorse the results as "reliable and robust". On the contrary, as I mentioned, their data and or methods were found to be questionable by all 5 investigations that have been completed so far.
I'm not sure that's all of them. When this first popped up, the UK government said they were going to do a separate investigation of precisely those data and methods, and expected that it would take about 3 years to complete. I don't think those 3 years have passed yet.
"Perhaps its because in the one case there was something wrong, and in the other there wasn't. And then you just know the trolls of the world would start with their ill-informed nonsense"
There were plenty of things "wrong" here. The fact that they were trying to keep secrets that were legally public information (resisting FOI requests) is definitely very, very wrong. And that wasn't the only wrong thing, but it was probably among the worst.
"The worst thing these emails show is someone asking what function would best fit his data."
That's simply not true. I had (might still have, I should look) a copy of the leaked emails, and they did show worse things than that.
For example, they proved that the researchers:
(A) were engaged in a united attempt to keep other people's papers out of the peer-reviewed journals (maybe not illegal but certainly not ethical),
(B) agreed to avoid giving information to certain people they viewed to be on "the other side", even if it meant they had to break the law to do so, and
(C) attempted to illegally refuse perfectly legitimate FOI requests.
Not to mention some of their other behavior which, while again not criminal, was hardly very professional.
Other countries have other quirks in their statistical reporting. So part of the difference seen between the U.S. and other countries, is just that we are more open (and in some cases, a bit more honest) about what the numbers really are.
"Numerous statistics show how it has been an absolute failure on countries like Australia. Criminals have no need to fear John Q Public (no pun or reference intended with your Slashdot name) so other violent crimes have increased drastically. I'm to lazy at the moment to dig for the statistics, just figured I'd point you in that direction in case you were interested."
Yes, I know, but if this person isn't going to believe Department of Justice statistics he (or she) isn't going to believe those, either.
br/>
It's actually worse than that, because the way the statistics are kept can drastically influence what people infer.
In England, for example, a killing is not labeled a "murder" in the statistics until they convict the perpetrator in court. If they never find or convict the killer, it never gets listed as a "murder". Whereas in the United States, of course, the statistics show it as a murder regardless of whether the killer is ever found, much less prosecuted.
So I always cringe when someone says, for example, "But look at England... their murder rate is so much lower."
"so countries with stricter gun control meaning less deaths... it just means nothing to you"
That is nothing even remotely like what I wrote. What I wrote is that We've tried it here and it doesn't work. It's not that I don't care about those other countries, it's that what works for them doesn't seem to work here.
"what can one say to someone like you? the delusion is a sealed space, reality has no meaning or bearing"
Wow. Delusion, is it? Hahaha. Well, many millions of dollars and man-hours have been spent by the government gathering and collating the statistics that support my "delusion". I don't think your opinion has much weight in comparison.
so if i said universal healthcare meant they spent less money and lived longer in other countries... different culture?
No, I would say you are trying to make a straw-man argument.
Yes, that is true, I mis-spoke about that one. Nevertheless, that and GATT were promoted as "free trade" when they are actually anything but.
"The real point is that for someone to claim "I want to fix it!" then take no action or extend what is broken shows how broken our system currently is."
Yes, but what are they to do? Other than vote for RP or Gary Johnson I mean? Because neither of the Big Two parties are going to do it, treaties can only be made and broken at the top, there is no grass-roots way to do that unless you start another OWS or something.
"You look at a site which is practically surrounded by signs flashing 'disinformation' and you have not an inkling as to why a serious visitor would be dubious about its contents. You need to exercise way more skepticism in assessing the credibility of your sources of information."
On the contrary, I do. You see, I didn't just look at the fluff and ASSUME, as you did. I took the trouble to look up Professor Latour and his reputation which, unlike the site on which it happened to reside, might actually have some bearing on the CONTENT, which is the important thing. YOU didn't even get that far.
"What I wrote was that "I've made no claim of invalidity" and since an ad hominem argument is in essence a claim of invalidity there can be no ad hom. Yes?"
First, you DID make a claim of invalidity (more on that in a moment). Second, that isn't what you wrote. You wrote this:
To establish an ad hominem you would have to show that I dismissed the validity of an argument (or truth of a fact) based on a personal attribute of the "speaker."
That is what the "hominem" part means, technically... but it is commonly used to refer to the "source", not necessarily a person. In this case, you looked at that "source", didn't like it's looks, and ON THAT BASIS, according to what YOU wrote later, decided it was among:
"... these pseudo-scientific refutations of climate science..."
So, you did, in fact judge the validity of Latour's writing, based on the "source". And not even really the actual source (Latour), but the location you found it in. Just as I stated in my analogy. You are trying to claim that it is perfectly valid to dismiss, for example, the Declaration of Independence not because of its content, but whether you found it on Discovery.com or Disney.com.
Which, as I stated before, you are perfectly welcome to do. But you have no right, then, to judge the validity of its content based solely on that location, without having read it. Which you DID do.
"Again, it's not a question of validity, every word he wrote could be true. "
Yes, it is a question of validity. You were attempting to rebut my own comment by calling Latour's piece a "pseudo-scientific refutation", without having even read it.
"no matter how you or the propaganda you swallow without thought phrases it, we have a country with too much senseless gun death, and the solution is a lot more strict controls"
"Swallow propaganda without thought"??? Listen, asshole (just my opinion): I have taken the trouble to look at the DOD statistics MYSELF. Don't give me this shit about "swallowing propaganda without thought". It isn't propaganda, it's hard facts that I have personally taken a considerable amount of time and trouble to verify.
Make sure of your own facts before you go around calling people names.
As for your other statements: the fact that it may work in other countries has no bearing on whether it would work in the United States. I repeat: we've been trying it in various forms (no wordplay or nitpicking on MY end... I mean "tighter restrictions on firearms", the same as you do), and IT DOESN'T WORK.
To further explain this issue (which you would know if you really researched this): the vast majority of gun violence in the United States is related, directly or indirectly, to the illegal drug trade. In exactly the same way that so much gun violence was caused by Prohibition in the 30s. The huge majority of it isn't regular citizens killing regular citizens, or even criminals killing regular citizens. No, most of it is criminals killing criminals.
And just as repealing Prohibition eliminated most of the problem, reforming our ridiculous drug laws will get rid of most of this one. It worked in Portugal, for just one example.
But no... I don't buy your argument that just because it worked in Australia or somewhere, that it would work here. We have a different culture, and we have some different problems.
Slashdot Mirror
"The CBO report provided a broad range of the estimated number of full-time jobs created because of the stimulus Ã" from a low of 500,000 to a high of 3.3 million jobs."
Yeah... largely government or government-sponsored, tax-paid jobs, all while the private sector was still LOSING jobs.
I hate to break this to you, but tax-paid jobs are not an overall economic "stimulus", no matter how you slice it. The numbers don't add up. It's nothing more than an illusion of success.
"For instance, if you followed the rhetoric, you might think that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney differ significantly on their desired health care policies, when in fact based on their track record they fundamentally agree on what's a good idea."
Not to mention that RomneyCare failed, big time.
This teacher thing might actually be a good idea... but it doesn't matter because it would never fly. Teachers' Unions do not want good teachers to be singled out. Rewarding good teaching was tried in New York and in fact many other places, and it was killed just about every time by the unions.
NYC even proposed a plan to give good teachers bonuses, nothing more. No scoring or ranking or judgment or salary scales, just a little cash bonus. The union said "Hell, no."
Correction: the papers that they were most famously trying to block were by Michaels and McKitrick. McIntyre did not step into the picture until later.
"All the claims made about the scientists where disproven in multiple investigations."
Absolute nonsense. What the "multiple investigations" found (5 of them so far by my count), was that they were not guilty of actionable wrongdoing. That is a far, far different thing than being proven innocent of "all the claims".
They very clearly, and by their own admission, engaged in conduct that most people would probably call unethical.
Technically -- and only technically -- they didn't quite break the rules. But that they did conspire to keep certain other parties they perceived to be "enemies" out of the peer-reviewed journals is not in doubt.
From Keith Briffa to Edward Cook, June 4, 2003:
"I am really sorry but I have to nag about that review -- Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting -- to support Dave Stahle's and really as soon as you can. Please
Keith"
Cook back to Briffa, June 4, 2003:
If published as is, this paper could really do some damage. It is also an ugly paper to review because it is rather mathematical, with a lot of Box-Jenkins stuff in it. It won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically...
The paper they were discussing was very likely this one. (pdf)
Phil Jones to Michael Mann on March 31, 2004:
Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.
Phil Jones (I don't know the recipient right now, I'd have to look it up) Jul. 8, 2004:
"The other paper by MM is just garbage -- as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well â" frequently as I see it. I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
However, as we know, although they tried Jones and Kevin Trenberth were not able to keep the Michaels & McKitrick (M&M) papers completely out after the first draft round.
Email from Phil Jones to several people, Jan. 29 2009:
"With free wifi in my room, I've just seen that M+M have submitted a paper to IJC on your H2 statistic -- using more years, up to 2007. They have also found your PCMDI data -- laughing at the directory name -- FOIA? ... Anyway you'll likely get this for review, or poor Francis will. Best if both Francis and Myles did this. If I get an email from Glenn I'll suggest this."
Those are by no means all of the emails on the subject. No need to fill the whole page.
That is completely off-topic from the point I was making, which was that their behavior was unethical and possibly even illegal.
"You seem to have some difficulty understanding what "peer review" is about. Peer review serves multiple purposes. One is to improve papers before publication by getting their authors to revise them based on feedback. Another is to exclude from publication those papers which are not worthy of being published. It is both normal and ethical to discuss ways of keeping junk science out of journals."
You could at least find out what you're talking about before trying to refute somebody.
The emails showed that they conspired to prevent papers from ever being peer reviewed, or to rig that peer review.
I know full well what peer review is about, and that has nothing to do with the subject I was talking about.
"Oddly enough, none of you "skeptics" seem to be able to mount effective attacks on climate science, even after Climategate was supposed to have blown the lid off faulty science. Instead you're stuck just sniping at personalities, not the science."
Jesus Christ, man, read the thread! We were discussing whether there were BAD THINGS IN THE EMAILS, not the science!
"More of it is drug criminals than gun runners."
Um... that's exactly what I wrote, man.
"In the US, retired military is "inactive reserves" and *not* civilian. Applying that standard to Switzerland, how do your statistics stand up?"
By reducing the number of "civilians", you just made his argument stronger.
They've been effectively banned, at various times, in entire states, not just small areas.
Try doing some actual research.
"It is not. It's listed as a "speed related crash". There is no such thing as "suicide" as the cause of a fatal crash, so far as the federal government is concerned. "
The issue under discussion was MURDERS, and how they are reported, not suicides. Are suicides reported inaccurately in the United States? Maybe. But I never looked at those figures because suicide was not I was researching.
But as far as you thinking I am "a liar": have you given me any reason to care?
"As I look back at some of the things I have seen and heard, I realize I'm not the first to wake up (obviously)."
Yes, I have been one of those people for some years now. The problem that you often run into is that some people will try to knock YOU out (figuratively speaking), just so they can go back to sleep. Or maybe while sleepwalking is a better analogy.
"This is why I don't discount things like infowars.com which may be a bit over the top to people awake..."
Yes, Infowars may a bit over the top at times, but that doesn't mean that everything they say is wrong.
However, you get these sleepwalkers, again, refusing to believe ANYHING just because it's from a source like Infowars. Like those materials scientists who claim to have pretty unequivocally found thermite in the dust from 9/11... and not just a little, but a lot. Nobody would publish them. So they end up on Infowars, in order to get the word out any way they can. And now people are saying it's not believable because it's on Infowars. Wait, what?
"How is GATT and NAFTA not free-trade? Or at least freer than what previously existed?"
Because they treat apples and oranges (vastly different economies) as if they were the same. Well, as I said before, GATT much more than NAFTA. One of the things it does is allow money to walk across borders with effectively no exchange rate... which is a bad thing.
Let me give you an example that I have run into personally (I'll try to keep it brief):
A U.S. corporation posts a request for bids on a large programming job. You are a programmer in the U.S. You bid on the job at $10 per hour. Someone from a developing or disadvantaged country, let's call it Nation X, bids $5 an hour. Now, all else being equal, as a corporation you would be tempted to take the $5 bid, no? And that seems "fair"... straight-up, direct market competition.
Except that it's not. See, in the U.S., $10 USD buys about, let's say, 4 pounds of rice. But in Nation X, $5 USD buys 16 pounds of rice.
So in terms of the economy of Nation X, that programmer is actually getting paid the equivalent of about $40 per hour.
Doesn't sound quite so "fair" now, does it? When somebody can do the same work you do, and buy 4 times as much with their paycheck? It starts to look a lot less like real "competition".
And in addition, that money is also walking straight out of the U.S., never to be seen again (in any kind of direct way, anyway). This kind of practice bleeds our economy, just so that greedy corporations can save a few bucks. And sure... they do save a few bucks. But the cost is a lost U.S. job, and the loss of a good portion of that money to the U.S.
That's why it's not "free trade". In general, GATT may have more to do with products than with labor, but the same basic idea holds.
"States have no special status here, vigilance is necessary at all levels."
That is certainly true, but slightly out of context of the remark to which I was replying.
The Jefferson quote makes my point just fine.
"we never remotely tried real gun control in the usa"
If you are really talking about "restrictions on the availability of firearms", then we most definitely HAVE tried it here, in different states and municipalities, to varying degrees, for over 50 years. Actually more, because many of the US firearms restriction laws date back to the 1930s.
It isn't me who is delusional here.
I am done with this conversation.
"Good scientists try to keep papers out of journals if they think it's bad science. Good scientists don't welcome ignorant criticism or criticism in bad faith. Good scientists would be aware when some nutcase in the energy industry is firing billion dollar bullets at them, and good scientist will fight back."
But that isn't what they did. They made an agreement to try to block legitimate criticisms of their statistical methods by McIntyre and McKittrick, which have since been validated by statisticians.
So they were trying to block legitimate science, from people who knew what the hell they were talking about.
"I will bash the scientists involved. I have read all the e-mails and was appalled at what I saw."
Yes, I had them too. I don't claim to have read ALL of them, but I did read a significant portion and all of your allegations are true.
"As to them being "ultimately cleared them of wrongdoing"..."
It rather disgusts me when people say that. It is a gross distortion of the truth. Every one of the 5 completed investigations I am aware of questioned their methods or data, in one way or another. I count the House of Commons, which stated the scientists
"did not violate accepted practices, but those practices have to change."
[emphasis mine]
"... found that there was no falsification of data and that the data and methods used were reliable and robust."
Ummm... not quite. Every investigation so far has questioned certain aspects of their data and methods. They found no wrongdoing, but they did NOT endorse the results as "reliable and robust". On the contrary, as I mentioned, their data and or methods were found to be questionable by all 5 investigations that have been completed so far.
I'm not sure that's all of them. When this first popped up, the UK government said they were going to do a separate investigation of precisely those data and methods, and expected that it would take about 3 years to complete. I don't think those 3 years have passed yet.
"Perhaps its because in the one case there was something wrong, and in the other there wasn't. And then you just know the trolls of the world would start with their ill-informed nonsense"
There were plenty of things "wrong" here. The fact that they were trying to keep secrets that were legally public information (resisting FOI requests) is definitely very, very wrong. And that wasn't the only wrong thing, but it was probably among the worst.
"The worst thing these emails show is someone asking what function would best fit his data."
That's simply not true. I had (might still have, I should look) a copy of the leaked emails, and they did show worse things than that.
For example, they proved that the researchers:
(A) were engaged in a united attempt to keep other people's papers out of the peer-reviewed journals (maybe not illegal but certainly not ethical),
(B) agreed to avoid giving information to certain people they viewed to be on "the other side", even if it meant they had to break the law to do so, and
(C) attempted to illegally refuse perfectly legitimate FOI requests.
Not to mention some of their other behavior which, while again not criminal, was hardly very professional.
I should have added:
Other countries have other quirks in their statistical reporting. So part of the difference seen between the U.S. and other countries, is just that we are more open (and in some cases, a bit more honest) about what the numbers really are.
"Numerous statistics show how it has been an absolute failure on countries like Australia. Criminals have no need to fear John Q Public (no pun or reference intended with your Slashdot name) so other violent crimes have increased drastically. I'm to lazy at the moment to dig for the statistics, just figured I'd point you in that direction in case you were interested."
Yes, I know, but if this person isn't going to believe Department of Justice statistics he (or she) isn't going to believe those, either. />
It's actually worse than that, because the way the statistics are kept can drastically influence what people infer.
br
In England, for example, a killing is not labeled a "murder" in the statistics until they convict the perpetrator in court. If they never find or convict the killer, it never gets listed as a "murder". Whereas in the United States, of course, the statistics show it as a murder regardless of whether the killer is ever found, much less prosecuted.
So I always cringe when someone says, for example, "But look at England... their murder rate is so much lower."
"so countries with stricter gun control meaning less deaths... it just means nothing to you"
That is nothing even remotely like what I wrote. What I wrote is that We've tried it here and it doesn't work. It's not that I don't care about those other countries, it's that what works for them doesn't seem to work here.
"what can one say to someone like you? the delusion is a sealed space, reality has no meaning or bearing"
Wow. Delusion, is it? Hahaha. Well, many millions of dollars and man-hours have been spent by the government gathering and collating the statistics that support my "delusion". I don't think your opinion has much weight in comparison.
so if i said universal healthcare meant they spent less money and lived longer in other countries... different culture?
No, I would say you are trying to make a straw-man argument.
"Citizens did not support NAFTA..."
Yes, that is true, I mis-spoke about that one. Nevertheless, that and GATT were promoted as "free trade" when they are actually anything but.
"The real point is that for someone to claim "I want to fix it!" then take no action or extend what is broken shows how broken our system currently is."
Yes, but what are they to do? Other than vote for RP or Gary Johnson I mean? Because neither of the Big Two parties are going to do it, treaties can only be made and broken at the top, there is no grass-roots way to do that unless you start another OWS or something.
"You look at a site which is practically surrounded by signs flashing 'disinformation' and you have not an inkling as to why a serious visitor would be dubious about its contents. You need to exercise way more skepticism in assessing the credibility of your sources of information."
On the contrary, I do. You see, I didn't just look at the fluff and ASSUME, as you did. I took the trouble to look up Professor Latour and his reputation which, unlike the site on which it happened to reside, might actually have some bearing on the CONTENT, which is the important thing. YOU didn't even get that far.
"What I wrote was that "I've made no claim of invalidity" and since an ad hominem argument is in essence a claim of invalidity there can be no ad hom. Yes?"
First, you DID make a claim of invalidity (more on that in a moment). Second, that isn't what you wrote. You wrote this:
To establish an ad hominem you would have to show that I dismissed the validity of an argument (or truth of a fact) based on a personal attribute of the "speaker."
That is what the "hominem" part means, technically... but it is commonly used to refer to the "source", not necessarily a person. In this case, you looked at that "source", didn't like it's looks, and ON THAT BASIS, according to what YOU wrote later, decided it was among:
"... these pseudo-scientific refutations of climate science ..."
So, you did, in fact judge the validity of Latour's writing, based on the "source". And not even really the actual source (Latour), but the location you found it in. Just as I stated in my analogy. You are trying to claim that it is perfectly valid to dismiss, for example, the Declaration of Independence not because of its content, but whether you found it on Discovery.com or Disney.com.
Which, as I stated before, you are perfectly welcome to do. But you have no right, then, to judge the validity of its content based solely on that location, without having read it. Which you DID do.
"Again, it's not a question of validity, every word he wrote could be true. "
Yes, it is a question of validity. You were attempting to rebut my own comment by calling Latour's piece a "pseudo-scientific refutation", without having even read it.
QED. You can't talk your way out of that now.
Have a nice day.
"no matter how you or the propaganda you swallow without thought phrases it, we have a country with too much senseless gun death, and the solution is a lot more strict controls"
"Swallow propaganda without thought"??? Listen, asshole (just my opinion): I have taken the trouble to look at the DOD statistics MYSELF. Don't give me this shit about "swallowing propaganda without thought". It isn't propaganda, it's hard facts that I have personally taken a considerable amount of time and trouble to verify.
Make sure of your own facts before you go around calling people names.
As for your other statements: the fact that it may work in other countries has no bearing on whether it would work in the United States. I repeat: we've been trying it in various forms (no wordplay or nitpicking on MY end... I mean "tighter restrictions on firearms", the same as you do), and IT DOESN'T WORK.
To further explain this issue (which you would know if you really researched this): the vast majority of gun violence in the United States is related, directly or indirectly, to the illegal drug trade. In exactly the same way that so much gun violence was caused by Prohibition in the 30s. The huge majority of it isn't regular citizens killing regular citizens, or even criminals killing regular citizens. No, most of it is criminals killing criminals.
And just as repealing Prohibition eliminated most of the problem, reforming our ridiculous drug laws will get rid of most of this one. It worked in Portugal, for just one example.
But no... I don't buy your argument that just because it worked in Australia or somewhere, that it would work here. We have a different culture, and we have some different problems.