A Google search returns 35,400 results the day after Politico drops its story about 2 female employees who, years ago, were angered and upset by what they said was "sexually suggestive behavior" by Herman Cain.
Let's listen to the original use of the phrase "high-tech lynching." It was just about exactly 20 years ago that Clarence Thomas, nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by George H. W. Bush, faced the Senate Judiciary Committee, which, under the watch of Senator Joe Biden, heard testimony accusing him of sexual harassment.
October 31, 2011
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 291 of 291The idea that this Audie Murphy malarkey is an unscripted identity suddenly asserting itself is obviously ridiculous bullshit.
I would heartily agree with you except for the fact that I don't believe any of the regulars on this blog ever believed such obvious bullshit.
But a certain 'liberal' commenter has shown up here using numerous nom de guerres over time and within time, the usual what about Bush, what about the GOP, Beck this and Beck that and everyone here follows Beck ends up coming out and the lovely brick facade suddenly falls away to reveal pockmarked drywall that the commenter really is.
If asked what his name is, it will reply -Legion, for we are many.
I tried to use small words.
So, if it isn Dust Bunny I apologize.Bit my daughter has seen the blog and the comments here on Althouse, she agrees about the possibility of cyberstalking. We are looking into it further.
You know, I really love when people are all "I showed it to an attorney " like that's some kind of threat or something. If only we had half that much power.
(Kind of like when they think that all Italians are in the mob. I'm not, but I appreciate having that sort of toughness attributed to me.)
DBQ, if we didn't live on opposite sides of the country, I'd gladly represent you, pro bono, in your defense against this scary, scary cyber-stalking charge.
You know, I really love when people are all "I showed it to an attorney
Not just any attorney, her daughter the attorney who is also a proud liberal.
I'll go ahead and say that I don't hate Glenn Beck. When he had his show on Fox, I sometimes turned it on for background noise if I happened to be doing something around the house at the time - it could be entertaining in it's own strange way. Sometimes I agreed with him; sometimes I didn't, but that's hardly the point. I read liberal both liberal and conservative publications pretty much every day.
Even if a person never missed an episode (which apparently seems to be the case with some liberals), that doesn't mean that they're somehow responsible for anything that he said, and it certainly doesn't mean that they're hypocritical if they say something that is contrary to something that he said. That's just stupid.
"a certain"
A "certain" what? No certain nothing. You confidently insert that word to promote the myth of a singular identity that's as unlikely to exist as it is that you will suck Jeremy's cock, or do whatever it is that he always resorts to asking you to do.
I say this as a former incarnation of Amanda Marcotte - at least in Pogo's mind.
And then there's "Hombre" (dropped the Spanish definite article, you see, after I proposed that "el" might be a shortening of the more effeminate "elle"). He accuses others of sock puppetry for changing their name openly and transparently. But since he did the same it's ok, as hypocrisy is a charge that a right-winger can't ever be convicted of.
Just admit that paranoia confuses things, and duplicates and replicates and reduces the objects of your fear quicker than a magician. Stories of doppelgangers and Jekyll and Hyde should shed some illumination on this problem. Or if you're really susceptible, go the one about that nice, sweet lil old granny who turned into a big, bad wolf.
Politico drops its story about 2 female employees who, years ago, were angered and upset by what they said was "sexually suggestive behavior" by Herman Cain.
Went to Politico.com. Cain is their leadoff article. Dropped it?
… Politico is not the liberal media …
Hahahahaha
… as part of their settlement agreement the women are forbidden to talk about it.
Exactly. Which makes it perfect for the MSM. They now get to imply, fabricate and falsely accuse without any concrete facts to trip them up. Neat.
I am very curious about how Biden responded to the attack by Thomas.
According to David Brock:
In the wee hours of Monday morning, when it was all over, Joe Biden stopped two of Thomas's witnesses in the hallway outside the hearing room. Biden told the women: "I believe him, not her."
http://tinyurl.com/3ohmblt
However, Biden voted against Thomas’s confirmation. Party loyalty? Eleven Democrat Senators voted to confirm.
http://tinyurl.com/3j9avbc
[Thomas said to Anita Hill] …. there's a pube on my coke can …
According to Anita Hill. I’m skeptical.
Not just any attorney, her daughter the attorney who is also a proud liberal.
Who, I'm certain, would never just say "Yeah, yeah, of course Mom. I'll check it out, sure." while rolling her eyes and trying to think of an excuse to get off the damn phone already.
Just admit that paranoia confuses things, and duplicates and replicates and reduces the objects of your fear quicker than a magician.
Neither paranoia or fear but simply a remarkable ability to smell bullshit a mile away.
But you are to be commended, Ritmo, for your swift and valiant defense of a fellow lefty commenter, even knowing that the damsel in distress is probably the Blogger version of Rupaul. Loyalty to one's ideological kameraden rises above all.
You are a true gentleman. Or am I being presumptuous?
Even if a person never missed an episode (which apparently seems to be the case with some liberals),
Lol. Apparently someone never heard of Media Matters, Steven Colbert, or John Stewart playing all those damning seven-second-long clips that mattered the most. ;-)
Division of labor, and all. Woe be the liberal whose job it was to watch the predictable garbage reel-to-reel, while laying in wait for the parts where the right-winger stuck his foot so far back into his mouth that his ass grew a leg.
You guys are as silly as all get-out. Althouse plays and quotes sound-bites all the time of whichever liberal sap she has declared to be impresario of the day in her show, and the idea that she watched and waited herself to find those oh-so-juicy bits to throw at her Roman circus here is absurd. But it follows the predictable logic.
if we didn't live on opposite sides of the country, I'd gladly represent you, pro bono, in your defense against this scary, scary cyber-stalking charge.
LOL. Yes. I'll take you up on that. I'm shaking in my boots. /sarcasm
Speaking of attorneys. One of our friends has a daughter in law who is a corporate labor law/human resources attorney for a multi national conglomerate. (Definitely one of the 5% if not 1%).
She said the claims against Cain are just rote bullshit. It is easier to pay off these disgruntled women employees than it is to even deal with them. The nuisance factor. She said that her division deals with this all the time.
Nothing to see here.....move along.
You are not being presumptuous. Sometimes a broken clock actually is right. ;-) Twice a day, last time I checked.
So you think with your gut, then? Colbert (your double?) would agree.
Lol. I'm sure that ideological camaraderie is something you go to great lengths to avoid, buddy. ;-)
No, I just like how she does what she does. If she isn't real, I guess that would be a pity. But I am not a right-winger so I can accept fallibility.
Lol. Apparently someone never heard of Media Matters, Steven Colbert, or John Stewart playing all those damning seven-second-long clips that mattered the most. ;-)
Where do you think they get those clips? Someone's got to be watching. (BTW, if you're being serious, and you actually do form opinions of a public figure based only on what you see of any of those sources, that's a really bad way to approach life. I hope you're just being silly, though.)
DBQ, if we didn't live on opposite sides of the country, I'd gladly represent you, pro bono, in your defense against this scary, scary cyber-stalking charge.
I'm not sure which I find funnier: That you take seriously the proposition of defending someone of a charge after it was withdrawn, that you do so on the grounds that it's frivolous, or that you do so while the person making the charge was mobbed with the typically knee-jerking and reactionary accusations that she's been doing the same.
Bunny is naughty, naughty! Naughty, I tell ya!
If Mito is listening (and, I presume, real) then she should realize that Bunny's shortcomings are not all that serious or great, though they are complex and arise from reasons that evoke sympathy - if she's behind the latest round in this bullshit mobile.
I read more in-depth commentary on material that calls for it.
Whatever is going on in the latest dramedy of the day in pundit-land, is not that material - as important as it is to summarizing the capricious emotional stirrings that ripple through the electorate.
Satire and political commentary have merged, or maybe the latter was absorbed by the former in large measure. That's just a fact of life. Luckily, I rely on the commentary and leaven that reliance with only the satire that's biting enough, when it's called for.
But yes, sometimes the political drama is too much of a joke for it to be summarized by anyone other than a satirist.
So you think with your gut, then? Colbert (your double?) would agree.
Yep. It hasn't failed me yet.
Lol. I'm sure that ideological camaraderie is something you go to great lengths to avoid, buddy. ;-)
Birds of a feather flock together but that doesn't mean I won't shun a fellow conservative if it turns out he likes to dress up in women's clothing and thinks he's Herbert Hoover.
But I am not a right-winger so I can accept fallibility.
That's interesting because so many leftwingers like yourself liken the rightwing to God-fearing Christianists and being God-fearing Christianists we are all cognizant of the fact that only God the Almighty is infallible, and we are all sinners who are in constant need of redemption.
You certainly should be glad I am here to keep you in line with your leftist dogma. I think in your haste to create strawmen, you tend to forget the party line.
No, tipping isn't necessary. As you are well aware, the righwing is very charitable to those in need.
Satirists are largely lampooning the pundits, anyway.
To the extent that some of these pundits (like Beck and Limbaugh) are taken seriously, this is as it should be.
Just because Limbaugh pretends to be unserious, doesn't mean he lacks followers who see it differently. The right-wing purposely and strategically merged commentary and satire, as a way to claim plausible deniability for the consequences of their ideas and remarks, and what they got was a lampooning of what they do that they can no longer run from.
Hoosier, keep perpetuating the sock puppet myth, it's beginning to make you sound like J, only slightly less incoherent. How do I know you aren't a sock puppet of someone else, this business of accusing people of being a sock puppet is getting old and worn out. give it up, it's silly at best and creepy at worst.
Well, your retelling of J. Edgar Hoover's habits is bizarre, and makes for an even more bizarre basis for ideological differentiation, but I guess that's your gut talking. Maybe try some Gas-X, Hoozh.
And being fallible is not a sin. But I suppose I should appreciate you lecturing me with your theological dogma as if there were some sort of political lesson to be learned in there.
I'm rational, so there isn't one.
How do I know you aren't a sock puppet of someone else
You don't. For all you know I could be Ritmo. A double agent if you will.
I'm not sure which I find funnier: That you take seriously the proposition of defending someone of a charge after it was withdrawn, that you do so on the grounds that it's frivolous, or that you do so while the person making the charge was mobbed with the typically knee-jerking and reactionary accusations that she's been doing the same.
I'm not sure what I find funnier...that you think that I am taking any of this seriously or that anyone would even think that Audie Murphy's Mom is a serious blog or that anyone who posts here would even think so.
Bunny is naughty, naughty! Naughty, I tell ya!
Why ....yes I am!
I guess I'm just used to the good old days of Usenet and the art of flame wars and I'm unable to deal with such a delicate snowflake as Mito. If she is flaming or trying to participate.....she really sucks at it.
Come on. Where is the fun, the challenge? I know YOU are up on the game and understand the rules.
Dust Bunny, Snowflake I am not, pearl clutching old lady I am not. You continue to try to portray me as such and that is also getting old.I still think that your behavior in the past few weeks has been every bit as creepy as the person behind the blog or Sixty Shits, don't sell yourself short. Trying to butter up Ritmo are ya, lol?
Well, your retelling of J. Edgar Hoover's habits is bizarre,
How so? Is Hoover's fondness for dresses news to you?
And being fallible is not a sin. But I suppose I should appreciate you lecturing me with your theological dogma as if there were some sort of political lesson to be learned in there.
For secular infallibility, rightwingers are equally as forgiving. Beck is a recovering drunk, Limbaugh is a recovering drug addict etc. Everyone makes mistakes. Rightwingers celebrate overcoming one's shortcomings. Leftwingers just make the over and over again and just blame someone other than themselves for it. Usually life for being so unfair.
Hoosier you idiot, why wouldn't I show it to an attorney I wouldn't have to pay?
Division of labor, and all. Woe be the liberal whose job it was to watch the predictable garbage reel-to-reel, while laying in wait for the parts where the right-winger stuck his foot so far back into his mouth that his ass grew a leg.
You are some kind of pompous ass, Ritmo.
I used to watch Glenn Beck sometimes when he was on Fox. He never held my attention for a whole hour. The rodeo clown persona would wear on me after a while.
The best part was the book coverage. Who else would have had the authors of academic books about James Madison or Woodrow Wilson on a TV show with that big an audience?
I've never considered Beck to be either a genius or a scourge. I have no idea how his new venture is going to go.
But I'll bet Keith Olbermann bores you silly in under a minute...
Hoosier you idiot, why wouldn't I show it to an attorney I wouldn't have to pay?
Oh I think you did the right thing. Paying an attorney would have been a waste of money once you were educated on what cyberstalking really is.
Hoosier, hmmmm, I wonder where Audie Murphy's Mom went to in such a hurry, I haven seen her in a bit.
Hoosier, hmmmm, I wonder where Audie Murphy's Mom went to in such a hurry, I haven seen her in a bit.
Well at her age, probably to bed.
I was at a Halloween party at the VFW.
I have a life away from the internet. Not like you Mitzie since you are a creature of it as all sock puppets are.
It is interesting that you went to my blog that I have just started to bring my thoughts to the public.
Also I am not any of the people you accuse me of being. I am just someone who finds you a fraud who should be exposed for what you are. A liar and a cheat.
Anyone can start a blog you know. Even you. Why not start one and share your wisdom with the world. Oh thats right. You do not provide a profile or any information. Even a sock can tell you his size.
So how could anyone stalk you?
You are a fool.
By the way please do not post on my blog. You have left a comment in every post. That is very disturbing.
Please stop cyberstalking me. Do not post on my blog. I am going to show this to my non-existent grandson and we will be taking legal action.
I guess I'm just used to the good old days of Usenet and the art of flame wars and I'm unable to deal with such a delicate snowflake as Mito.
Bunny, I think what you're picking up on is the fact that she has a heart. So don't hate on her for it; it wouldn't kill you to grow one yourself, and would improve your life immeasurably.
I find that people without compassion were generally treated very poorly in life. So think about the statement that makes the next time you go off spouting this cold-blooded, reptilian vision of yours that you hold up as if it were some sort of ideal.
Rightwingers celebrate overcoming one's shortcomings.
Except when that shortcoming includes a lack of compassion. But Republicans seem to think that a lack of compassion is a virtue.
Even the Romans, as brutal as they were, knew better. They called it humanitas.
Come on. Where is the fun, the challenge? I know YOU are up on the game and understand the rules.
Yes. The flame war-insult game can be fun, especially the more creatively one does it. But there are limits to everything.
If someone honestly opens up about a source of great pain for them, you don't pound them into the sand about it. That is cruel and inhumane. You respect their honesty and let that be, if not the final word, the point of the heretofore "game". To not do so is to break the cosmic law of how we treat others. Mercilessness is an ugly and disgusting thing. To do that in the name of Charlie Sheen's sense of "winning", is abominable.
As much of a cantankerous asshole as Shouting Thomas used to be to me, he one night made it clear to me that a tangential joke touched too sensitively upon thoughts of his relationship with his late wife. I figured I wouldn't let him change the subject, given how vile and violent and merciless I'd seen him act in the past. But he practically pleaded with me to understand a level of pain he felt.
I took that for what it was and never brought it, or anything related to anything like it, up again.
Our discussions have improved immeasurably. I'm not sure I take as much from him as he does from me, but I see that his contributions have improved mightily. He is more willing to be thoughtful. He is less inclined to see something he might disagree with as a despicable ruse. He doesn't assume a reason to distrust as much as he used to. He doesn't come across as the sort of wounded, vile schmuck that he inhabited before. And I have returned that kindness generously, taking his questions and interest in debate more seriously than before - willing to give him honest answers that he can actually use. Why not? He's willing to actually take some knowledge away from these experiences and has shown that he actually CAN be a decent guy. Even when it's not his first instinct. That is its own reward, but it's also worth rewarding.
That's the way it should be.
But Republicans seem to think that a lack of compassion is a virtue.
I suppose with your warped sense of reality that's true.
But in the universe where unicorns don't exist compassion is the heart of conservatism. Giving a hand up is compassion. Leftism can only succeed when it creates dependency otherwise it has no function, no reason for being. Like the empty nest mother who suddenly realizes her use as a nurturer is done and has nothing else to turn to.
I subscribe to the adage that you teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for life. Modern liberalism survives on State funded fish so there is no need for him to learn how to fish.
Compassion is raising a child to deal with the unfairness of life because despite liberal's desire to make everything fair, reality gets in the way of such nonsensical thinking and prepares them to deal with it rather than pitch a tent in a park and demand someone pay for their tuition.
Once upon a time I was a youth, fresh out of college with zero prospects of work yet I even took a manual labor job because that was the expectation, not sitting around wondering when Saint Fairness would pick me for a cool job.
Unfortunately much of this generation was raised in a reality where everyone gets a trophy, essays aren't corrected with red pens and dodgeball is replaced with yoga. To liberals this is a bumper crop of sheep to mold into perpetual dependents that can be coddled and nurtured in perpetuity, not to actually help them but to give liberals a sense of purpose.
That's bullshit and a caricature but if it gives you a sense of purpose to believe it, then so be it. I can't stop you.
Inequalities exist and, no matter how much individual effort one exerts, there is only so much that can be done about them.
Conservatives tell the lie that hardships and shortcomings are either one's own fault or not worth encouraging their prevention or amelioration. The problem with that is it makes for a less free and less efficient and less opportunity-driven society, the more we discourage people from working together and for their common benefit.
The data is right there, compelling and stark, in its own little link. But I have little doubt that your pride will compel you to denounce it as a pack of Marxist (or whatever) lies. Your pride and your gut have told your brain what to think, no matter what evidence, no matter what. No matter. No mind.
But other people less interested in buying their "truths" like cans of ham from a grocery shelf. They actually care to see what the evidence shows.
Shamefully, that will offend you. But you can't stop knowledge, as much as you try. You can't stop others from trying to improve their lives, and all of ours collectively, because of it, either.
Unfairness is whatever you define, apparently. Natural life is what it is, but conservatives are encouraging unfairness in human institutions. They can embrace their perceived capriciousness of the natural world all they want. But it's nothing more than pissing in our ears and telling us it's raining outside when they shriek and holler that human institutions, artificial constructions, should also be unfair.
Some get to be, in the private sector. And that's fine. But conservatives now think that government's job is to spread unfairness around, to encourage it - at the obvious expense of any governing stability. And it is because of the lies they spread to achieve this aim that they are imploding today and that this goal will continue to fail.
No one will embrace a vision for humanity that is intrinsically inhumane. Unless you lie to them about it.
But I've provided some facts, above. Cover your ears, shut your eyes, scream and holler about 19th century philosophers. It gets old and people stop listening. Your prejudices don't have much to do with their lives' needs, so stop puffing yourself up into the mindset that convinces you otherwise.
Conservatives tell the lie that hardships and shortcomings are either one's own fault or not worth encouraging their prevention or amelioration.
Liberals believe the myth that inequality exists because faceless suits in tall buildings somehow steal money from the less affluent thereby securing their positions of wealth and power.
In reality conservatives believe, correctly, that poverty by and large is created by poor life choices such as getting pregnant in your teen years. Getting arrested in your teen years. Dropping out of school in your teen years or any combination thereof. Offspring produced by such people tend to be caught in the same cycle as they tend to follow the path of the parent.
Liberals incorrectly believe the way to correct the inequality this creates is wealth redistribution. However, in the universe where the sun rises in the east, we can see why such plans fail.
The three main causes of poverty I listed above are about the three easiest ways to avoid it seems for many, it isn't which is easily evidenced by looking at annual out of wedlock births, dropout rates and arrests. A 15-16 year old girl that gets knocked up is pretty much at bat with life starting with two strikes and odds are will end up poor and so will her offspring save a close knit family that can help. That's simple statistical fact. Considering how much liberals like you have pounded sex ed, birth control, and abortion on demand our out of wedlock birthrates should be negligible yet in 2009 the unmarried birth rate was 41%.
You can't stop others from trying to improve their lives, and all of ours collectively, because of it, either
This is why I don't think you argue in good faith. Why would you think I would want to stop somone from improving thier lives? Where, in anything that I have ever said would elicit that statement? I can only conclude its because you are so blinded by your conviction that conservatives are trying to keep people down rather than see themselves as productive members of society. Such a sad, warped view. I almost feel sorry for you.
Natural life is what it is, but conservatives are encouraging unfairness in human institutions.
In what sense? Last time I checked conservatives believed in advancement based upon individual merit and not due to skin tone, gender or religion. If I'm not mistaken its liberals who demand government be the bulwark against the evil of meritocracy.
Maybe your desire to reside in a more aesthetically pleasing environment than the Dickensian land that the US appears to be in your mind has warped your sense of reality.
At least you'll always have Rio.
Trooper York aka Audie's Mom, what a sore loser you are, still mad that Athouse deleted all those comments of yours almost a month ago?
You haven't been back here as Trooper York since.Now you show up as Audie's Mom. LOL, what a pathetic coward. So funny that Chip S called you Trooper on your blog Audie's Mom, man that was good for a laugh, thanks.
Last time I checked conservatives believed in advancement based upon individual merit and not due to skin tone, gender or religion. If I'm not mistaken its liberals who demand government be the bulwark against the evil of meritocracy.
I'm not big on the idea that certain minority groups who have members that make it to the presidency, need to overcome overlooked consideration.
But your statement is incoherent. If there were no racism, sexism, nepotism (remember THAT one), cronyism, favortism in any form, etc., then we could assume that individual merit would be the norm.
It is not.
It is even a farce to declare that absolute objectivity exists in anything, let alone in hiring.
So we just tell ourselves the lie that we live in a society free of bias. No one believes it, though.
I'll read the rest of your previous comment and its gratuitous contents just as soon as you bother to watch the video I linked. But know this: the case for your side's pretension to favoring economic mobility is not being advanced when America, as with every unequal society, lags far behind on the financial mobility score.
Also, post hoc ergo propter hoc is no way to make an argument. I couldn't care less about out of wedlock birth rates and the only relevance they might have is with regard to the affect of marriage on a couple's income. Raising kids takes money and love and commitment, and arbitrary institutions have little to do with it.
This is why it all comes back to untenable regressions. If you hate unwed motherhood, go tell women that they can't work. You know you can't do that though, so (unfortunately) you'll have to deal with the fact that marriage is no longer a primarily economic institution. Ergo, not necessary for raising kids. Nice, but not containing the same sense of urgency as when women and kids needed a man for ANY income.
But as I said, I could care less about all that. Still, it won't stop me from pointing out the fact that you're making an illogical argument.
Thanks Ritmo, you are my hero.You are the blond boy who changed his hair to red in an Althouse blog, with a insurance commercial commercial about a little red headed boy being picked on by a group of bullies. I think it was from last Sunday.
You are one of the few commenters here that has both brains and heart, oh and COURAGE, and lets not forget integrity. I want to adopt both you and Garage.
I couldn't care less about out of wedlock birth rates
Of course not because the largest demographic of poor are unwed single mothers.
If you hate unwed motherhood, go tell women that they can't work.
Again, you don't argue in good faith. I hate that unwed motherhood perpetuates a cycle of poverty. I have no problem with them working and in fact encourage them to do so.
You know you can't do that though, so (unfortunately) you'll have to deal with the fact that marriage is no longer a primarily economic institution.
Well actually it is, or at least, a stable two parent family.
Still, it won't stop me from pointing out the fact that you're making an illogical argument.
Actually its quite logical, you simply can't refute it. Alas it is late and it can be tiresome trying to convince someone water is wet so I'll retire for the night.
oh and COURAGE
What the hell is so COURAGEOUS about anonymous posting on a blog?
That's kind defining it down quite a bit don't you think?
Hoosier, I have started a blog, go look, then shut your ugly trap.
Very well said, Hoosier, at 12:59.
Also, Ritmo, I agree that you're not arguing in good faith, as is typical. Women working, having careers, is pretty much the biggest catalyst to us putting more responsibility into our reproduction. Surely, you're aware of that, you just want to slander arguments that you can't refute.
Hoosier, I have started a blog, go look, then shut your ugly trap.
You certainly have some anger issues you need to work out.
Hoosier, you have a serious personality issue, you wretched puke. Did you view my blogs? You and your peers can stop claiming my kids don't exist, now right? Because we all know having a blog page makes some legitimate. No blog page = sock puppet in your twisted minds.
And I did change my moniker again, I am Mitochondri, -Allie,I was Apfelkuchen, which I never denied, just wouldn't give you haters the satisfaction.
Hoosier, you have a serious personality issue, you wretched puke. Did you view my blogs?
I have a personality issue? Me? You were on a cyberstalking tear about Audie's Mom and then you immediately create a blog about yourself and plaster pictures of your offspring all over it practically begging me to look at it and you say I have a personality issue?
Wow. Just freaking wow.
The data is right there, compelling and stark, in its own little link.
Ritmo,
You're referring to Richard Wilkinson's TED talk.
TED talks are well produced. They're useful for introducing you to a speaker and giving you a very quick overview of his or her ideas.
But, you know, they're 15 minutes long—by design.
On seeing Wilkinson's data presentation, I start asking questions. Lots of questions.
Such as, why are only the wealthiest countries included in any of data sets?
Such as, what is the definition of "mental illness" that he's using and is it comparable from one country to another? And why are some countries (e.g., Singapore) included in most of his other country-by-country data sets but not this one?
Such as, what are the implications of his off-hand comment that more people are in prison in countries with higher income inequality, not so much because crime rates are higher but because punishment is more severe? Could this be taken to imply that the best policy would be to reduce incarceration rates to zero, by never putting anyone in prison for committing any crime?
Such as, does Wilkinson really believe that nearly always the relationship between income inequality and whatever else he is tracking must be linear? (The rates of incarceration graph puts number of prisoners per 100,000 on a logarithmic scale; every other graph that has a line fitted to the points shows a linear relationship).
Such as, should Wilkinson be taking a UN agency’s index of child well-being at face value?
Such as, how does Wilkinson think that income inequality causes all these social ills (he obviously believes that it does, but all of his slides save one present correlational data)? The little theory he sketches agrees with Thomas Hobbes in presenting human beings as endlessly obsessed with status comparisons and severely wounded in the self-esteem should they ever come out on the low end of one.
For anyone who takes the social science seriously, a presentation like Wilkinson’s is the beginning of a long conversation, not the end of a short one.
But other people [are] less interested in buying their "truths" like cans of ham from a grocery shelf. They actually care to see what the evidence shows.
Have you taken even one step beyond Wilkinson’s 15 minutes on the TED stage, toward examining his data or his assumptions?
Or did you just buy the whole package, like a canned ham?
I will consider your faith-based assessment of Hoosier's manifesto, Lissa. Just give me the faith to equate out-of-wedlock births to teen pregnancy (cause I never received any evidence for that association) and I will blame Natalie Portman's unwed pregnancy not on the fact that she's a millionaire who, along with many women these days, don't have to rely on a spouse as their sole source of income, but because she had access to abortion, knew about the birds and the bees, and had access to birth control. 'Cause that's what Hoosier seemed to be saying.
This exercise in irrationality was most edifying.
In reality, women in ye olden days still got knocked up before marriage, they just had few other choices but to marry the guy.
To refuse to see that women's access to personal income and economic self-sufficiency is responsible for dissociating marriage from childbirth is a historical blindspot so big that you could fly a 747 through it.
I am clearly talking to people who live in the past, here. But I see the point. It's all about the faith. Reason, shmeason.
Wilkinson has something called "data", sorethumb. And you present none.
Since you have none of your own, (or even any to borrow or steal from anyone else), then I will continue to consider Wilkinson's arguments to be vastly superior to whatever vague (purposely so?) challenge that you propose to present.
Data trumps no data. At least, it does for those of us who aren't relying on ignorance to guide our decisions.
Natural life is what it is, but conservatives are encouraging unfairness in human institutions. They can embrace their perceived capriciousness of the natural world all they want. But it's nothing more than pissing in our ears and telling us it's raining outside when they shriek and holler that human institutions, artificial constructions, should also be unfair.
It does not follow, Ritmo, that because something is a human institution, that its functioning will all be consciously understood by those who live in it or deal with it.
Nor does it follow that because various human actors want or intend their decisions, rules, laws, practices, or what have you, to produce certain outcomes, that these outcomes will therefore ensue.
So you may be convinced that some pattern of outcomes is fair, expect some rule or law or bureaucratic organization to produce that pattern of outcomes—and end getting nothing of the kind.
Do you want to end up like the politicians who believe that financial institutions will in fact be reformed, because they proclaimed that FrankenDodd was "reform legislation"? Or that jobs will in fact be created, because they proclaimed some bundle of legislation a "jobs bill"? Or that people will stop consuming various drugs, because they have declared a "war on drugs"?
Friedrich Hayek may have something to teach you. Or Tom Sowell (specifically, in Knowledge and Decisions). Or Robert Nozick (specifically, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia).
There's a difference between telling you what you may not want to hear, and pissing in your ear.
Talk about bad faith (or just faulty assumptions), Lissa. I see the cause of your faith in the wrong argument:
Women working, having careers, is pretty much the biggest catalyst to us putting more responsibility into our reproduction.
Hoosier never, I repeat, NEVER made a distinction between unwed pregnancies and "irresponsible" pregnancies. He assumed a faith-based association between the two.
Learn to make distinctions in life.
Oh Jesus, soreguy. Do you really have to come on into these things a day and a half after the fact? Everyone's moved on and all I did was clean up the tidy edges around Lissa's premature applause. You seem to think that you're swooping on in from above, but all I see is an intellectual hobo picking up scraps from a party that ended hours ago.
If I wanted to read tired old 1980s and 1970s conservative polemics, I would. You recycle them here as if no one's ever heard them before - and miss the point entirely. Just move on, man.
Ritmo,
Data trumps no data.
In science, nobody learns anything by merely collecting data.
You need to have some idea why you're collecting it, some way to analyze it, and some way to make sense of the patterns in it. And be prepared to defend your choices at each step.
Wilkinson's conclusions don't simply emerge from the data he is presenting. Nor do his decisions about how to present the data merely emerge from the data.
You seem to be saying that no one should ask any questions about Wilkinson's data presentation or his interpretation of what he has presented.
Would you make the same insistence about every other data presentation by anyone in any of the social sciences?
You sound like Gabriel Hanna when he proclaims that any data set put forth by an organization such as NOAA or GISS automatically trumps any questions or objections that might be brought by anyone else.
Why did Hoosier not blame the market for sperm donations on sex education, abortion, drop-outs, arrests, etc.
BTW, I love this implied assertion that wealth is the norm and that poverty is the exception. Fascinating. All of human history was the exception to the rule of extreme wealth for all. (And no jostling for competition of resources).
poverty... is created
I thought wealth was created.
I hate that unwed motherhood perpetuates a cycle of poverty.
So does Natalie Portman, Hoosier. She really feels your pain.
The argument made sense. You have questions about it, go ask the guy or read his publications. Learn about the debates within his field, a field in which you lack experience and understanding. No argument is iron-clad; but we rightly endorse the one that is stronger than the others. Stop believing the conservative myth that some flawlessly transcendent truth lurks within our empirical observations of the natural world. Perception is limited, but we still can see things and apply the process of refined observation and understanding to it. Fucking deal with it.
It's clear that you've never done any science. You are making a fool of yourself. But sadly, American society, with its pisspoor failure to prepare our youth in math and science, encourages this.
If I wanted to read tired old 1980s and 1970s conservative polemics, I would. You recycle them here as if no one's ever heard them before - and miss the point entirely. Just move on, man.
All right, Ritmo.
All you're doing is admitting that you aren't intellectually serious.
And strongly hinting that you never were.
You're not here because you have a coherent position about anything, or any interest in defending such a position.
You aren't really recycling old Leftist polemics—they were much clearer and better organized than any of your online effusions.
Does anyone else give a hoot whether you believe yourself morally superior to the rest of the world? Or whether you just mentally awarded yourself a point against some "Right-winger"?
I'd like to see you try debating Gabriel Hanna.
What is clear, is that, like with the other jerking knees of this blogspace, you resent knowledge and feel that superior knowledge is some sort of stumbling block against coming up with the better argument.
No one's buying this embrace of ignorance that's being peddled any more.
You're boring, sorethumb. The relevant debate already took place and the capable parties already moved on.
And your opinions are STILL just opinions. As plentiful as assholes, and just as unhelpful.
I'm not interested in mentally masturbating with the sloppy seconds guy.
Move on. Fight someone else on the Daily Kos or some other web site. And do yourself a favor and do it on a post that was entered today. Staying current helps convince people that you're not anti-new knowledge.
Friedrich Hayek may have something to teach you. Or Tom Sowell (specifically, in Knowledge and Decisions). Or Robert Nozick (specifically, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia).
I'm sure that, for you, these works are the epistemological equivalent of inerrant biblical truth.
The rest of us form arguments to fit the facts, and not the other way around.
The argument made sense. You have questions about it, go ask the guy or read his publications. Learn about the debates within his field, a field in which you lack experience and understanding.
Yes, if I wish to pursue the matter, I will read his publications. If a presentation about science is any good at all, that's what it encourages the audience to do. Wilkinson is moderately successful on that level.
Have you read any of Wilkinson's publications? Do you intend to read any of them?
Or was your mind made up as soon as he finished his 15 minutes at TED?
Meanwhile, you obviously have no what my field is or how it relates to Wilkinson's.
Suffice it to say that you are remarkably loose with your charges that just about everyone in the world (except Ritmo) lacks "experience and understanding."
What's your field? How does it relate to Wilkinson's? What do you know about the debates in and around Wilkinson's field?
If you are going to judge other people's experience and understanding, you'll need a more reliable criterion than the old narcissist's stand-by:
—Agrees with Ritmo, has experience and understanding
—Disagrees with Ritmo, lacks experience and understanding
Perception is limited, but we still can see things and apply the process of refined observation and understanding to it. Fucking deal with it.
Do you have any other platitudes to serve up along with this one?
What is clear, is that, like with the other jerking knees of this blogspace, you resent knowledge and feel that superior knowledge is some sort of stumbling block against coming up with the better argument.
Scram, self-infatuated troll.
Hoosier, so now my kids exist, so now I'm no a sock puppet of Jeremy? You challenge me over and over again to post a blog, then when I do yo say I'm begging you to look at it? I was not to be trusted because I was an anonymous commenter? Wow oh wow is right, it is you who have a serious problem.
Did you pull wings of off flies when you were a kid? I'm done, you and your buddies are persona non grata.You are the ones who do not exist, at least not in the real world, only here on Althouse, where YOU can remain anonymous and be as twisted as yo want.
I meant to say, you have no *idea* what my field is.
I'm a psychologist. So I have a little acquaintance with the kinds of issues posed by the data sets Wilkinson uses.
And do yourself a favor and do it on a post that was entered today. Staying current helps convince people that you're not anti-new knowledge.
A self-infatuated troll with a millisecond attention span...
I respect people who use facts and reason to disagree with me.
You've presented nothing more than an impulsively contrarian attempt at reason, but without the facts. Big mistake.
Scientists seem to be able to have an easier time appreciating other scientists' work, regardless of the field. That's why conservatives, who don't believe that reason can improve the human condition, always attack academia - and by extension, education.
I have undergraduate and advanced degrees and training and publications in scientific fields. It's not braggadocio; it means I know how the process works. If the guy is wrong (or Gawd forbid, incomplete - a near inevitability because science only continues because knowledge is incomplete), then that will become known in time. Patience, grasshopper. Evidence is required for that part.
But again, what's your training? How many publications have you authored in a peer-reviewed journal, in a scientific field? What's your understanding of the scientific method? And most important, WHERE'S YOUR FUCKING DATA?
If you had been alive during Einstein's time you'd have lambasted the theory of relativity, and declared the revision to it acquired by quantum mechanics to be a refutation of his ideas. Because you can't fathom the idea that incomplete knowledge can still be useful in advancing our understanding.
You are simply anti-knowledge. You think that facts distract from ideas.
You are boring, ignorant, undeservedly self-righteous and not worth talking to.
Goodbye.
Ritmo, they are so jealous of your superior intellect, when they see they cannot win with their faulty logic,they always resort to the same old shit. Ritmo you run circles around them intellectually ,I love watching you pound them into the ground.If anyone deserves to be shown as the haters they are, it's Althouse's vicious little dogs.
I'm a psychologist.
Oh, really? Of which sort... the theoretical sort? Do you have one of those fancy shmancy Psy.D. degrees? Are you, like, down with that whole Freudian thang?
Dear God in Heaven Sorehead is a psychologist? I pity his patients. Well, IF I believed he REALLY was a psychologist that is, which I seriously doubt. Haha, how does it feel to be doubted?
Well, thanks - but I guess it's a duty of sorts. I mean, I'd probably prefer to be doing something better. Ignorance is one thing. Proudly assertive ignorance is grating, though. I just don't have much tolerance for it.
Ritmo someone has to do it, you've been courageous and victorious in battle. You deserve a medal.
Awwww.....
"... I hate that unwed motherhood perpetuates a cycle of poverty.
So does Natalie Portman, Hoosier. She really feels your pain..."
Jesus, you really are an idiot.
"... You challenge me over and over again to post a blog, then when I do yo say I'm begging you to look at it?.."
I never challenged you to do any such thing!
You really are a loon. Seek help.
Ritmo, they are so jealous of your superior intellect
Allie, you've got to be kidding.
I respect people who use facts and reason to disagree with me.
Like hell you do, Ritmo.
I have no idea what level of respect you show for facts and reason in the rest of your life.
I hope it greatly exceeds what you've consistently displayed around here.
Tell me what your scientific field is, if you have one, and what you've published on, if you ever have.
Ritmo,
If this is the quality of reasoning you normally employ about people who dispute with you, you're a hopeless case:
Scientists seem to be able to have an easier time appreciating other scientists' work, regardless of the field. That's why conservatives, who don't believe that reason can improve the human condition, always attack academia - and by extension, education.
I'm a social scientist, for starters.
Second—and this is going to blow your tiny mind—I'm an academic. You know, as in I work at a university. Like, as a professor.
Third, a trained scientist is in a better position to know which questions to ask, and, on the whole, is more inclined to informed skepticism than someone without training. This may never once have dawned on you, but questioning is part of appreciating other scientists' work. Certainly, a trained scientist is liable to thoroughly unimpressed by naked appeals to authority, such as the CACCistocracy and its promoters in the media are so inclined to resort to.
Fourth, you keep calling me a conservative. Well, I'm not down with banning abortion or punishing gays or warring on drugs, so if any of those is your criterion for conservatism, I don't qualify. If you want to call anyone who questions more taxing, more government spending, more government bowering, and more power for bureaucrats a conservative, then I suppose the label sort of fits. Libertarian is actually what I call myself.
And where the hell did you ever get the idea that I don't think reason can improve the human condition? Out of your fundamental aperture, maybe?
Are you so deluded as to suppose that anyone who questions ObamaReidPelosiCare, has given up on the application to reason to questions of human health?
Are you so self-infatuated as to suppose that anyone who doubts, say, Paul Krugman's prescriptions for economic recovery through digging huge holes in the ground and burying trillions of dollars in them, then filling them back up, has given up on the application of reason to questions about markets and economic exchange?
If you had been alive during Einstein's time you'd have lambasted the theory of relativity, and declared the revision to it acquired by quantum mechanics to be a refutation of his ideas. Because you can't fathom the idea that incomplete knowledge can still be useful in advancing our understanding.
I'm a social scientist, you flaming fool.
If I didn't find value in incomplete knowledge, I'd have to write off my own field, and all of its neighbors—'cause anyone with half a brain can find big ole gaps in what even the best social scientists know.
Haha, how does it feel to be doubted?
On a political blog's comment thread, with pseudonymous posters, it's a regular occurrence.
But again, what's your training? How many publications have you authored in a peer-reviewed journal, in a scientific field?
Ritmo,
You are obviously malicious. And you've already attempted, though incompetently, to identify me by name on this board. So I am not going to give you precise details about my work.
I am not going to identify my specialties precisely. There are lots of psychologists overall, but only small numbers of players in some of the research specialities within psychology.
I'll just say that my training consists of a Ph. D. From a well known psychology program. In an established area of basic psychology.
I think Psy. D.'s are OK for people who have the skill and motivation, and just want to go into clinical practice instead of becoming clinical researchers. But I am not a clinician, and university psychology departments aren't in the habit of hiring people with Psy. D.'s.
What's more, you complete asshole, I'm no fan of Sigmund Freud (not that most of today's Psy. D.'s would be, either). I regularly explain to my students why Freudian theory is wrong and can be discarded. In fact, why it is one of the few major theories in the field that we know is false.
I'll describe my publications this way. Vague, but correct.
My H-index is 19, meaning that I have published at least 19 articles in peer-reviewed journals, each of which, in turn, has been cited at least 19 times in the peer-reviewed literature. I've published additional articles that have not (yet) been cited at least 19 times.
Oh, and one more thing, you preening idiot.
I am the editor of a peer-reviewed journal. So I know the peer-review process from both sides.
One thing I've learned about it is that in psychology, a field with lots of knock-down drag-out controversies, no one demands that an editor be fired for publishing an article that takes a position displeasing to the complainant. I know of zero cases where this has happened.
Whereas CACCistocratic "climate scientists" will demand that the editor of a journal be fired for publishing an empirical report by a climate skeptic. And they often get what they demand, as in the forced resignation of the editor at Remote Sensing, upon the insistence of Kevin Trenberth, for publishing an article by Roy Spencer.
What's your understanding of the scientific method?
Well, presumptuous fool, how should I put this?
I've been teaching it to undergraduates in psychology for years.
On several recent comment threads at this site, I took Gabriel Hanna to task for his fallacious arguments defending the misuse of "proxy" data in climate science. That is an issue I'm familiar with, since most measurement in psychology uses what people in some other fields call "proxies."
Hanna, by the way, has stopped jumping up every time someone here takes the name of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change establishment in vain.
And most important, WHERE'S YOUR FUCKING DATA?
My fucking data with regard to what question?
If you don't state an empirically testable hypothesis, it's, umm, kind of hard for you, or for anyone else, to know what sorts of data are needed to test it.
You bellow, roar, chest-thump, and whine about science, you clamor for "fucking data," but you never get down to specifics.
I've yet to see you state a testable hypothesis about anything.
People who believe that science is strictly about collecting and analyzing data, and that scientists must never get into "metaphysics," are called positivists.
You sometimes talk like a really dim-witted, belligerent positivist.
Yet on this thread you've relied heavily on assertions about ... fairness and unfairness.
And positivists generally believe in an absolute separation between facts and norms.
So, if you are a positivist, you are as unscientific as a positivist can get.
I have undergraduate and advanced degrees and training and publications in scientific fields. It's not braggadocio; it means I know how the process works.
Back it up, jerk.
There's no need to do this in complete detail, though I am far less malicious than you appear to be, and I don't give a rat's ass who you really are.
Just present enough data to make a plausible case that you are any of the things you say you are.
Otherwise, the next time I encounter you on this board, I'm going to refer to you as Ritmo, the Fake Scientist.
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