Yep, its textbook victim-blaming. Also, there's the whole thing about it being patently untrue; obeying the law is no guarantee that you won't be assaulted or even killed by police. Credentialed journalists, pedestrians, peaceful protesters, even young children and the elderly have been assaulted by cops- on video no less- and that's just since the latest round of protests broke out in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Look at Breonna Taylor ffs: murdered by police, in her own home, while she was sleeping.

And of course its pretty routine at this point for cops to execute people who are accused/suspected of having committed minor/non-violent offenses like selling loose cigarettes (as Eric Garner was accused of doing, before being murdered by police) or using a bad $20 bill (as George Floyd was accused of doing, before being murdered by police). So not only harming people who are obeying the law, but taking upon themselves the duties of judge, jury and executioner, in addition to their legitimate law enforcement functions. And no one seems all that interested in stopping any of this, outside of the BLM protesters out in the streets.

Unemployment is down to 8.4%... an incredibly high/bad figure (probably has something to do with the economic crisis Trump is currently presiding over), while covid rages (looks like about 42,000 new US cases as of yesterday and 700+ new deaths), and Trump throws a crybaby tantrum because he got busted saying some pretty shitty/disrespectful stuff about combat veterans... stuff that's so bad even Faux News can't/won't defend him (yikes!).

Yep, things look positively peachy for poor little Donnie right about now, good call... :lol:

From what I've seen, its a pretty standard argument among NT scholars and especially apologists that the historicity of Christ himself is the best explanation/most consistent with the record. And certainly there are apologists who argue for the resurrection as historically sound as well, but I doubt that this is anywhere near so common or typical, and obviously the arguments for it are incredibly weak (not least because there has never been any confirmed/corroborated/observed resurrections of this sort in all of human history).

Damn, well-stated! :strong:

No shame whatsoever, eh? :roll:

Of course the republicans are gonna call the democrat candidate a "socialist", they would say, but there's a difference between nominating someone who's pretty much a right wing politician in Biden, and someone who's known to be a "radical" like Bernie. Having the latter run in the general gives some credibility to the right's accusations making their attacks more effective where they would otherwise fall flat on their face

Certainly there's a difference, but I would suggest that in the present environment its not a difference that makes much of a difference (in terms of changing anyone's mind or vote): i.e. given the partisan polarization and the fact that people's attitudes towards both parties/candidates are pretty strongly locked in at this point. So the question is: giving credibility to the rights accusations for whom? Those on the right? They were always going to regard those accusations as credible, regardless of the facts. So, maybe for those on the left? They were always going to regard those accusations as falling flat on their face. And the number + impact of independents is always overstated: most people who self-identify as independents are functionally committed partisans in terms of their voting habits (identifying as independent seems to be mostly just a kind of self-flattery): their votes aren't actually up for grabs, any more than the votes of committed partisans of either party are up for grabs.

And so like I said I don't think there's any practical benefit to trying to anticipate or counter the (mostly disingenuous) arguments from the right: this isn't going to move the needle in any tangible way, in terms of the election and voting. Whereas pandering to the right on issues the left/progressives hold dear (like police violence/reform) may well come at the cost of depressed turnout there- so there's no upside here, only downside, making Biden's position especially frustrating since its not only cowardly and morally indefensible, but politically stupid as well (at least so far as I can tell).

I don't accept the premise that failing to pander to rightwingers on this issue or in general will cost Biden the election, if anything the opposite seems more likely to be the case, as I just said.

Nor do I see the point of fighting a battle if you need to become what you're fighting against in order to win: seems to me that defeats the entire purpose.

Its par for the course, unfortunately. Its like Pelosi and the House re-authorizing the Patriot Act, absurd Pentagon/defense budget increases, etc without putting up so much as a token fight.. But hey, she clapped sideways at Trump that one time, and maybe if we're lucky she'll tear up another sheet of paper, right? #theResistance

Honestly I don't understand the concern over what Trump might say, or with anticipating or pre-empting the right's disingenuous arguments. They're going to call Dems/the left radical anti-cop socialists irrespective of what the facts are, so why worry about it?

And Biden pandering to the right on this issue (and most others for that matter) is not only craven and morally indefensible, its politically stupid: especially given the extreme partisan polarization in the US right now, any Dem is going to be too far left for the overwhelming majority of Republican voters, regardless of their actual views or positions or how much "tough on crime"/"law and order" rhetoric they spew... whereas being too far right on these issues may well be (and almost certainly is) a deal-breaker for a non-negligible amount of progressives and leftists.

And of course its incredibly frustrating when the morally right thing to do and the politically advisable thing to do coincide... and Biden/the Dems still refuse to do that thing.

I think you accidentally managed to say what is actually the case here: bothsidesism is indeed an "assault on common sense", since there is no equivalence, moral or otherwise, between "radical" leftwing and rightwing groups, fascists and anti-fascists, white supremacists and BLM protesters, and suggesting that there is is completely non-factual sophistry.

aaaaand there's that vacuous bothsidesism, right on cue. :roll:

And Joe Biden doesn't get to decide what constitutes protest or not (any more than you do), especially given his utter lack of impartiality or credibility on this particular issue. Worse, clutching pearls over property damage (all commercial insurance policies cover damage from vandalism/arson/rioting/etc anyways- so any affected businesses will have a check in the mail to cover their losses) while dragging their feet on addressing the police violence (including literal murder) that the protests are about in any meaningful or substantive way, robs Biden and the Dems of any sort of moral authority here.

As they say, respect existence or expect resistance. If Joe Biden or any other of these neoliberal dipshits want the fires to stop burning, the solution is simple enough: start holding police accountable for breaking the laws they're paid to enforce and killing/harming those they're paid to be protecting. The protesters are pretty clear about what they want. And for all the finger-pointing at Republicans, there are plenty of cities that have few if any Republicans on the city council (and/or have state legislatures + governorships controlled by Dems), that could institute meaningful police reforms without having to so much as even look at a Republican, if they were motivated to do so. But clearly, that's asking for too much, and so we get purely performative/symbolic gestures (like Pelosi et al taking a knee for a photo op), and both the violence and the protests will continue.

Doesn't matter. The law sets out specific requirements to qualify as a legally valid self-defense or defense of property claim. In order to justifiably use lethal force in WI, ones life must be in danger. His was not. So, no valid self-defense claim. Nor was he the owner of the property (or employee/agent of the person whose private property) he was purportedly "protecting": again, invalidating any claim to a legal defense of property.

Just a straight-up criminal to begin the night (illegally open-carrying and violating curfew), and a murderer/mass-shooter/domestic terrorist by the end of the night. And the supposed party of "law and order" is bending over backwards to defend and glorify this scumbag. I sincerely hope his night of LARPing + murder was worth it, the price is going to be steep: with any luck, it'll have come at the cost of the rest of his life in prison.

I doubt it. Feel free to post it if they do, but obviously we shouldn't be holding our breath on that one. Among the many other asymmetries and false equivalences between the left and right (and hence the vacuity of this mindless bothsidesism rhetoric), the left simply lacks the right's stomach for justifying violence, especially while deploying blatant double-standards in doing so. The Dems are certainly no strangers to hypocrisy and double-standards, but not on this particular front.

(and of course Rittenhouse was already a criminal before he even pulled the trigger: he was illegally open-carrying + violating curfew... and yet the supposed party of "law and order" has nothing to say about any of that, naturally)

moreover, the fact that something was foreseeable or predictable doesn't mean its therefore justified. If you were Jewish and decided to walk down the street reading from the Torah in Nazi Germany, you'd predictably/foreseeably end up in a concentration camp (or come to some other similarly grim end). That doesn't justify putting people in concentration camps, obviously. And so it is here: just because the mass-shooter would predictably shoot the guy with the skateboard, doesn't mean he was therefore justified in doing so.

Also worth noting that the fact the first victim threw a balled up paper bag at Rittenhouse, or that the 2nd victim tried to hit him with a skateboard, does not constitute a valid self-defense claim under WI statute: in order to justify use of lethal force (shooting someone with a rifle, for instance), one's life needs to be in danger. Having a balled up plastic bag thrown at you or having someone chase you wielding a skateboard do not constitute threats to ones life, and so Rittenhouse has no valid self-defense claim in shooting them (i.e. lethal force).

Yeah there's that double standard/hypocrisy again. When rightwing domestic terrorists/mass-shooters murder BLM protesters they're lauded as heroes, but its a different story as soon as the shoe's on the other foot. I don't imagine we'll won't see many (if any) on the left trying to glorify whoever shot this member of Patriot Prayer (a violent rightwing/fascist/white nationalist group, ftr- since rightwingers love bringing up a victim's personal history as justification for their having been hurt/killed) the way the right did with Kyle Rittenhouse. Disgusting, shameless, and downright pitiful.

No doubt. More videos, shifting goalposts, changing the subject. Its remarkable the flexibility bad faith grants one in an argument, eh?

And of course you're a rightwinger: your posts are publicly viewable: if you want to (credibly) claim to not be a duck you probably shouldn't be waddling + quacking where everyone can see.

Exactly. Without fail, its always projection + hypocrisy with these rightwing crybabbies.

There was no mob in the video. Just a girl saying mean words. And you're here crying about "intimidation by a mob" and "harassment" and "my poor bum it hurts so much". You've proven my point: rightwingers can dish it out, but can't take it without throwing a tantrum and crying victim.

Did I "blame the victims"? Not at all. I didn't blame the couple in the video: I said nothing that even implied as much. I just pointed out the usual double-standard, the amusing and persistent hypocrisy of rightwingers delight at accusing other people (i.e. on the left) of being "snowflakes" who get "triggered" and need their "safe spaces"... but then turn around and throw a crybaby tantrum when someone says some naughty words to them. As with poor Dotard himself, you can dish it out, but not take it (not without melting down at any rate). And similarly with free speech and "cancel-culture" (and probably plenty of other things besides): for all your whining, you're as guilty as anyone else and in many cases quite a bit more so.

I mean, I understand that you don't put any stock in things like basic logical consistency, but it would help your credibility if you would at least attempt to disguise the double-standard.

Nice try, but the couple "harassed by unhinged protesters" weren't being threatened by any mob, they were being shouted at by a girl holding up a cell-phone.

So, total snowflakes, having their fee-fees hurt by naughty words. Yet another amusing instance of rightwing hypocrisy (see also: rightwingers- including/especially Little Donnie Dotard himself- "cancelling" companies, professors, etc for wearing anti-Trump shirts, criticizing Trump, criticizing Israeli settlement/apartheid policies, etc... while crying about "cancel culture" out the other side of their mouth- doh!).

Its always projection and hypocrisy with these clowns, they rarely even attempt to hide the double standard, just outright demand to play by different rules. And so it is here.

And I thought liberals were the ones who were supposed to be the "snowflakes"! Yikes that's pathetic. Crying because someone said something that hurt you in the fee-fees: boo-fucking-hoo.

So entrenched is he in this idealism that he has even fallaciously tried to attribute it to Nietzsche, claiming that Nietzsche knew morality/values could not be bolstered without some kind of supernatural foundation(???). This is Nihilism! This is also a distortion and woefully incompetent mischaracterization of Nietzsche's position [see Peterson's exchange with Susan Blackmore]. (This proves that he is exactly the kind of Nihilist Nietzsche warned about.)

Wow, has Jordan Peterson honestly never read Nietzsche? Not only is this a mischaracterization, this is pretty much the literal exact opposite of Nietzsche's actual position. I've seen Jordan Peterson's strawman arguments about Marx, so I'm not overly surprised to hear he does similar violence to Nietzsche, but... woof. What a clown. He should definitely stick to psychology and leave philosophy to those with at least some familiarity with or talent for it. From what I gather, he was a competent if not especially distinguished academic in his primary field, but from everything I've seen or heard about his philosophical and social/cultural erm.. "contributions" (using this term generously), he's woefully out of his depth and should definitely consider staying in his lane.

I mean, I know what you mean, but I tend to think that trying to anticipate and forestall whatever disingenuous BS Trump and the GOP is going to argue is a pointless endeavor. Its not like there was any VP selection that Biden could make that Trump or Republican voters were going to support, so why concern yourself with pre-empting their bad faith arguments at all? Nobody who was susceptible to such arguments was ever going to vote for Biden in the first place, such arguments are only ever intended to preach to the choir.

(although as it happens, I suspect that this was very explicitly part of their deliberation process and a major selling-point in favor of Harris- i.e. hard to label her as some "defund the police" leftist given her record as prosecutor/DA, and as always Dems are overeager to prove their commitment to "law and order" politics/rhetoric, i.e. the prison/industrial complex and modern police/incarceratory state)

at least its been amusing to see the rightwingers twisting themselves into pretzels trying to figure out how to attack Harris- she's a cop but also she's anti-cop, she's not really black but also she was only selected as VP because she's black, etc. Poor hapless morons can't even get their stories straight.

Yep, you love to see it! :up:

Yep exactly. There's a (double) standard here that must be respected.

(btw, aren't you a MN/U of MN guy? You see that Ilhan Omar won her primary- and effectively her re-election- tonight?)

the more positive news today, imo, is that Ilhan Omar steamrolled her rightwing-funded opponent in her primary this evening (woot!), which effectively means she was re-elected since the 5th Congressional district in MN is about as strongly/safely Dem as you can find, making the general election mostly a formality. :cool:

And the Harris pick is... meh. Would have preferred an actual progressive or someone with a less wildly inconsistent record, but there certainly were worse options than Harris and its not like the VP pick actually matters in any significant way anyways, so mostly its a whoopty-fucking-do afaic.

no, see, white identity politics (like the white identity/grievance/fake-victim politics that got Donald Trump elected) magically doesn't count as identity politics, because reasons. Identity politics of any other identity, otoh, now that's identity politics.

:grimace: Yikes, what a clown-show...

I'm not doing that, what I am talking about is any processes involved in the origin of the Big Bang.

Again, explicitly self-contradictory. Origin of the Big Bang = cause of the Big Bang = temporally prior = nonsense, i.e. "north of the North Pole".

You are most assuredly in over your head here, and this latest post is only further proof of that- the burden of proof applies to anyone making assertions, such as those you made. And not only do you have the burden of proof for your claims, but epistemic justification as well- assertions such as you made require sufficient evidence in order to be justified, i.e. reasonable. Lacking sufficient evidence/argumentation, you are not only shirking your burden of proof in the context of this discussion board, but are adopting unreasonable beliefs- mere guesses. So, until you put on your big-boy pants and start taking things seriously, you can hang out in the kiddie pool all by your lonesome.

But I'm not talking about events back in time from the singularity, I'm talking about its origin

But this is contradictory, and that's the point- causes precede their effects (i.e. temporally), so if you're trying to talk about the cause or origin of the Big Bang- so, divine creation for instance- then you're talking about "events back in time from the singularity". But that's nonsense, as far as our best current picture of the early universe goes, the singularity at t=0 is like someone took a cosmic hole-puncher and just cut out a hole in the timeline of the universe. We can't extend causality, temporal relations, geodesics, or anything through that point- you can't pass go, you can't collect $200, until we know how gravity operates on the quantum scale we're just spitting goobledeegook.

Well, once you figure out precisely how we can meaningfully extend talk of temporal or causal relations backwards in time to/past the Big Bang singularity, you let us know. Until then your optimism that we can do so, somehow, some way, doesn't amount to much.

Easiest assertion to show as wrong.

All you have to do is give one syllogism that shows any of those things...and my assertion falls to ruin.

But you cannot.

So, I laugh at the people who suppose they can logically come to "there is a god" or who pretend they are being scientific and logical when they come to "there are no gods"...and enjoy the pretense for its humor value.

I thank you good folk for entertaining me.

You still didn't answer the question. Its a pretty straightforward one. You made a serious of assertions. I ask you, on what basis do you make these assertions? Evidently you make these assertions on the basis of nothing whatsoever, so they amount to blind guessing on your part. Amusing, in a pitiful sort of way. Clearly in over your head, even in the kiddie pool. :smile:

oh boy, imagine being this naive/ignorant :rofl:

Its sort of funny (in a grotesque way) how often people say they like Trump because he's "real" or "genuine" or "honest", given that he's one of the more prolific and shameless liars in recent memory. But I suppose its not any more absurd than the idea that he's some populist folk hero looking out for the little guy, despite the fact that he's a spoiled silver-spoon rich boy who's never worked a day in his life and who has spent his entire time in office fighting for the interests of the financial/corporate elite over and against those of middle and working class Americans.

needless to say, I'm not holding my breath

I agree it's immaterial if the science and the maths break down at the singularity. But you can't just stop at the singularity and say things like there is no before, or prior state for example.

Well, actually, yes you can. Whether time genuinely originated at the Big Bang (a legitimate possibility) or our ability to meaningful posit or understand cause/effect relationships merely breaks down at that point as an artifact of theory, "before the Big Bang" is not something that we can meaningfully speak to. And as Banno and others have pointed out, its comparable to talking about "north of the North Pole" in that trying to extend talk of temporal or causal relations past the Big Bang singularity is undefined- nonsense, word salad- given everything we currently know and lacking an adequate theory for situations where gravitation dominates on the quantum scale (as in the Big Bang and the interior of black holes).