jonottawa

QFT

I absolutely agree with that. However, when someone frames an argument in a dishonest way, you can (if the misrepresentation is blatant enough) certainly reply with near-metaphysical certainty that their accusation doesn't apply to you. Cognitive dissonance doesn't enter it. I can't (and don't) claim to be right about every issue. Though as someone who greatly admired Bill Clinton when he was president & who supported Hillary and then Obama (after Hillary lost the nomination) in 2008, and who now is more excited (though prepared to be disappointed yet again) about the Trump presidency than any presidency in my lifetime, I think I'm in a better position to argue that I'm FAIRLY RESISTANT to cognitive dissonance than your average bear (or than a lifelong leftist.) Here are some examples of things I DON'T like about Trump (or his agenda,) for instance: Kowtowing to Bibi (especially on Jerusalem, which I find incredibly offensive & counter-productive.) Preemptively ruling out a prosecution of Hillary instead of letting the FBI/DoJ do their jobs once he takes office. Abolishing the estate tax. Saying an unqualified yes to torture (I'd much rather he just said 'I'll keep them guessing' or at least 'only in EXTRAORDINARY circumstances' to torture.) Involving his children in his administration. Signaling a willingness to compromise too easily. The other side HATES him & showing weakness won't change that. Obama made the same mistake in 2009. Then Democrats got crushed in 2010, so his show of 'good faith' was NOT rewarded by the voters either. Oh look! More racist Hillary supporters:

I think Mike must be used to dealing with really unintelligent juries (forgive me if that's redundant.) He accuses me of something, and then does the old 'oh, he won't know how it applies to him anyway.' And then when I explain to him in a very simple, logical, brief, straightforward way why his argument (which he knew was bogus when he made it) is completely bogus he does the old 'Ha! He proved my point!' Mike, if someone were to accuse you of something, like being a murderer, or a rapist, or a pedophile, or a sociopath or an adulterer and then followed that up with 'oh, he won't know how that applies to him anyway' your denying the accusation wouldn't prove your accuser's point about anything. Though if your accuser crows 'Ha! He proved my point!' it might prove that your accuser argues like a grade-schooler. Either substantiate your accusation that by pointing out kenberg's double standard I am projecting, or withdraw it. Or just keep being intellectually dishonest. Whatever floats your boat. As for the video of the hate crime, whether the man was beaten because he was white, or because he was a Trump supporter, it was an appalling crime and I'm still waiting to hear which motive you think is more plausible. Mike's sophistry is so transparent that it reminds me of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwdba9C2G14 FWIW, here's my favorite piece of sophistry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PYb_anBMus

So now we're defending the perpetrators of a hate crime because they attacked a man not because he voted for Trump but just because he's white? Is anyone claiming the audio from the video is staged? Please DO watch the longer video. It's obviously more disturbing than the shorter video. The man is dragged away as one of his assailants steals his car at the end of the longer video. I'd like to ask Mike: Does he consider that a hate crime? Or when a group of folks from one ethnic group attacks an individual from another ethnic group because of his race it's only a hate crime if the right races are in the right spots? And look how biased Snopes is: So desperate to downplay this video that they decide to tell you what The Daily Stormer's reaction was. Please Snopes, tell me what David Duke said about this video so I can form my own opinion. Unbelievable. The bias and the subterfuge is palpable. Only cognitive dissonance is preventing you from seeing it.

It's funny, I went to search through kenberg's recent posts (just to make sure that he hadn't actually spoken out against the incivility/name-calling in this thread) and NONE of them from this thread appeared. Is this thread on Double-Secret Probation? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0cF2piwjYQ

Yes, that's why I gave him the courtesy of a reply. Hopefully he'll return my courtesy by acknowledging the truthfulness of my reply, but maybe he's 'gone.' You don't think the SNL bit was intended as humorous? You don't think most of the cartoons I post are intended to be humorous? Please tell me you're joking (did you get that one at least?) There you go being intellectually dishonest again. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop. I wasn't saying "WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH, someone on the Internet said something mean to me!" (Which is what you're implying.) I was responding to someone who accused me of being 'unrelentingly unpleasant' (because I used a little sarcasm?) by pointing out that he didn't have a lot to say when I was called all kinds of (incredibly) unpleasant nonsense. I was pointing out his double standard. Do you understand now? Because it doesn't apply to me. Because people like you can be as 'unrelentingly unpleasant' towards me as you like. But then PLEASE don't turn around and complain about how my occasional sarcasm has driven you to despondency. Be intellectually honest. Don't be a hypocrite. TIA

That's called cognitive dissonance. (I wish you wouldn't hide behind the excuse of 'unrelenting unpleasantness' when you've seen (and not commented on) the bile directed my (and Kaitlyn's) way in this thread, with virtually no comparable response. But whatever floats your boat.) And yes, like the SIGN SAYS, the truth can be unpleasant. Even unrelentingly unpleasant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance http://www.wheelofpersuasion.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/cognitive_dissonance.jpg http://www.lotusguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cognitive-dissonance.jpg Let me repeat again what I've said repeatedly: I am not here to 'change the minds' of those living in 'the Bubble' (see SNL sketch from the previous page.) I'm here to present solid arguments (interspersed with humor) so that an open-minded person can see the truth, or at least learn something that brings them closer to the truth. If people say vicious things to me, I tend to ignore it. Because I believe that reflects more on them than it does on me (and because they're probably doing it in part to either get my attention or an emotional reaction.) http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-wisdom-is-tolerance-of-cognitive-dissonance-robert-thurman-113-94-23.jpg

From what I'm reading in this thread, I think some folks believe that All in the Family was a documentary. Let's contrast criminals on a fictional TV show (with a regressive leftist political agenda) with criminals in real life, shall we? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0xsid5I5j0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7zEibNcejA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKOb-kmOgpI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GfkIfqoSS4

No, I'm pretty sure she's talking about this. And it's not proportional distribution, it's whoever wins the national popular vote gets ALL of the electoral votes from the states who have signed up. And it doesn't require amending the Constitution. But it does require that states totaling at least 270 Electoral Votes sign up, which hasn't happened yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daOH-pTd_nk

Yeah, no. If you mean that a 17-year old gangbanger who can barely read or do math at a 6th grade level needs Affirmative Action to get him into university or else society is full of racist crackers, you're bonkers (I believe that's the medical term.) There is no (significant) racism problem. There is a culture problem. There is an illegitimacy problem. There is a dependency problem. There is an unenforced border problem. There is an Orwellian media problem. There is a river in Egypt problem. Affirmative action IS the problem. It's racist. It's fundamentally unfair. And the only people who are exempt from it are the (marginally qualified for their professions) old fogeys who actually DID benefit from a somewhat racist society back in the olden days. At least you acknowledge that it is a form of discrimination. Hooray for words meaning things on a semi-consistent basis! No, that would be for anyone interested in how racial prejudice may have impacted one bright African American ~30 years ago (if you ignore the bits about how racial preferences benefited him.) I'm kinda 'do research for these people'd out. I think it's abundantly clear that if a bunch of white people formed a group called “The Race” which promoted white unity/teamwork/collaboration & opportunities for white folks that you'd say they were racist (at a minimum) & probably call them White Supremacists (I know, I had you at “The Race.”) If you think it's cogent to raise hell about 2 or 3 cases nationwide of 'Cop gone bad' each year when hundreds of young people are murdering each other in the ghetto to the sound of crickets, we have different ideas of what 'cogent' means. (Maybe cogent means nucking futs in the world where bigotry doesn't mean intolerance for people who don't share one's views?) So you think that blacks commit crimes at the same rate as whites but police only tend to respond when the crime is committed by a black person in order to manipulate the crime statistics? I'm trying to get your 'logic' here. Or is it that you think police should keep an Affirmative Action ledger and when they get a call they should ascertain the race of the suspect before they decide whether or not to respond? “I'm sorry ma'am, we've already reached our quota of sexual assaults by black men this month. We won't be able to assist you or else our 'armed confrontation' statistics will be all messed up.” And they also stop males of all races between the age of 15-40 more than they stop other demographic groups. Should they start randomly pulling over old ladies to balance out the statistics for you? Let's be serious. That's funny, my very regressive SJW leftist birth mother, who also lives in Victoria, draws the line at niqabs too. (It sounds like you do, anyway. There might be some hope for you yet.) I don't see why it's silly to ask your opinion (I assume you have an opinion on this that you don't wish to explicitly/publicly share) on whether 'diversity' is a universal good or ONLY in all countries that when you were born had 90%+ white populations. Surely after decades of listening to CBC you have some opinion on & understanding of the subject of 'diversity.' But I'll take that as a 'not a universal good, duh.' I don't see how someone who is an adherent of a faith-based religion like regressive leftism, despite having grown up in the glory days (albeit not perfect, but as close as we've come so far) of western civilization, with today's reality screaming at him that he's wrong, that the 'solutions' he's clung to for decades aren't working (and are in fact making things worse) and that we're on the wrong track, can claim that his beliefs are solely based on facts. If your lying eyes and memory can't convince you that at least some of your presuppositions are mistaken, I sure as hell won't be able to. There are other examples of things that I'm confident you believe in that meet your definition of racism (though it seems to me we've already agreed that Affirmative Action does.) For instance, I'm confident that you support race-based scholarships for some races and not others. I'm confident that you support student groups for Asians, Latinos, African Americans & Muslims, but not for whites. I'm confident that you support the right of people to celebrate Black pride, Gay pride & Asian pride, but not White pride. I'm confident that most of your fellow Kaitlyn-bashers (though probably not you) think it's fair that a private bakery owned by devout Christians be forced at gunpoint to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, but that it wouldn't be fair for a private bakery owned by devout Muslims to be forced at gunpoint to bake a cake with a picture of Mohammed on it (or to bake the same-sex wedding cake, for that matter.) (Okay, the last one technically isn't racism, just a textbook example of the regressive left's war on Christianity.) I'm not sure why this jpg seems appropriate. But somehow it does. :)

Ok. (I'll pretend it doesn't sound like you're bashing motherhood and the monumentally vital role that women have historically played as homemakers and raising healthy and well-adjusted children.) I would imagine it took a lot of independence for countless historical figures to do what they did. I guess they had a lot of independence, some might have even had so much that they declared it! I suppose it would depend on one's abilities, ambition, self-discipline and interests. I don't see how 'of course' it's twice as difficult for anyone. I would imagine there would have been TONS of opportunities for highly intelligent, ambitious & well-educated African Americans once the 60's rolled around & employers were looking to virtue signal & comply with the law. And let's not forget, you're talking about 50+ years ago. Remember the Cosby (that guy who sexually assaulted all those women after drugging them) Show with the successful Doctor & Lawyer & the adorable family? That was 30 YEARS AGO! There are tons of examples today. It wouldn't be a valid justification even if there weren't. But there are. (Besides, that didn't stop lots of (non-white) immigrants from all around the world from thriving in America.) Again, there are tons of role models out there. Neither of my parents went to university. Both my older sister and I got our Bachelor's degrees and went on to post-graduate school. She's a prosecutor. This is just not a valid excuse anymore, if it ever was, even a little. Such a flimsy excuse certainly doesn't justify the indefinite perpetuation of a RACIST governmental policy. I see what you did there. So now we make a huge non-sequitur where you no longer try to rationally justify your claims, you just 'imagine a society where we have decided that MikeH is right about everything.' Who are you to decide what's fair and just? To me, a meritocracy that emphasizes equality of opportunity is fair and just. To you, racial discrimination is fair and just. To me racial/gender quotas are abhorrent. They not only deprive more qualified people (perhaps even with epic, gut-wrenching sob stories of their own) of getting the jobs/education they've worked hard to earn, they also taint the reputation/stature of minorities/women who EARNED their place at the table but who might be suspected of being token Affirmative Action hires/selections. Or we could say 50 years IS the long road, and definitely long enough. There are lots of role models now. No young girl or black or black girl today wonders if she's going to be 'allowed' to pursue her dreams. Let's try to make our society as gender/race-blind as possible and end the divisiveness, racism & misandry we (and by we, I mean you)'ve created. Let's acknowledge that women who choose NOT to enter the workforce, but to raise a family instead (while their husbands work & provide, as men have done for generations,) should be praised, not scorned or derided and that silly arbitrary participation rate statistics are NOT the measure of a functional or moral or just society. Uhhh, no. But it should be (and is and will be after Affirmative Action is abolished) as easy for an equally QUALIFIED woman or black man to aspire to become a lawyer, doctor or engineer as it is for a white man. Doesn't drive me nuts (nothing drives me nuts today, because when I start to get vexed I just say 2 words to myself: President Trump.) It's just emotionally laden rhetoric designed to substitute for a valid argument. But your last sentence is certainly correct. It would be and IS unjustifiable. You're right about one other thing (but for the wrong reasons,) many (most?) African Americans living in America today ARE oppressed: They're oppressed in the sense that many of them are brought up (often in a single parent household, with no strong/moral male role model) in a (regressive left) culture that promotes degeneracy, illegitimacy, law-breaking, violence, promiscuity, victimhood, drug use & dependency & scorns old fashioned values like honesty, hard-work, common courtesy, educational achievement, thrift, sacrifice, family, marriage, monogamy, etc. They have to compete for unskilled jobs with millions of non citizens living in the US illegally, artificially (and drastically) lowering their job prospects & potential wages. Untold gobs of money are spent trying to educate them, but in most cases the negative cultural influence is too strong. They're oppressed because the regressive left has rigged the system & set them up to fail, then told them that they are failing because of Whitey. Affirmative Action doesn't do anything to fix that oppression and simply adds another victim (the innocent white boy (who also might have grown up in poverty in this degenerate culture) who didn't get the job or educational opportunity he earned) while depriving society of the lost marginal utility between the two candidates. Sorry, but just you saying it and wanting to believe it doesn't make it true. Welfare & a culture of degeneracy have destroyed (formerly strong and proud) black communities, not some 'discrimination' bogeyman. Though if you advocated (mild) Affirmative Action (speaking of generations of systemic discrimination) SOLELY ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC GROUNDS then you'd at least have ONE (albeit wobbly) leg to stand on.

Ok. It's actually a very simple issue. Racism is wrong. Sexism is wrong. Holding someone responsible for the (real or imagined) sins of their ancestors is wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right. Even if it was right at one time, 50 years is enough. We should repeal Affirmative Action. Oh NOW we're opposed to knee-jerk name-calling, how serendipitous. 50 years is long enough. The president is black (or half-black, I'm not sure if it's more politically correct to acknowledge his white half or to ignore it, perhaps a PC expert can illuminate me.) Hillary would have won if she hadn't been such a uniquely unqualified candidate (and, perhaps most importantly, she got WAY more votes solely for having a vagina than she lost solely for the same reason.) Nobody questions whether or not a well-qualified woman could become president. The glass ceiling HAS been shattered, it's just waiting for someone worthy to step through. (My money is on Ivanka (she'd also be the first Jewish president.)) Ok. I think they were well aware of their biases. It's just that in most (almost all?) cases they considered their racial beliefs to be self-evident. Most (educated) people are familiar with (everyone's favorite president) Lincoln's comments on race, for instance. Read (or watch on CNN, NBC, CBS, CBC, MSNBC or ABC) (almost) any election coverage written in the last 6 months in the NYT or Washington Post (or countless other lesser rags/websites) and you will see discrimination that forms part of the background to the story. It is so omnipresent that it seems that the writer and intended audience weren't even aware of the biases, in much the same fashion that allows Mike to repeatedly claim that Hillary Clinton is a unicorn who farts rainbows who would have fixed all of society's ills if only we'd let her extend (a SLIGHTLY more corrupt version of) the Obama administration for 4 more years & amnesty 15 million+ non-citizens living in the US illegally. Except (in most cases) the writer (loosely described as a 'journalist') WAS aware of the biases and wrote the story that way anyway, even if much of the audience wasn't. (So if I'm not being clear, I'm a lot more concerned with current media bias/groupthink/crybullying than with how people viewed the world back when scientists and educators weren't afraid (and were in fact encouraged) to follow the evidence wherever it led.) I don't know. Nor do I particularly care. I'd be mildly interested in knowing (if such a thing were knowable) how many unfortunate women who LONGED to do this or that but were prevented from doing so solely because of their gender there were. I do know that nowadays any woman with the ambition, drive & ability to become an astronomer or a medical doctor or a lawyer (though Lord knows why anybody would want to) can do so as readily as a man. Again, I don't know or particularly care. I would imagine there were quite a few Latino astronomers, doctors and lawyers in Mexico 80 years ago. How many Christian politicians are there in Japan? Or in Iran? Or in Pakistan? Or in China? Or in South Korea? I would guess none, but surely at least not more than a handful. I know there are female-only health clubs in Ottawa today. I see no reason why there shouldn't be male-only private clubs. I believe in freedom of association (and in intellectual consistency.) It was openly degenerate, but I don't see how a consensual sex act is sexist. Would it have been sexist if the class president was female and had screwed a hired Chippendale's dancer? As for how many women were in Engineering with you ... again … so what? Was it because they were forbidden to apply or because they were held to a higher standard? I doubt it. I strongly suspect it was due to a lack of interest in the field by the vast majority of young women. Nursing is dominated by women, does that mean that men who apply to nursing school should be held to a lower standard? Social work is dominated by women, same question. If a guy wants to run a daycare, should he be able to sue successfully when people prefer to leave their children with a woman? Should I be able to sue my government successfully because a woman will on average collect an old age pension for at least 5 years longer than I will? Or should I sue my doctor for keeping women alive longer than they keep men alive (I'm pretty sure it's a conspiracy fueled by discrimination & oppression, amirite?) Maybe I should sue the police for arresting, charging & incarcerating men in such disproportional numbers to the number of women who are arrested. Or sue my government for 'reparations' for all the men who fought & died in wartime compared to the paltry number of women who did. I think it's an outrage that such a high proportion of homeless people are men, & yet that they have shelters SPECIFICALLY for homeless women, don't you? I feel so victimized. Who should I sue? Let me sue all the things! I was shopping at the local drug store & they asked me at checkout if I wanted to donate money for women's health. Can you imagine? Don't they know it's 2016?! Should I be able to sue successfully because I've been to bars DOZENS of times in my life and NOT ONCE has a strange woman approached me and offered to buy ME a drink? Do you not see what nonsense this all is? Leave past injustices (real and imagined) in the past. And stop trying to create discrimination & oppression out of thin air. Focus on pragmatic, cost-effective solutions to today's problems, or at LEAST on ending policies that exacerbate today's problems. Stop punishing today's youth for the (real & imaginary) sins of their great-grandfathers. And stop perpetuating a culture of victimhood, injustice, dependency, degeneracy, dishonesty, groupthink and defeatism.

Good news. This makes confirmation a virtual lock.http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/key-republican-throws-support-behind-sessions/article/2607811http://cdn.washingtonexaminer.biz/cache/730x420-67705309434f1c99257ec76c449ffeec.jpg

That's a pretty low bar. Is that like being more moral than Anthony Weiner? Or less corrupt than Hillary? Good quote partially explaining (but not excusing) the incoherent rage directed at us:

I agree, you haven't been particularly supportive, but I'm a big boy. B-) I'm actually not convinced at all that you're right fwiw. You've said some things I disagree with. But my sense of you is that you're a fundamentally decent person trying to carry on an honest conversation & to figure out what the right thing is. I AM convinced that you shouldn't back down from bullies, and that the behavior of (most of?) the folks on the other side has been shameful. But it's like with the Soros riots, I think their behavior just turns off anyone who hasn't already made up their minds, so in that sense it's helpful.

"Kaitlyn, it's also worth noting that by Mike's own definition, he is a racist. I'm confident that he favors discriminating against whites in hiring or in university applications. I'm confident that he supports racially/religiously polarizing organizations like La Raza & Black Lives Matter & the Muslim Brotherhood. I'm confident that he hasn't spent a minute of his life advocating for more 'diversity' in China, or in Africa, or in India, or in Japan, or in Israel, or in Vietnam, or in Afghanistan, or in Bangladesh, or in South Korea." "Just to be clear, I am NOT calling Mike a racist. I am saying that Mike, if he were being intellectually honest and consistent, would call HIMSELF a racist. :P" Now Mike, here's how an intellectually honest person would reply to my argument: Either deny that you favor/support the things that I say I'm confident you favor/support. OR Explain how favoring/supporting those things doesn't constitute having "opinions of or behaviours towards people [that] are influenced by the race of such people." Here's how YOU replied: IQ differences! I'm amused at being called a racist! I'm going to keep misusing the word bigot no matter how many times you post its definition! You're a white supremacist! Shame on you, sir.

Mike reminds me of the joke about the guy who lost his keys: A police officer sees a drunken man intently searching the ground near a lamppost and asks him the goal of his quest. The inebriate replies that he is looking for his car keys, and the officer helps for a few minutes without success then he asks whether the man is certain that he dropped the keys near the lamppost. “No,” is the reply, “I lost the keys somewhere across the street.” “Why look here?” asks the surprised and irritated officer. “The light is much better here,” the intoxicated man responds with aplomb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Just to be clear, I am NOT calling Mike a racist. I am saying that Mike, if he were being intellectually honest and consistent, would call HIMSELF a racist. :P Here's what to do to them when they hit you in the back: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KPWmXgPOn8

Emphasis mine. Kaitlyn, it's also worth noting that by Mike's own definition, he is a racist. I'm confident that he favors discriminating against whites in hiring or in university applications. I'm confident that he supports racially/religiously polarizing organizations like La Raza & Black Lives Matter & the Muslim Brotherhood. I'm confident that he hasn't spent a minute of his life advocating for more 'diversity' in China, or in Africa, or in India, or in Japan, or in Israel, or in Vietnam, or in Afghanistan, or in Bangladesh, or in South Korea. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGJVX6jYjI0 If you use the exact same rhetoric as they use, but substitute "White" for "Latino" or "Black" or "Muslim", he will call you a racist. Here's an interesting NSFW article discussing that phenomenon on Twitter. Remember, when they go low, we go high.

Jeff Sessions will be the next Attorney General! What a great choice. America will be a nation of laws again in only ~2 months!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rBr_WLQsFc

Quoted for posterity.

I tend to post images/videos that are on-topic & that I find either funny or clever, preferably both. They often convey a point that I wish to make or highlight in a concise, humorous & effective way. Your awareness seems rather limited, then. Make like Kaitlyn & do a little research, perhaps? (I got you started. You're welcome.) De facto President Ryan? Really Mike? THAT'S what you think? Trump LOATHES Ryan (because Ryan was as disloyal/countersignaling as he could get away with being (as Speaker) throughout the campaign. Remember Romney/Ryan & Ryan's close buddy Romney was #NeverTrump & got Egg McMuffin to run to try to throw it to Hillary if it was close.) Trump LOVES Pence (without Pence BTFO'ing Kaine, BTFO'ing the press & rocking the rallies, there'd be no President Trump.) So if, in some bizarre parallel universe, Trump gets bored of being president (one of the most inane theories floated by the MSM in a year of inane theories about Trump (Don't they ever tire of being wrong? Remember when they said he was going to drop out? Or that he didn't really want to win the election? Or that Hillary would win the mother of all landslides?)) he will make like Dubya & give more authority/responsibility to Pence. Anything Ryan gets will only be because he gave Trump something that he wants in exchange. Are you a billionaire (or multi hundred millionaire, depending on your sources) Manhattan real estate magnate? Do you realize how preposterous you sound when you suggest that a man who has succeeded in one of the most cutthroat industries in the world, LADEN with detail, is a bumbling idiot with ADD? Was it one of his advisors who said that he often gets confused? Oh wait, no, that was one of Hillary's advisors (Huma) talking about her. As for healthcare, Obamacare is a disaster. (In no small part because Republicans refused to cooperate on a better bill.) It was a huge gift to Big Pharma and the AMA and did almost nothing to contain costs. The 'you can keep your doctor and your plan' bit was a lie, and plenty of smart folks said it at the time. I think the latest massive premium spike probably cost Hillary Pennsylvania. (And if she had won Pennsylvania, I think there would have been a huge push to steal the election by hook or by crook. But Trump's win was bigger than EITHER of Dubya's 'wins'.) Healthcare in the US has been a disaster for a long time. Basically doctors and drug companies have lobbies that are way too powerful. Luckily Trump isn't beholden to those lobbies because he took almost no money from lobbyists. Unfortunately, Congress still is. Am I sure that Trump will come up with a great plan that gets through Congress when EVERY president before him has tried and failed? No, but I'm hopeful. (I don't think Congress has the guts to defund Obamacare without replacing it with SOMETHING. And Trump would almost certainly veto a budget like that if they did.) And I won't heap scorn on him if he fails, because in this selfish & unhealthy culture healthcare is a disaster almost everywhere, including Canada where they've 'solved' the problem by letting people die while they wait for healthcare. On the bright side, if he deports the majority of the non-citizens who are living illegally in the US, the healthcare prognosis is far brighter for American Citizens than if Hillary had been elected and amnestied them all (& given Obamacare to the rest,) which would have drastically increased the demand for healthcare with almost no corresponding increase in funds (or medical facilities/professionals.) It's funny, when I posted stuff in here several years ago about police misconduct, I was excoriated because that wasn't the 'cause du jour.' Now we're all virtue signaling for BLM. The fact is, as a Harvard study has shown, that unjustified police shootings have no racial basis. Unarmed blacks who interact with police are no more likely to be shot than unarmed whites who interact with police. If Soros weren't funding the riots, there wouldn't be riots. And if all Americans were taught to respect the police & to not resist arrest, there would be almost no shootings by police. The real CRISIS is the number of blacks killed by blacks. THOSE are the 'black lives' we SHOULD be focused on. Not the handful of people of all races wrongfully killed by police each year. Do I favor the prosecution of officers (like that idiot in Toronto) who murder (virtually) unarmed civilians? Of course, and so does President Trump, but cases like that are INCREDIBLY rare. If they WEREN'T incredibly rare, we'd have lots of clear-cut cases to choose from, rather than glorifying cases where an armed criminal who resisted arrest was shot. You think Christie ever had a moral center? He's a bully and a thug. But he derailed Rubio & endorsed Trump VERY early. Trump would probably not be president if Christie hadn't done either of those things. So a slimy character does you a YUGE service. You feel like you owe him. But you know he's slimy. It's a dilemma with no obvious solution. You and your ad hominems. Gee whiz. Bannon did a brilliant job as campaign strategist and is the obvious choice for WH strategist/advisor. (Navigating this corrupt Congress in this media environment will require some serious 4-dimensional chess.) Breitbart is an excellent source of news. Compared to Turd Blossom, or Bill Clinton, or Hillary's mentor Byrd, Bannon is a saint. Go watch 'An Inconvenient Truth' again and tell me how accurate its predictions were. Then tell me how environmentally friendly China is. I hate pollution & I think carbon taxes should be much higher (but ONLY if coupled by a corresponding reduction in other taxes) but as I mentioned before the NUMBER ONE (and Number 2 and Number 3) driver of climate change (and poverty & pollution & hunger & disease & war & mass extinction & virtually every other serious problem under the sun) is … THIRD WORLD OVERPOPULATION. An issue that Hillary Clinton has actively CENSORED the mention of! So tell me what Trudeau & Merkel & Bill Gates & the UN are doing about THAT issue and then I'll hear you out about whether a few extra US coal-fired power plants mean the end of the world is nigh. And remind me about how Obama's EPA poisoned a river if we're comparing EPAs. Other countries didn't used to harass American ships because they had a healthy respect for & fear of America. Trump will restore that. Good for him. China's building islands & claiming sovereignty in the South China sea. That's not legal, either. Invading Crimea wasn't legal. But a successful nation with balls pursues its national interest. That's the way the world has always worked. Realpolitik. Trump will put America FIRST again. I hated Dubya for torture. But I see what some of these sick animals have done & they're just not human to me anymore. If you behead innocents on video, if you burn people alive on video, and we catch you, and you're unmistakably the guy from the video, I'm not going to lose much sleep about what Trump does or doesn't do to such 'people.' I used to think America is better than that. America doesn't do that. But then America started putting up with spoiled & 'privileged' millionaire athletes kneeling while the Star Spangled Banner played. And putting up with non-citizens violently rioting in her streets. And letting an organization urge the murder of police officers with impunity. And rewarding 10's of millions of non-citizens living here illegally with hundreds of billions of dollars in cash, services & in-state tuition. So I really don't know what America does or doesn't do anymore. But I know that torturing a few evil people in order to extract information that might save American lives or help destroy ISIS wouldn't be the worst thing America has done lately. Obama's launched lots of drone strikes and there's always collateral damage. It's a mess. Israel's (wrongfully imo) punished the families of those who perpetrate violence against Israel for years. The obvious reasoning is that you might deter people from carrying out a violent act if they think or know that their family will be held accountable for their actions. Bottom line is that Trump wants to preserve his options & not let the enemy know what he is or isn't willing to do to them. And that bottom line I fully support. Keep the enemy guessing. If we capture someone from ISIS and they don't know if they'll be tortured or not, I think they'll be far more 'cooperative' than if they know ahead of time that they won't be tortured, even if we weren't going to torture them. He wants to avoid foreign entanglements. He wants peace with Russia (but a peace based on mutual respect, not based on Putin running roughshod over the US & her allies.) And he wants to crush ISIS. He has a great respect for the military that Obama lacks. He will make the US military great again. He will have good advisors & I trust him as CiC. All this histrionic 'he claims this, blah, bloo, blee' c'mon now. Hillary would have brought with her a much greater risk of WWIII than Trump does. There's nothing logical about the fear of Trump, a fear engendered NOT by Trump, but by the corporate media, which has been dedicated to attacking him (and to instilling fear in their more gullible viewers) for months. Here are some logical reasons to have feared Hillary: She's accepted tens of millions of dollars in bribes from Wall St., corporations, lobbyists & foreign governments. (And please don't waste my time and insult my intelligence by claiming that they're not bribes.) She didn't give a single open press conference during all of 2016. That alone is DISQUALIFYING. She pledged to amnesty virtually all of the 15 million + non-citizens illegally living in the US. She seemed to welcome a return of the Cold War with Russia. Her donor list was a who's who of the folks who've been running America into the ground for decades. She jeopardized US national security by setting up an unsecure private server, which was probably hacked by several foreign governments, on which she did all her State Dept. email correspondence. She deleted THOUSANDS of emails that were under subpoena & got away with it because she is (for the moment) ABOVE THE LAW. She colluded with the DNC to rig the Democratic primary, which she otherwise would have lost to a 75 year old self-described socialist named Bernie. The person who was FIRED by the DNC for rigging the primary was IMMEDIATELY HIRED BY HILLARY. She acknowledges having conflicting public positions and private positions on the same issue. In other words, she lies to the public, so ultimately she can't be trusted. She had shady operatives working on behalf of her campaign who were videotaped plotting election fraud. She had the entire corporate mainstream media (including most commentators on the sole traditionally right-wing network) spewing propaganda for months in a desperate bid to ensure her election. She had Google altering their search results to help her. She had Twitter banning the accounts of her opponent's supporters & fudging trending hashtags to help her. She had POTUS on television talking to a mostly-ESL audience & when asked if non-citizens should be afraid to vote for Hillary, he replied: Not true. Hopefully President Trump will investigate 2016 election fraud, expose the hundreds of thousands of non-citizens who voted & pass a national voter ID law. And get rid of those hackable paperless black boxes while he's at it. The first two debates were rigged in that the tough questions invariably were about her opponent's controversies & not about hers. In spite of him crushing her in the 2nd debate, the MSM regurgitated the lie that she won all 3 debates, hoping people would forget their lying eyes and ears & what all the focus groups said. She is uniquely in US history UNFIT to serve (and given our last 2 presidents, that's a pretty low bar. I'd say she was uniquely unfit to serve in the history of 20th/21st century Western Civilization, but then you'd bring up Justin Trudeau and I can't really argue with that.) Her possession of a vagina doesn't change that & in fact exacerbates it. Do we REALLY want the FIRST female president to be so fatally flawed? Thank goodness the American people voted a resounding No. And here are some reasons to dislike her: She stayed with a husband who serially cheated on her throughout their marriage, while doing everything she could to silence the victims of his sexual aggression. She got the rapist of a 12-year old girl off the hook, in part by blaming the victim, & then later laughed multiple times while discussing the case. Then there's my personal gut feeling: She's a nasty bully with a violent temper who treats those around her (below her pay grade) with contempt. I think she's bipolar (people say she's a sociopath, but she lacks the charm and social graces for that imo.) She was willing to do or say (literally) anything to become president. She's got serious undisclosed health issues (many stemming from her serious head injury.) She probably drinks too much & who knows what meds she's on. Trump proved his stamina down the stretch speaking at massive rally after massive rally while she passed out cold and got thrown in a van, then lied about having pneumonia. And I believe Danney Williams is Bill Clinton's son. (Whether Chelsea is Bill Clinton's biological daughter or not is also an interesting question.) Maybe you weren't paying attention, but the victims of political violence this year have overwhelmingly been TRUMP supporters. And many, if not most, of these alleged 'bigoted acts' turn out to be hoaxes perpetrated by people trying to smear Trump supporters. You ignore acts of murder, attempted assassination & violence on the regressive left and focus solely on alleged 'bigoted acts' by a handful of Trump supporters. You have actual violence on one side incited by the media & by a globalist billionaire versus your neurotic fear of yet-to-be perpetrated violence on Trump's side. You have foreign citizens rioting in the streets, burning American flags, carrying signs that say 'Make America Mexico Again,' brandishing Mexican flags & funded by Soros. You have a domestic terrorist group funded by Soros that has already provoked the murder of several police officers in Dallas chanting 'What do we want? Dead pigs. When do we want it? Now!' You seem to have lost ALL sense of proportion & perspective. What stance do I think law enforcement will take now? I think that the vast majority of law enforcement officers will CONTINUE to take the stance of behaving professionally & competently in the exercise of their duties. Perhaps even moreso now that they have a president who shows them the respect they have earned and deserve for putting their lives on the line every day. A president who will make America a Nation of Laws again. Because we wouldn't be having this conversation that some lurkers or future academics might learn from if I had? Because I'm not here to conform to your (pathologically flawed imo) perception of what is or isn't rational? Obviously you'll agree with me most of the time when I criticize Trump. And you'll disagree with me when I post a clever image mocking the hypocrisy of Hillary supporters. But I'm here to express my perspective, and to shed a little light on the truth that's been hidden from people whose only source of news is the corrupt corporate pro-Hillary MSM, or their Facebook bubble, not to get you (or anyone else, for that matter) to agree with me. If I want to talk to people who agree with me I'll go post to my echo chamber on Twitter. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, you may return to bullying a woman on the Internet because you disagree with her political views.

I'm glad you're not letting bullying get to you, Kaitlyn. I don't engage here to change the minds of the people I'm talking to, because they're completely closed-minded. They accept their ideology as an article of faith. But maybe some lurkers learn a thing or two. Just remember the definition of bigotry, and then you'll know in your heart who the real bigots are: Search Results big·ot·ry ˈbiɡətrē/ noun noun: bigotry; plural noun: bigotries intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself. ................................... Pay attention to which side is advancing logical arguments and which side is doing little more than throwing out ad hominems and bringing up anecdotes from 50 years ago. Be happy knowing that most Americans agree with you, even though most denizens of an Internet bridge forum don't.