Fake News

[Ellen Stuttle]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Ellen,

I can't say since I haven't read it, but I can make an educated guess.

My guess is that the problem is not the political view, but the evolutionary one. Those who look down their noses at what they perceive as human livestock actually believe they are higher on the evolutionary scale, at least to some degree. And their comfort is that this superiority is innate, meaning they don't have to work for it and no one can take it from them.

That might sound like a quip, but I'm serious. These folks may not use those words, but this belief flows through so much I have seen from them, I have no reason to doubt this kind of vain nitwit has been with us for a long time.

Michael,

The only elitists I've met who I think feel that the prerogative of ruling is in their genetic endowment have been some members of the old Hungarian aristocracy and some Austrians (an Aryan superiority sort of attitude).  My impression of American elitists is that they feel that it's their credentials which convey superiority.  The credentials could be connected with genetics in the sense of flowing from "I.Q.," but it seems to me that the superiority is felt to be conferred by the educational attainment.

But maybe I'm not understanding what you mean by "higher on the evolutionary scale."

Ellen

[william.scherk]

Trump: Reports of infighting are 'FAKE NEWS'
 

Quote

President Donald Trump asserted on Tuesday that his administration is “getting along great, and getting major things done,” pushing back on widespread reports that the West Wing has been engulfed in infighting.

“Don't let the FAKE NEWS tell you that there is big infighting in the Trump Admin,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “We are getting along great, and getting major things done!”

Multiple news outlets, including POLITICO, have reported that Trump’s White House has operated in something of a state of chaos since he took office, with aides competing for the president’s ear. POLITICO reported on Sunday that chief of staff Reince Priebus is taking the blame for the administration’s mistakes so far.

The unflattering stories about the administration that have leaked to the media appear to have bothered Trump.

 

[william.scherk]

"What's wrong, Jan?"

On 3/4/2017 at 8:25 AM, william.scherk said:

Politico's Matthew Nussbaum has put together a timeline of Russia-Trump news and acts and speeches and tweets.

Jan. 7: Trump writes on Twitter: “Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only 'stupid' people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We..... have enough problems around the world without yet another one. When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now and.... both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!”

Kremlin-backed media turns on Trump

Quote

News outlets funded by Putin’s government rooted for Trump’s election but now relish the chaotic first weeks of his administration. [...]

Kremlin-controlled news outlets used to root for Donald Trump’s election. Now they’re reveling in the chaos and division of his early presidency.

“Sessions Scandal: ‘U.S Headed to Constitutional Crisis,’” reads a March 3 headline on the website of the Kremlin-funded English language network RT.

“Immigrants See American Dream Fade in Wake of Surge Hate Crimes,” Sputnik News, another English language outlet bankrolled by the Kremlin, reported the same day.

“America is in the grips of hatred,” the Russian television commentator Dmitry Kiselyov told viewers of the Rossiya 1 network on Sunday night. The popular host, appointed directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggested the political discord could lead to violence in gun-friendly America — “a dangerous combination with free-flowing firearms,” he said.

Trump: Russia ‘ran over’ Obama for eight years

Quote

 

President Donald Trump, himself a frequent target of criticism over his perceived soft stance towards Russia, said Tuesday that it was his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, who truly failed to get tough with the Russian government.

“For eight years Russia ‘ran over’ President Obama, got stronger and stronger, picked-off Crimea and added missiles. Weak! @foxandfriends,” Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning, his second online outburst towards Obama of the morning.

 

 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

12 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

My impression of American elitists is that they feel that it's their credentials which convey superiority.  The credentials could be connected with genetics in the sense of flowing from "I.Q.," but it seems to me that the superiority is felt to be conferred by the educational attainment.

But maybe I'm not understanding what you mean by "higher on the evolutionary scale."

Ellen,

I see credentials as a signal for the people I'm talking about, not as a requirement.

I probably expressed this poorly. I'm talking about a bigoted attitude, an emotional conviction, not necessarily a rational one. For instance, very few among the Hollywood elitists have higher educational credentials or lots of independent academic study. Yet these people are absolutely full of this attitude. People like Barbara Streisand, Meryl Streep, etc., truly believe they are a higher form of human than Donald Trump--just look how they act--although I think they would die before they would say that out loud.

Hell, not even Bill Nye has much academically on his own. I read he helped invent a new kind of sun dial.  (He does have a string of honorary degrees, though. Charity credentials.) Yet put him up against a Christian or someone who questions climate change and you will see his attitude convey what I am talking about.

Ayn Rand once mentioned that racism means attributing a moral nature to genetic characteristics (she used different words, but that was the gist of it). White racism against blacks conveys this belief. These racists truly believe they are a different morally superior sort of human being than their targets.

The attitude I talk about is similar. Except instead of race, there's a mental component. And it's not just a belief system, although morality is one of the critical elements. For the elitists I am criticizing, it's like being emotionally frozen in perpetual adolescence.

Notice that these people don't mind violence against their "inferiors." You won't find many of them condemning the left-wing violence on campuses across America to shut down speakers that oppose the party line or the violence aimed at Trump and his supporters. That's because--to them--the human livestock needs to be taught a lesson and not get so uppity. These subhumans should know better, so they deserve what they get.

Also, radical Muslims in their own way have the same attitude of superiority, even regarding the violence. They are Chosen by Allah, they have the good sense to submit to Allah, as opposed to other forms of human life that are inferior, even positing that the inferior humans will suffer eternal torture for being that way.

But saying it this way is vague because I have to use words. What I am talking about is a feeling. It's bigotry underneath, except instead of the bigots emotionally focusing on the inferiority of their targets, they emotionally focus on their own self-believed awesomeness for belonging to The Superior Human Stock. That's their constant default mood. It's them (who they believe deserve to be endowed with all kinds of privilege) versus the livestock (an inconvenience of existence or probably, you know, evolution ). Whatever it is, this feeling is a certainty to them. 

And if a person has a scientific bent, I believe that bigotry feeling will include their interest in science (or academia) as one more proof that they are Superior Humans.

But oodles of actors, singers, sports folks, celebrities in general, belong to that club, not just academics. Even young local celebrities at the high school level. You get in the club by behaving a certain way and bashing others for the right reasons. And it helps if you believe this bilge because the club gatekeepers seem to have a radar to detect those who don't. You can tell who they suspect of secretly harboring slivers of independent thinking and reason on this point by who they bully amongst themselves.

I think the Judeo-Christian virtue of humility is aimed at deflating this conceit, at least to some extent, and get the person thinking as an individual instead of believing he innately belongs to a superior collective. (There's a bad side, too, but that discussion is beyond the scope right now.)

Once you tune your antenna to non-verbal communication (or in-between-the-lines when verbal) to detect this "I'm one of the superior chosen humans" attitude, it comes across as clear as daylight when you interact with people.

At the paradoxical extremes, on one end some very polite people are so soaked in this conceit, they just drip it all over everything and can't help mentioning their "club membership" as a subtext in every communication (especially when "virtue signalling"), and on the other end, some very rude and rough people are the most moral people you will ever meet whose default attitude is, as a human being, they are equals to the lowest and highest of mankind. These last are the same in private as they are in public.

Most people, in my perception and experience, are not paradoxical extremes. But they do lean one way or another to different degrees.

I don't know if that's clear, but that's the best I can do right now. Maybe I'll be able to articulate it better later.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

15 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Ellen,

I see credentials as a signal for the people I'm talking about, not as a requirement.

[....]

[....] What I am talking about is a feeling. It's bigotry underneath, except instead of the bigots emotionally focusing on the inferiority of their targets, they emotionally focus on their own self-believed awesomeness for belonging to The Superior Human Stock. That's their constant default mood. It's them (who they believe deserve to be endowed with all kinds of privilege) versus the livestock (an inconvenience of existence or probably, you know, evolution  ). Whatever it is, this feeling is a certainty to them. 

And if a person has a scientific bent, I believe that bigotry feeling will include their interest in science (or academia) as one more proof that they are Superior Humans.

But oodles of actors, singers, sports folks, celebrities in general, belong to that club, not just academics. Even young local celebrities at the high school level. You get in the club by behaving a certain way and bashing others for the right reasons. And it helps if you believe this bilge because the club gatekeepers seem to have a radar to detect those who don't. You can tell who they suspect of secretly harboring slivers of independent thinking and reason on this point by who they bully amongst themselves.

Michael,

Thanks for your further explicating.

The parts I've excerpted get at the difference I see between the Europeans I mentioned and just about every American I've encountered personally or through writing, reputation, interviews, whatever.  The sole American exception - and even there, only "almost" - I've encountered has been a relative by marriage who was a DAR (Daughter of the American Revolution).

You speak of "get[ting] in the club." That's where the difference lies.  The people I'm thinking of whom I met in Budapest and in Vienna had no need which I could detect of gaining/keeping access to superior status.  They felt (I sensed) literally born superior.  So superior they weren't even what I'd call snobbish.  The superiority was like their skin, so much an integral feature of their existence as not to be separable from their existence.  It wasn't something which in any respect had to be earned or demonstrated.  They felt just born on a different level.

The examples you speak of all have to keep proving the point, at least to themselves.  And they can lose membership in the "club" if they stray from the required behavior/attitudes.  Membership remains always provisional.  With the Europeans I'm thinking of, membership was guaranteed.  They could be destitute, living in a slum, all achieved reputation lost.  And still have the certainty of birth status.

Possibly there are people with close to the certainty attitude among old aristocracy of the American South, and of Boston (what's called "Boston Brahmins"), but except "almost" in the case of the DAR relative-by-marriage, I haven't met such people.  The difference I felt in the Europeans I'm thinking of was a security of status which went too deep to be questioned, a security unassailable by the details of personal life history and achievements or their lack.  I was kind of awestruck picking up the "vibes," with a feeling of a different emotional world than that of my American experience.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

12 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

The examples you speak of all have to keep proving the point, at least to themselves.  And they can lose membership in the "club" if they stray from the required behavior/attitudes.  Membership remains always provisional.  With the Europeans I'm thinking of, membership was guaranteed.  They could be destitute, living in a slum, all achieved reputation lost.  And still have the certainty of birth status.

Possibly there are people with close to the certainty attitude among old aristocracy of the American South, and of Boston (what's called "Boston Brahmins"), but except "almost" in the case of the DAR relative-by-marriage, I haven't met such people.  The difference I felt in the Europeans I'm thinking of was a security of status which went too deep to be questioned, a security unassailable by the details of personal life history and achievements or their lack.  I was kind of awestruck picking up the "vibes," with a feeling of a different emotional world than that of my American experience.

Ellen,

This is a very good point and it made me refine my own thinking. (Thanks...  )

The people I talk about do have insecurity whereas the Old Guard Bluebloods are certain. You are right that the newcomers to the Superior Caste must toe a party line of behavior or they will be expelled. (I even mentioned this behavior as the way into the club.)

However I believe there is a secret inner longing by the Nouveau Snoots. Their dream of paradise on earth is that emotional world you mentioned. They crave it but don't have it. They tell themselves they are certain of their membership in the Superior Caste and do everything they can to believe it, even and especially lying to themselves. They lose sleep over this. But they never admit to themselves or others that they could fall from grace. They try to goose their desire into an ontological reality, but can't help knowing they don't belong by birth. They've got to say grace to the right folks and keep saying grace to get grace.

There's another component that fosters this, although I think it's more in terms of brainwashing or indoctrination than the essential foundational urge to be innately better than others. It's the city folks versus the country folks. Notice that it's far easier to indoctrinate people who live in cities and who have to get their food and everything else to survive from other people rather than from the land. A self-sufficient person of the country knows that snark doesn't work on a cow. Neither does gotcha. Not if you want milk. You gotta roll up your sleeves, get a bucket and get to work.  

(As an aside, I believe this disconnection of people from actually doing things on their own and/or in reality is why a lot of intelligent folks simply didn't--and some still don't--see Trump's productive achievements as important.)

Tucker Carlson had Victor Davis Hanson on last night to discuss the rural-urban divide and they covered most of the standard bullet points that have been debated for a couple of centuries. But near the end, Tucker touched on what I consider to be one of the greatest tells in history for this indoctrination and attitude I talk about. He asked Hanson why the loathing of the elitist city-dwellers for those in the country. (Unfortunately Hanson misunderstood and replied as if Tucker asked about country-folk anger against coastal elites.)

That loathing is a key to a lot of insight.

I think it arises from the fact that the indoctrinated city people believe--all the way down inside themselves--they hold dominion (somewhat like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden) over the human livestock out in the country who feed them, but they also know that they couldn't milk a cow if their lives depended on it. And they are pissed that their right to rule the human livestock has been questioned by the livestock itself. I can almost hear them thinking in between the lines of countless articles and videos:

Just look at that. The livestock wants to rule itself and ignore us! How dare they? How fucking dare they? 

 

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

22 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

However I believe there is a secret inner longing by the Nouveau Snoots. Their dream of paradise on earth is that emotional world you mentioned. They crave it but don't have it. They tell themselves they are certain of their membership in the Superior Caste and do everything they can to believe it, even and especially lying to themselves. They lose sleep over this. But they never admit to themselves or others that they could fall from grace. They try to goose their desire into an ontological reality, but can't help knowing they don't belong by birth. They've got to say grace to the right folks and keep saying grace to get grace.

[....]

[....]  And they are pissed that their right to rule the human livestock has been questioned by the livestock itself.  I can almost hear them thinking in between the lines of countless articles and videos:

Just look at that. The livestock wants to rule itself and ignore us! How dare they? How fucking dare they? 

Agreed about the Nouveau Snoots' (I like that) dream of paradise on earth.

I, too, have heard the astonished and indignant message between the lines.

Ellen

[william.scherk]

It is interesting to see the surface spin put on what are basically the same happenings. This is the straight Google News top search returns for "Senate Judiciary+Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism."

Full coverage

US senators ask FBI, DOJ for any evidence of Trump wiretap Arutz Sheva - ‎Mar 8, 2017‎ Senators Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey and Acting ...   Senators ask DOJ and FBI for information on Trump's wiretapping accusation CNBC - ‎21 hours ago‎ "As chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, we would take any abuse of wiretapping authorities for political purposes very seriously. We would be equally alarmed to learn that a court found ...   Senators say they'll look into Trump wiretapping claims CBS News - ‎16 hours ago‎ Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the heads of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, sent a letter Wednesday afternoon to the Department of Justice requesting evidence of, “any warrant ...   Lindsey Graham open to subpoenaing intelligence agencies over Trump's wiretap claims New York Daily News - ‎3 hours ago‎ Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on crime and terrorism, said Thursday he was open to subpoenaing intelligence agencies to get information regarding President Trump's baseless accusation ...   Senate Committee Leaders Seek Proof Of Trump's Wiretapping Claim RTT News - ‎2 hours ago‎ The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism have sought proof from the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation on information related to President Donald Trump's assertion that his ...   Senators Graham and Whitehouse request any warrant applications, court orders related to President Trump's claim ... South Strand news - ‎Mar 8, 2017‎ Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), the chair and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, today sent a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Director ...   Senators Ask President Trump to Give Evidence of His Obama Wiretap Claim TIME - ‎20 hours ago‎ WASHINGTON — The leaders of a congressional inquiry into Russia's efforts to sway the U.S. election called on the Justice Department Wednesday to produce any evidence that supports President Donald Trump's explosive wiretapping allegation. Declaring ...   Senators ask intelligence agencies for Trump wiretap information OregonLive.com - ‎2 hours ago‎ I., the top Republican and Democrat on the Judiciary Committee's Crime and Terrorism panel, wrote Wednesday to FBI Director James Comey and Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente asking for "copies of any warrant applications and court orders ...   Graham, Dem Counterpart Ask DOJ, FBI for Any Warrants Related to Trump Wiretapping PJ Media - ‎16 hours ago‎ I.), chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, sent a letter to the Justice Department and FBI today asking them to hand over copies of any existing warrants or court orders related to ...   Senators Ask For Proof of Trump's Claim of Wiretapping Foreign Policy (blog) - ‎20 hours ago‎ I.), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, sent a letter Wednesday to the FBI and Department of Justice requesting any information they have on possible eavesdropping on Trump or his ...   Republicans want Comey briefing on Trump's wiretap claim Politico - ‎Mar 8, 2017‎ Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee are asking FBI Director James Comey for a briefing on President Donald Trump's claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower in the run-up to the presidential election. In a letter to ...   Senators Ask DOJ, FBI For Info On Trump's Wiretapping Charge TPM - ‎22 hours ago‎ “As Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, we would take any abuse of wiretapping authorities for political purposes very seriously,” Graham and Whitehouse's letter concluded “We would ...   US senators ask government for proof Obama wiretapped Trump CNBC - ‎10 hours ago‎ He chairs a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism, and Whitehouse is the senior Democrat on the panel. On Saturday, Trump ... The committee has scheduled a March 20 hearing and Trump's wiretap allegation is part of that probe. Democrats ...   Senators seek evidence to support Trump's wiretapping claim Minneapolis Star Tribune - ‎18 hours ago‎ As the chairman and top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary crime and terrorism subcommittee, Graham and Whitehouse said they would take very seriously "any abuse of wiretapping authorities for political reasons." But, they added, "We would be ... Mark ...   Senators ask FBI and DOJ for evidence of Trump wiretaps MarketWatch - ‎Mar 8, 2017‎ The senators — Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, and Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island — are the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on crime and terrorism. They directed the ...   Senators demand DOJ, FBI provide evidence that Obama wiretapped Trump The Daily Dot - ‎1 hour ago‎ “As Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, we would take any abuse of wiretapping authorities for political purposes very seriously,” the letter continues. “We would be equally alarmed to ...   Senate panel to probe Trump's wiretap claim The Hill - ‎Mar 6, 2017‎ The Senate Intelligence Committee is separately conducting an investigation into allegations that Moscow meddled in the White House race to help Trump, including any contacts between his campaign and Russia. Two sources told CNN that FBI director ...   Lindsey Graham asks FBI, Justice Department for proof that wiretapping occurred Washington Examiner - ‎Mar 8, 2017‎ "As chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, we would take any abuse of wiretapping authorities for political purposes very seriously," they added. The letter comes less than 24 hours after ...   Trump wiretapping allegation: Senators ask FBI, DOJ for evidence Vanguard Daily - ‎17 hours ago‎ Senators Graham and Whitehouse serve as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism. The lawmakers also emphasized, “We would take any abuse of wiretapping authorities for political ...   Sen. Graham to subpoena for evidence of Trump's wiretap claim Press TV - ‎10 minutes ago‎ Graham and Whitehouse, the two top ranking members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, argue that oversight for the potential wiretaps falls under their subcommittee. The House Intelligence Committee has scheduled a March 20 ...   House Judiciary Committee calls for FBI to investigate cyberattacks, wiretapping WHSV - ‎Mar 8, 2017‎ Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, including Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who chairs the committee, are calling on ... The Senate Judiciary Committee sent their own letter to Comey on Wednesday requesting information on Trump's wiretapping claims ...   Sheldon Whitehouse, Lindsey Graham want subpoenas to investigate President Trump's wiretapping claims An error ... Salon - ‎3 hours ago‎ ... intelligence committees to look into this, but it is the Department of Justice's criminal division that obtains warrants for wiretaps, and oversight of the criminal division lies with the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism ...   Two Senators Ask The FBI For Documents On Trump's Wiretapping Claims BuzzFeed News - ‎22 hours ago‎ Graham and Whitehouse, ranking members on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism, write that they “would take any abuse of wiretapping authorities for political purposes very seriously. “We would be equally alarmed to learn that a ...   McCain, Graham ask Trump for evidence of wiretapping claims CBS News - ‎Mar 6, 2017‎ “It was a very serious charge and one that needs corroboration,” noted McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “If it's true it's earth-shattering,” commented Senator ... The South Carolina Senator revealed that he and Senator ...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Come on, guys.

Really?

AP Consults Spy Novelists to Hype Trump-Russia Fake News

Dayaamm!

After the Russians-did-it storyline has tanked, the AP goes to fiction writers?

Now that's hunger to serve up some fake news.

Michael

 

[william.scherk]

Gate!

In another light-hearted thread, discussion drained some bloat out of an implausible quoat, from online information emporium  Your News Wire.  The writer of that story is called "Baxter Dmitry," and he is one hell of a writer.  At least in the sense of beavering away, day after day, making sure that the YNW  front page has at least four fresh stories by him. In total, his by-lined stories run to a list of 69 pages, ten per page.  Nowhere near my mighty WSS output here over the years, but hey.

Baxter (a pen-name, it has been argued**) is also a presence with the other YNW contributor on Twitter and Facebook, making sure that every YNW story is available via social media mentions. Like I said, a hell of a writer, and a canny or at least competent marketer.  For example, his retweet of a follower's direction to one of his stories got republished a respectable 500 times, and a Trump scam warning retweet garnered 39, which is quite OK.

Jeff Sessions Says He ‘Will Not Back Down’ From DC Pedo Investigations https://t.co/GZaVRdvYV6 @DHecei @therealroseanne @ScottBaio

— Lagartija Nix (@Lagartija_Nix) March 3, 2017

Trump Warns Flu Shots Are The Greatest ‘Scam’ In Medical History https://t.co/BduGoCKvP9 via @yournewswire

— Ciarra Deep XC (@MrsDeep) January 27, 2017

-- some of this information I just did not know. I now consider YNW a valuable source. Source of what? Be clairvoyant, dear reader.

-- Here are just a few of the tracks one can take under the guidance of the talented and prolific Baxter:

Justin Bieber Caught ‘Shapeshifting’ By Hundreds Of Fans
Posted on March 7, 2017 by Baxter Dmitry in Weird // 3 Comments

– a group of shapeshifting reptilian humanoids determined to control the world and usher in the New World Order.

According to historians there have been sightings of reptilians around the world at regular intervals throughout history, however it is widely believed that we are now in a golden age of reptilian sightings.  There is a belief that the world is gaining consciousness, waking up, and that the veil is slowly lifting.

It is said that Justin Bieber, a member of the dominant reptilian-Illuminati bloodline, is becoming one of the most commonly sighted shapeshifting reptilians in the world.

Two people watching the same scene will not necessarily both be able to discern the shapeshifting reptilian, however experts are saying that more people than ever before have developed the ability to witness reptilians manifest in their true form.

Anti-Soros Uprising Spreads Across Europe, Media Blackout
Posted on March 5, 2017 by Baxter Dmitry in News, World // 4 Comments
Liberal media, in thrall to the globalist masterplan, is suppressing news that George Soros's Open Society Foundation is being banned across Europe.

President Trump Announces Elite Pedophile Ring Investigation
Posted on February 24, 2017 by Baxter Dmitry in News, US // 18 Comments 
President Trump has announced a federal investigation into the Pizzagate elite pedophile scandal involving human trafficking on Tuesday and promised to help put an end to the “horrific, really horrific crimes taking place.”

FBI: 30% Of Washington DC Part Of Elite Pedo Ring
Posted on February 6, 2017 by Baxter Dmitry in News, US // 26 Comments

The insider at the Federal Bureau of Investigation says that the FBI finished submitting paperwork to the Department of Justice in preparation for the “Pizzagate” arrests which will begin as soon as Jeff Sessions is confirmed as Attorney General.

Mr. Sessions has been briefed on the investigation and all of the evidence three weeks ago.

“We expect some movement next week. Another 42 people also expected to be arrested in the drag net. 72 in all.”

--- 

When asked how they can get away with committing crimes that outrage ordinary citizens, the insider said, “It’s covered up. Law Enforcement takes their orders from the DC power brokers. AG’s, police chiefs, etc, are ordered to cover up the pedophile rings and their players. Lawmakers are allowed to be law breakers, because they create the law and rule over those that enforce the law.”

FBI: Pizzagate Arrests ‘Imminent’ In Washington Pedophile Ring Bust
Posted on February 4, 2017 by Baxter Dmitry in News, US // 143 Comments

WikiLeaks: Clinton, Obama, Soros Overthrew Pope Benedict In Vatican Coup
A group of Catholic lay leaders have asked President Trump to investigate their claims Soros, Obama and Clinton organized a Vatican coup to install radical leftist Pope Francis
Posted on February 1, 2017 by Baxter Dmitry in News, World // 13 Comments

______________________________

** I cannot vouch for the mental health or critical acuity of the commenters below. The first excerpt is from specialty site David Icke dotcom, an article that exposes a nom-de-plume and grievance, the second an inquiry with skeptical conclusions, the third an article that deconstructs one particular story by Baxter Dmitry's partner-writer at YNW -- and the last one a plangent plea for factual information.  If your computer camera light comes on unexpectedly, it is not my fault. Not at all.  There are key words craftily embedded in code that turn on the NSA's version of Mrs Kravitz.

Spoiler

Does Adl-Tabatabai’s friend David Hardy know that his picture is being used as ‘Baxter Dmitry’? There is no confirmation either way yet because he has not replied to questions sent to his Facebook page, but what is for sure is that ‘Baxter Dmitry’ has had two completely different people posted as his image. Can we have an explanation Mr Adl-Tabatabai?

So who is the REAL ‘Baxter Dmitry’ who clearly does not exist??

[ +++++ ]

posted on Jan, 15 2016 @ 03:24 PM
A thread was recently started concerning a "report circulating around the Kremlin" to the effect that Putin holds GMOs, vaccines, and junk food responsible for turning Americans into fat zombies. This supposed report certainly appeals to some folks' confirmation biases, as it was no doubt intended to. The Kremlin "tell" is misleading, though. This non-news was not produced by our old friend Sorcha Faal. but rather a new fabulist writing under the handle "Baxter Dmitry." Here is a screen capture of the most recent articles he has contributed to yournewswire.com:

[...]

Queen’s 2015 Christmas Message: “Enjoy Your Final Christmas” 

Donald Trump Strongly Denies Gay Putin Rumors 

Iran’s Supreme Leader Says New World Order To Be Thwarted In 2016 

Putin: ISIS Was Made In The USA, And We’re Going To Destroy Them 

Former Nanny Says Kim Kardashian An Illuminati Insider 

Putin Has Proof Princess Diana Was Killed By British Royal Family 

(Pics! What more proof do you need?) 

Putin’s 2016 New Year Speech – I’m Going To Defeat The Illuminati 

David Icke Didn’t Expose Jimmy Savile Before He Died, But Tells Fans He Did 

Some of these articles are extremely funny, and I would like to think that they are clever satire. Here's the problem: this is not a satirical site like The Onion. They intermingle real news with shoddy propaganda and outright hoaxes. The editor is a man going by the name of Sean Adl-Tabatabai . (Nice Irish-Arab name, eh?) He definitely has a point of view. Let's examine one of the stories bearing his byline: 

[ ++++++ ]

Bottom line.  YourNewsWire is not a news site, in my opinion it is used by the Russians as a proxy site to spread disinformation.  They throw in just enough legitimate news stories to establish a cover and when the opportunity to promote Russia, denigrate the West, or sow divisiveness against a Western country or alliance arises, they will publish Russian disinformation  and misinformation through lies, fabrications and otherwise bogus stories made to look like news. Only this guy, Sean Adl-Tabatabai, who seems to write most of the “stories” at YourNewsWire, is lazy and cheap.

Another Russian Proxy “News” site exposed. Liar. Cheat. Fraud.

[ +++++ ]

Dear Sean Adl-Tabatabai,

We heard you on BBC R4 Today news this morning, 30.01.2017, with John Humphreys talking about ‘fake news’.

Wow, how come you were invited onto the BBC? At the end of last year your ex-colleague David Icke was talking about you; rather suggesting you were the source of unreliable news to say the least. ...

If you Baxter or you David or you Sean are real, please comment here at TAP. Of course, all of you may not deem TAP prestigious enough now you have tasted the giddy heights of stardom at the BBC; the BBC who called you before Infowars or Jeff Rense or James Corbett or David Icke or Thomas Sheridan or 21st Century Wire or UK Column or any number of news sources referred to as ‘fake’ by the likes of the BBC.

It’s one thing to have the taxpayer funded BBC, but to have faceless or even and imaginary click bait presstittues also contributing toward the muddying of waters of truth and reliable information, well, it’s takes a ridiculous situation to another level of ridiculousness.

Well!

Edited March 11, 2017 by william.scherk
Removed Kravitz trigger

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 3/8/2017 at 5:14 PM, Ellen Stuttle said:

I, too, have heard the astonished and indignant message between the lines.

Ellen,

There are many people who hear it. Having been raised several years in a trailer park when I was young (grade school up to high school), I've always been attuned to being looked down on just from the early signals I got from the adult world back then.

But there are tons and tons of folks who see this. Even today, I came across a passage from Rush Limbaugh:

Nate Silver, Still Trying to Figure Out Why Hillary Lost, Stumbles into the Truth

The following says a little more so I don't have to talk about Silver:

The quote that jumped out at me was the following (my bold):

Quote

... he’s [Nate Silver] basically saying, “You people on the left and the media got nobody to blame but yourselves. You all wanted to be right, you all wanted to agree with each other and you all thought whatever each other thought was the most brilliant thing around.” No way Trump could win, no way Hillary could lose, not possible.

So that bias played a role in assembling polling data and analyzing polling data and reporting polling data.

None of this is a surprise to you and me. We knew this going in, that conventional wisdom was betraying these people. They were ignoring the Trump rally crowds. The point is, they’re still navel-gazing; they’re still trying to figure out what happened. Because, in their minds, folks, they control these things, they control elections, they control the outcome of events.

Not so much by how they shape public opinion, although that’s part of it, but because they just think they’re superior beings and they’re in the establishment and the establishment runs things.

Rush has an audience of millions and those people think like that.

You know, my life has been funny. I have lived among people like this and been accepted as one of them back in my orchestra days. I've even co-authored music with a governor in Brazil. (I've also done a stint on a really dark side.  )

Now that I'm more or less isolated from large social groups other than on the Internet, I guess I can see myself from a different angle than when I was struggling with how to be among the people who controlled my profession and other aspects of society.

I've always been sassy, but with distance, I see this snoot factor far more easily than I did when I was younger. 

Michael

[Peter]

I think of Objectivists and fans of Rand as being superior, not just for understanding and agreeing with her Aristotelian philosophy, but for being able to see, criticize, and even “rethink” themselves and their philosophy, while using reason as their guide. That makes me think of Walt Disney’s “Jimminy Cricket” and his slogan to, “Let your conscience be your guide.”  

My biggest beef with the ARI and even the Atlas Society’s supporters (in my last attempt to converse on the “official email site) is their “shunning the almost right but incredibly horrible fans of Rand because they don’t conform” with their sinful, questioning ways.

Of course everyone, in just about every mentally human category avoids some people and applauds others, but they seem to cast their biases into cement for the ages and nothing can dissuade them. Once you are out of the ‘in-group’ there is no REDEMPTION! What high school mentalities. I shun thee, shunners, with your Amish suspenders, horse carts, and black, broad brimmed hats! Scram, you guys holding up your copy of "Atlas Shrugged," as if it were the bible.  

Peter

[Peter]

The left wing press will never concede defeat, but I see cracks in their facades. I still put President Trump on the road to “greatest President ever” but he needs to really, really get this repeal of Obamacare, right. Last week he mentioned talking to Rand Paul. I suggest he align himself with Rand’s plan, put Senator Paul in charge and let him “talk it out” with Paul Ryan and the other Republicans.  Tracinski just wrote that America First can truly be rational selfishness in action.

Peter

March 10, 2017 Obamacare's Defenders Have No Idea What Insurance Is by Robert Tracinski: The most telling reaction to Paul Ryan's defense of the House GOP's Obamacare replacement bill--I won't call it a repeal, because it isn't--is the way some mainstream media reporters seized on this section. Ryan's explanation was boiled down to the following: "The whole idea of Obamacare is...the people who are healthy pay for the...sick. It's not working, and that's why it's in a death spiral." Hint: when you see that many ellipses in a quote, it's probably not an accurate representation of what was said. But what was telling was the reaction to what people thought Ryan said. They clucked and shook their heads and told us that this is just how insurance works--the healthy pay for the sick!--and Ryan must be an idiot for not knowing this. Which gets it exactly backwards. My favorite example was from Binyamin Appelbaum: "Insurance is a really problematic concept if you're opposed to sharing." Appelbaum is a finance and economics reporter for the New York Times who has (irony alert) advocated improved "financial literacy." So I'm going to go out on a limb and posit that he actually does know, somewhere deep down, what insurance is. He certainly ought to know. Yet you wouldn't guess that from the simplistic, glassy-eyed way he invokes "sharing," as if all he needs to know he learned in kindergarten and the fields of finance and economics didn't exist. This shouldn't be too hard of a question: what is the difference between insurance and "sharing"? If somebody sold you insurance on the terms these media types are endorsing, by telling you that the whole system is set up so you're likely to pay more than everybody else and get less in return, would you buy it? Don't be silly, that's a rhetorical question. Of course you wouldn't buy it, which is why Obamacare had to impose a "mandate" to force you to buy it. But this is not what insurance is actually supposed to be. It is not a mechanism for some kind of free-form social "sharing." I can tell we're going to have to get really basic here, because a lot of people are really determined not to understand how a very simple thing works. So let me explain it slowly and carefully.

The point of insurance is not that healthy people pay for sick people. The point of insurance is that you pay when you are healthy in order to reduce your own financial risk when you eventually become sick. The ideal way to do this would be simply to save your own money, to put it aside while you are healthy so that you have a fund to draw on when you need medical treatment. This would work perfectly, if you knew exactly when you were going to need it and exactly how much it was going to cost. But there's no way to know this, so everyone faces a risk. What if I become sick before I have enough money set aside? What if I get some sort of cancer that's horrifically expensive to treat? Hence the need for insurance. The point of health insurance is not to provide health care. The point is to hedge against financial risk. It is a form of finance. You still set aside a certain amount every month, as you do with savings, but you control for the short-term risk of needing your benefits before you have fully paid for them. Some people will pay premiums for only a few months before they need the benefits. Others will pay for decades without needing them. You accept this because you don't know ahead of time which one of those people you are going to be. But you can make calculations about which one of those people you are likely to be. So you want your premiums to be correlated to your own level of risk and not just be a slush fund to be "shared" with others, because that looks a whole lot like getting ripped off. If you find yourself required to pay extremely high premiums while you're still young and healthy and with a healthy lifestyle, and therefore with a very low risk of using much of your coverage, then you may well decide you're better off without insurance. The steep premiums you are paying are not justified by the relatively small amount of risk they defray. Even if there's a penalty for failing to buy insurance, if the penalty is small enough--and Obamacare's architects didn't have the guts to make it as big as it really needed to be--then you're going to decide you're better off just paying the penalty.

Now add to this one other factor. If the whole system is designed to allow you to wait and get insurance later, when your risk of developing a serious health problem is much higher or even after you already have a chronic problem, and you can do that without paying much more, then your decision becomes even clearer. Of course you're going to delay getting insurance. All of the economic incentives tell you this is the smart move. The result is precisely the Obamacare "death spiral" Paul Ryan was explaining. The system is designed to overcharge the young and healthy in order to subsidize the insurance of the old and sick. In doing so, it creates a huge incentive for those young people to drop out and stop paying the subsidies and instead to wait until they're older and sicker. So you end up with more people who need to be subsidized and fewer people to do the subsidizing. This is exactly what is happening on the Obamacare exchanges. That's why a bunch of insurers decided they couldn't break even and bailed out, and it's why those who remained are charging ever-increasing premiums, making a joke out the name "Affordable Care Act."

If you want a system that is actually based on involuntary "sharing," on the outright redistribution of money from one group of people to another--well, there's a name for that, but it's not "insurance." It's "welfare." Applied to health care, that system would be something like Medicaid--which turns out to be mostly what Obamacare accomplished: pushing a bunch of new people onto Medicaid and expanding the welfare state. That's what everybody on the left really wanted all along. They never wanted to expand private health insurance, which they have spent decades vilifying. Instead, they wanted health care to be a welfare state entitlement, which they call by the euphemism "single payer." This has its own death spiral, by the way, which was memorably summed up by Margaret Thatcher when she said that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money. But the point is that the Democrats didn't think they could get away with full socialized medicine politically--not yet, at least--so they settled on the bastardized compromise of Obamacare, which consists of trying to treat private insurance as if it were a welfare entitlement. It was an unsustainable pretense, and that's what is currently collapsing. All of this is such a big story that everybody knows what's happening and why. But the mainstream reporters and commenters have an ideological bias against allowing any big government program to be rolled back, no matter how badly it fails. They have a more immediate partisan interest in thwarting anything Republicans are trying to do and trying to make them look foolish and needlessly cruel. So they play dumb. They pretend they don't know anything about how insurance works or how Obamacare works--and then they try to deflect this induced ignorance by pretending that Paul Ryan is the dumb one. That's my theory, anyhow. You can decide for yourself whether this is more or less comforting than the alternative hypothesis, which is that the nation's elite economics and health care reporters don't know the basics of their own field of expertise. 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Peter said:

I think of Objectivists and fans of Rand as being superior, not just for understanding and agreeing with her Aristotelian philosophy, but for being able to see, criticize, and even “rethink” themselves and their philosophy, while using reason as their guide.

Peter,

So you think Objectivists and fans of Ayn Rand are superior to, say, Dr. Ben Carson because he's a practicing Christian?

Thank you, but no.

If I need brain surgery, gimme the Christian.

A hardcore Objectivist would be the last person I would want to be under the knife of.

I'm still a Branden supporter.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Peter said:

Last week he mentioned talking to Rand Paul.

Peter,

Rand was really against the plan, now, after talking to the president, he's saying there might be a happy outcome.

When will the press--and most everyone else, for that matter--stop taking President Trump's opening bid as his final offer?

Never, I hope...

That way he'll keep getting shit done.

Michael

[william.scherk]

[Peter]

Whoa. I am a bit tipsy. I went to pick up some fish and chips for me, and a crab cake sandwich for my significant, oh so thankfully significant other, from a new restaurant with a liquor store next door. You can figure out the rest. The coating was kind of strange on the fish but my wife loved the crab cake. the fries, salad and mashed potatoes were very good. The Old Granddad was 20 proof too much.  

Michael wrote: Peter, So you think Objectivists and fans of Ayn Rand are superior to, say, Dr. Ben Carson because he's a practicing Christian? Thank you, but no. If I need brain surgery, gimme the Christian. end quote

I understand the distinction. A human can be proficient in one area and deficient in another. But what if Doctor Ben Carson’s psychology AND mysticism combined with his medical practice demanded a prayer break in the middle of the brain surgery, and HE HELLUCINATED THAT GOD TOLD HIM TO STOP THE SURGERY BECAUSE OF THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST . . . any moment now?   

Grrr! Michael? I have no problem with anyone who sees no difference between the races in a social context and I agree with Objectivism that our degree of *volition* is a big part of what makes us different from the great apes. Don’t judge a book by its cover. That is rational and scientific. But, the Sciences of modern Psychology, Anthropology and Evolutionary Psychology are not racist. They are an attempt to explain reality by using reason and scientific observation. There are significant differences in heredity that do matter in many different areas such as with medical treatments. And, innate capacities for talent, intelligence and action, do exist. A is A, José. Hard to convince? Here are a few questions. 

How many blacks have you met who you respect and are superior and achieving humans? Do you know someone who is black? Concerning their potential for being a true friend or family member how do you rate them on a scale of 1 to 5? Do certain things about them make you dubious? Have you soured on them? A Vast Majority of black men lose their status of cohabitation in a family unit. As the Ray Charles Singers harmonized, “Hit the road Jack, and don’t you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.”    

What is the average IQ of blacks? 70 to 80.

What is the incarceration rate for blacks? What percent were in jail, are in jail, or will be in jail? Do you think it is the systems, or “whities’” fault? The black incarceration rate is sixty percent.

What is the rate of domestic violence broken down according to racial identity or ethnicity? Their’s is the worst of any ethnic group. Child and family rape? Broken and fatherless families? There’s no need to repeat myself.

Peter

Notes.

From “Rose Gold,” by Walter Mosley page 297, Easy Rawlings is narrating: Half an hour later I was sitting in the kitchen reading the only book I could find, “Atlas Shrugged,” a book I had heard lots about, but never read. I knew that Rand’s philosophy Objectivism, was the talisman of free thinkers and capitalists around the world but in the few pages I got through I couldn’t make out her argument. Of course I wasn’t so much thinking about abstract ideas of laissez-faire capitalism with a million dollars in the hall closet.

From page 307, Easy Rawlings thinking: For twenty minutes we talked about Ayn Rand and her Objectivist philosophy.

“But she ain’t really no real philosopher,” Jackson said at last.

“She writes philosophy,” I argued.

“Yeah but really it’s just ideas that’s alive in the air,” he said. “She pluck out them concepts and act like they were her own. But you know a real philosopher tells you what’s comin.’ ‘Cause you know the world always gonna change an’ the genuine thinker give you some warnin’ ‘bout things nobody else even suspects.”

I stopped arguing after that. I had learned over time that even if Jackson was wrong he could still talk circles around me. end quote          

From, "The Missing Link," by Ayn Rand: I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent. But a certain hypothesis has haunted me for years; I want to stress that it is only a hypothesis. There is an enormous breach of continuity between men and all the other living species. The difference lies in the nature of man's consciousness, in its distinctive characteristic: his conceptual faculty. It is as if, after aeons of physiological development, the evolutionary process altered its course, and the higher stages of development focused primarily on the consciousness of living species, not their bodies. But the development of a man's consciousness is volitional: no matter what the innate degree of his intelligence, he must develop it, he must learn how to use it, he must become a human being by choice. What if he does not choose to? Then he becomes a transitional phenomenon - a desperate creature that struggles frantically against his own nature, longing for the effortless "safety" of an animal's consciousness, which he cannot recapture, and rebelling against a human consciousness, which he is afraid to achieve. For years, scientists have been looking for a "missing link" between man and animals. Perhaps that missing link is the anti-conceptual mentality. end quote

The following reminisces are inspired from, “Goddess of the Market,” and rehash some of my earlier musings which one OL contributor termed idiotic or racists, so I will put it here. Many scientists disagree with Rand is with her sense of species wide egalitarianism, attributed to “volition.” She tried to convince Rothbard of this mental egalitarianism, by telling him, “I could be just as good in music as in economics if I applied myself.” Rand insisted all men had “similar rational endowments.” Rothbard did not buy that non-scientific observation, nor do I. IQ is real and may increase the volitional choices available.

An earlier Rand gave credence to the Evolutionary justification for Capitalism. She had a sense of a “deep seated elitism.” She believed all men were NOT created equal, and included negroes in a lesser group, though she later changed her early rights theory to the Constitutionally stated, “All men are created equal . . . .” But her earlier direct observations, led her to see differences in intellect, and to record those differences.

Later in life, a more mature Ayn Rand was trying to develop a unified philosophy free from Nietzschean influences but went too far towards what cannot be scientifically verified. She went from “superman” to “passive, versus active man” to “equally volitional and egalitarian” in her mature writing as she attempted to write a “book for the centuries.”         
 

From my old writing. Evolutionary Biologists and Psychologists kind of beat around the bush, but security personnel and scientists DO agree with racial profiling. Ask any cop on any beat. Blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes as an ethnic group in America. Arabs commit more hijackings. Fat men need less scrutiny at an airport. South Africa is “the rape capital of the world.” Is there a racist factor in this African observation? I can’t say which scientists are allowing prejudice to influence their scientific observations but a common comparison for them to say is that the Bushmen of South Africa are the most different and “least violent” of the different African racial/ethic groups. Other African blacks are very violent.

If you watch any “black movies” you will know the level of violence is incredible, which is not unlike regular, generic “blockbusters” but in “black movies” the violence is more within a family or a neighborhood than international or in cowboy shoot-um-ups. This is in sync with the amount of violence in black families and neighborhoods, and in their ethnic music.

The movie, “Barbershop” is hailed by black people, as SO TRUE TO LIFE. In that movie, everyone threatens violence, commits violence, or has violence committed against them. I candidly spoke to a person of that ethnic persuasion and they thought nothing of the constant unremitting, violence. When I pressed them about it, they thought that it did COMICALLY reflect their life, but that they never thought of it as SO violent before. It was just their life.

Did neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in Florida, stake out his own neighborhood and then notice a young, black individual in a hoodie and did that make him suspicious? Sure. Wouldn’t you be suspicious? Even Jesse Jackson admitted that black youths walking behind him on a dark city street would scare the crap out of him. White youths, he would notice but he would not be as worried.

If the Zimmerman case had been a black on black crime it would not have gotten one minute on the national news. The weekend after the beginning of the trial there were 40 shoot outs in Chicago and 9 deaths. In the week before there were thirty some shoot outs in Baltimore and 14 deaths. Blacks men are killing each other across the country and that isn’t news to CBS. Recently, there have been more "black murders" in major American cities including Chicago, than in the top five world war zones.

George H. Smith wrote during the Zimmerman trial: If Martin had not approached Zimmerman, sucker punched him, and then beat him while on the ground, then he would still be alive. Zimmerman was with his neighborhood watch program, and Martin drew his attention because he was walking late at night close to houses rather than taking a sidewalk. Zimmerman had every right to be concerned (in a neighborhood that had been experiencing a lot of burglaries), and he did nothing wrong in trailing Martin from a distance. I live across the street from a mini-mart, and it's common for teens to cut through my driveway and backyard rather than go half a block to a sidewalk. And they walk very close to my house on their way. When this happens late at night it can make me nervous. I will sometimes look out the window, but if the teens keep walking there is no problem. That's what Martin should have done.
end quote

Life is GENERALLY more pleasant, and less violent for the races and ethnicities other than black. Ask, the city dwellers who stay as black majorities move into their old Jewish or Polish neighborhoods. They are harassed, and lately old white folks have been sucker punched. So which was worse, the punch or the fall, Grandma? As always when discussing race, I must end this letter by saying, “Always judge men by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.” Objectivism is contextual and scientific – but NOT stupid. Don’t spit out “bromides.” Don’t be stupid you beings of reason and rationality. Oh ye Objectivists. What is to become of you? Is this polemic racism? 

[Ellen Stuttle]

7 hours ago, Peter said:

How many blacks have you met who you respect and are superior and achieving humans? Do you know someone who is black? Concerning their potential for being a true friend or family member how do you rate them on a scale of 1 to 5? Do certain things about them make you dubious? Have you soured on them?

I live in a neighborhood which is more than 95% black and is as peaceful, quiet, and well-behaved as was the upper-middle-class white neighborhood in which I grew up.

Among my neighbors, the one I'm disinclined to get into conversation with, because she's the sort of "snoot" Michael and I have been talking about, is a white academic, a philosophy professor.

Ellen 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

10 hours ago, Peter said:

But what if Doctor Ben Carson’s psychology AND mysticism combined with his medical practice demanded a prayer break in the middle of the brain surgery, and HE HELLUCINATED THAT GOD TOLD HIM TO STOP THE SURGERY BECAUSE OF THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST . . . any moment now?

Peter,

Have you ever heard of any top-rank surgeon who has ever done anything like this?

I haven't.

Not even Muslim doctors, who tend to be very good, do weird stuff like this at the operating table. There are plenty of radical Islamist Muslim doctors who are, or have striven to be, terrorists. But even in their wildest religious ecstasies, I have never heard of any of them behaving like that during a medical operation.

It's OK to fear things, but if you are going to bash religious people for believing in things that don't exist, isn't fearing doctor melt-downs at the operating table due to religion the same thing? Believing in something that doesn't exist? Because from what I know, this behavior just doesn't exist. And if some case should come along, it would probably come with a high dose of sudden mental illness or brain tumor or something.

The closest I have ever seen to highly specialized doctors mixing up religion with their profession is in writing books. One neuroscientist claims he went to heaven during a seizure and came back. Things like that.

Now, on another point, that is, how a rational philosophy makes people reality-oriented, how do you explain the sorry shape of the Objectivist movement if we are supposed to be the Superior Ones? Within our own subculture, I have come across too many examples of people believing in a myth (or some us-against them story) rather than their own two eyes to attribute this to fluke. How is that rational?

This led me to see an error in Rand's framing of philosophy as causal. At root, philosophy is a tool, not a cause of behavior.

In other words, a builder has to want to build in order to act. A tool can help him build better, but the tool will never make him want to build. The tool is not the outcome nor the motivation.

This applies to the negative side, too. Take a look at the control freaks we see in our subculture. They want to be control freaks and the philosophy has nothing to do with it.

Michael

[Peter]

Something that I find interesting is that people can have different experiences. So of course, believe your own observations and knowledge. And people can agree on a group of facts, yet reach different conclusions about those facts. But one of those people is wrong. And as William illustrated when “some people” are researching a prior conclusion they “believe the first link that agrees with what they previously concluded,” and stop doing research. A parental admonition that “You’ll be sorry!” lands on deaf ears if they “pre-judge.”

So do you consider weather reports better than no reports? After all you can always just look out the window or step outside. I always like those old movies where someone is listening to the short wave or other transmissions and hears about a hurricane heading their way. We are expecting nor’easter Stella here but we may . . . or may not . . . get snow. But wow, west and north of us! Naming winter storms is the Weather Channels’ latest fad.

What about a psychiatrist’s report about a violent patient in a mental facility? Would you take off the strait jacket because you observe them to be placid and agreeable? Purrrr.

Most of us can agree about facts. But when it comes to people, suddenly the required proof is different. Why is that? Observation, facts, statistics, peer reviewed articles, scientific articles, books, and the daily news should not be filtered through a PC lens, is all that I hope to see on OL. And no one should assume a certain status because of the group they belong to.

I was thinking about racism as I watched an hour of one of the “Planet of the Apes,” movies last night from 1971 and it had in it the guy who plays Victor on “The Young and the Restless.” It very clearly illustrated Racism or in this case Species-ism but I also noticed only one black reporter and I don’t think more than a few women in a crowd of 50 Clark Kents. Then I switched to the RFD channels The Marty Stuart Show where he sings and plays western and country music and I noticed he has what is very close to one of those “white supremacist” crosses in the background and even on each shoulder of his costume. Later I fell asleep.

Peter   

[william.scherk]

 

11 hours ago, Peter said:

21 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

22 hours ago, Peter said:

I think of Objectivists and fans of Rand as being superior, not just for understanding and agreeing with her Aristotelian philosophy, but for being able to see, criticize, and even “rethink” themselves and their philosophy, while using reason as their guide.

So you think Objectivists and fans of Ayn Rand are superior to, say, Dr. Ben Carson because he's a practicing Christian?

I understand the distinction. A human can be proficient in one area and deficient in another. 

You are misunderstanding Michael, Peter, I think. Being able to 'see, criticize, and even "rethink" themselves and their philosophy, while using reason" as a guide is one thing -- and professional competence is another.  There is really nothing in Carson's medical expertise that depends on any religious underpinning, at least as far as I can tell.

We might find some of Carson's beliefs bizarre or comical, but his beliefs have little or nothing to do with his expertise in his chosen profession. 

11 hours ago, Peter said:

But what if Doctor Ben Carson’s psychology AND mysticism combined with his medical practice demanded a prayer break in the middle of the brain surgery, and HE HELLUCINATED THAT GOD TOLD HIM TO STOP THE SURGERY BECAUSE OF THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST . . . any moment now?

Do you mind if I call this silly?   I mean, one can indeed find medical practitioners who combine 'mysticism' with expertise (perhaps among the Jerry Story stockade of genius doctors), but there is zero evidence that Ben Carson is one of Them.

11 hours ago, Peter said:

What is the average IQ of blacks? 70 to 80.

Go quickly to the Internets and come back with the first thing that supports this contention. And then take the rest of the week off -- to  'see, criticize, and even "rethink"; your expertise in the  area of race and IQ. 

Unless you are being mystical about knowledge, or have wrapped up all further inquiry ...

Spoiler

[from the New Republic, written by Jeet Heer]

To solve the mystery of Ben Carson, it’s important to realize two facts: First, great intelligence doesn’t immunize a person from indulging in magical thinking or pseudo-science. Second, even very smart and accomplished people can be fantasists. 

A key text for understanding the Carson phenomenon is science journalist Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Times (originally published in 1997 and revised in 2002). In a chapter titled “Why Smart People Believe Weird Things,” Shermer notes that “intelligence is ... orthogonal to the variables that go into shaping beliefs.” What this means is that the factors that make someone believe unusual and non-scientific or pseudo-scientific ideas—everything ranging from ESP to myths about Atlantis to oddball Shakespearean authorship theories to outright holocaust denial—are independent of intelligence. These are beliefs that very smart people as well as the far less intellectually gifted are prone to.

“Another problem is that smart people might be smart in only one field,” Shermer notes. “We say that their intelligence is domain specific." Carson clearly has a "domain-specific" intelligence—which he freely applies to fields outside his ken (not just Egyptian Archaeology but also American politics, foreign policy, economics, evolutionary biology, and many others). 

But there’s a further factor at work: In our educational meritocracy, smart people like Carson are likely to have high social status, which makes them more self-assured and willing to think they are smarter than the experts in other fields. Or smart enough, in Carson's case, to believe they're qualified for the presidency. 

In some respects, being as intelligent and well-educated as Carson makes you more vulnerable to what Shermer calls weird beliefs. The smarter and better-educated you are, the more powerful you are at coming up with arguments to justify your positions. In effect, intelligence and education give you the skills at becoming entrenched in motivated reasonings. In Shermer’s words, “smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending belief they arrived at for non-smart reasons.” This explains the engineers who become 9/11 truthers, the Supreme Court justices who think the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare’s plays, the distinguished mathematicians who think HIV is not the cause of AIDS. It also explains Ben Carson.

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If I were gay and I needed a brain operation, Ben Carson would be my man (if he were still practicing).

I would not go to him for psychological counseling about sex, though.

Being able to judge like this in order to act like this, to me, is a sign of intellectual independence and maturity.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Unless you are being mystical about knowledge, or have wrapped up all further inquiry ...

William,

You mean like when someone prominent says about man-made climate change, "The science is settled?"

(I couldn't resist... )

Michael

[william.scherk]

Nobody knows. Nobody can know. That's settled.

48 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

3 hours ago, william.scherk said:

15 hours ago, Peter said:

What is the average IQ of blacks? 70 to 80.

Go quickly to the Internets and come back with the first thing that supports this contention. And then take the rest of the week off -- to  'see, criticize, and even "rethink"; your expertise in the  area of race and IQ. 

Unless you are being mystical about knowledge, or have wrapped up all further inquiry ...

You mean like when someone prominent says about man-made climate change, "The science is settled?"

I'd like to see the quoat in context before commenting, so no.  

What I meant was for Peter to show some of the thinking behind his assertion, to show his mental expertise at dealing with conflicting (and sometimes confusing) claims. Generally, I think 'the science is settled' can act as a thought-stopper, in some if not most situations.  Nobody is likely to be persuaded of this fact or that, simply because someone says "the science is settled."  As a slogan, it fails to be interesting, and doesn't open the door to a 'debate,' if you know what I mean.  

However ...

It does depend on what is the limited scope of the 'settled' bits, perhaps.  

Thus, some discoveries by Tyndall (the CO₂ effect/the Tyndall Gases Effect, per Judith Curry) might be said to be 'settled.'  But that in itself doesn't advance understanding or discussion of the 'solid' parts of the whole schmozzle ... part of the reason why I periodically recommend Spencer Weart's book, The Discovery of Global Warming (it is history, basically, and starts at the start -- with the suspicion that the Earth was not geologically constant ... ). I don't believe a single person here has bought or borrowed the book.

I guess if I said "the basic radiative physics with regard to CO₂ is pretty damn solid," regarding Tyndall's scientific discovery, a useful question is ... How do you know?  And off to the intellectual races we go.  

There is a somewhat related claim -- which I think I heard in Tucker Carlson's brief excursions into gnosis. It is that 'You don't know, you cannot know,' or 'Nobody knows.'  Which strikes me as classic incuriosity.  And kind of a thought-stopper of its own.

But back to so-called Fake News:

Americans most likely to trust information from climate scientists about causes of climate change https://t.co/wWU4tRqkZa pic.twitter.com/yUGEbsP6QZ

— PewResearch Internet (@pewinternet) March 11, 2017

Which reminds me I haven't posted any Arctic weather maps in the APS thread in a while ...

Edited March 12, 2017 by william.scherk
Which reminds me ... added link to Weart's online version of the Discovery of Global Warming ...

[Ellen Stuttle]

20 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

I periodically recommend Spencer Weart's book, The Discovery of Global Warming (it is history, basically, and starts at the start -- with the suspicion that the Earth was not geologically constant ... ). I don't believe a single person here has bought or borrowed the book.

You believe incorrectly.  Borrowed it, no desire to support Weart by buying it, nor to have the discussion of it you try to elicit.

Ellen