MereMortal

Damn, trying to re-create the '68 Democrat Convention environment.  What a bunch of hippy wannabes.  

Since it hasn't been posted yet, here it is.  Rush on Fox Sunday.  

13 hours ago, drhougen said:

The right to do something means the right to be immune from any legal consequences for doing that thing.  The right to create propaganda means the right to be immune from criminal prosecution or civil suits if one creates propaganda.  

If the propaganda is a knowingly false and malicious lie, you can sue and win if you prove it.  Are you suggesting making defamation suits illegal?  

On 2/15/2016 at 10:43 PM, Samson Corwell said:

Oh, for God's sake. The man is a social democrat, not a socialist. I don't care if he does call himself one.

Samson, is being a social democrat a good thing?  What's the benefit?   

51 minutes ago, Kirkwoody said:

 When I confronted the most intelligent guy in the group about it his response was "Rand was right so why should I have my own thoughts."

That's sad.  I'm a huge Rand admirer and consider myself a serious Objectivist and if I ever resort to quoting Rand or merely telling folks to look up what she said on some subject in response to a question, I'll just commit suicide.  If I learned anything from Rand, I learned to think for myself and draw my own conclusions.  

If Draymond Green really wants to be unselfish, he should have let the Sixers win. They are horrible and need the win far more than the Warriors do.

The difference between Democrats//liberals/progressives/socialists/commies/tyrants and Republicans/conservatives/libertarians/freedomlovers/Objectivishistics is that when the political figures of the former make gaffes, or even commit crimes, their side rallies behind them, brushes off the ridicule or accusations as politically motivated nonsense, and moves on, where the latter group caves in at the slightest indication that one of their own might be made fun of by opponents, and they join in on trying to destroy him or her.

J

Right on cue: Hillary Clinton blames the vast right wing conspiracy for her email woes

Yeah, and Hillary is not stupid, ridiculous or embarrassing, but Palin and Trump are!

J

See, you're catching on.

The difference between Democrats//liberals/progressives/socialists/commies/tyrants and Republicans/conservatives/libertarians/freedomlovers/Objectivishistics is that when the political figures of the former make gaffes, or even commit crimes, their side rallies behind them, brushes off the ridicule or accusations as politically motivated nonsense, and moves on, where the latter group caves in at the slightest indication that one of their own might be made fun of by opponents, and they join in on trying to destroy him or her.

J

Right on cue: Hillary Clinton blames the vast right wing conspiracy for her email woes

Frank Caliendo does his thing.

Mr. Scherk, since when is charity an Objectivist first principle?

Wolf,

Actual charity like giving money to the needy has nothing to do with this.

The Principle of Charity is a technical term used in academia and the sciences. It means making your best effort to understand what someone is saying before evaluating it. It is the opposite of gotcha.

In other words, if there are two interpretations of a statement, and one is better than the other (or clearer, etc.), you assume the better one until proven otherwise for the purpose of evaluating it, even if the better one runs counter to your ideas and beliefs.

This reminds me of something I read about a year ago or so on the Gus Van Horn blog about what is referred to as steelmanning.

I'm serious. I think steelmanning makes you a better person. It makes you more charitable, forcing you to assume, at least for a moment, that the people you're arguing with, much as you ferociously disagree with them or even actively dislike them, are people who might have something to teach you. It makes you more compassionate, learning to treat those you argue with as true opponents, not merely obstacles. It broadens your mind, preventing us from making easy dismissals or declaring preemptive victory, pushing us to imagine all the things that could and might be true in this beautiful, strange world of ours. And it keeps us rational, reminding us that we're arguing against ideas, not people, and that our goal is to take down these bad ideas, not to revel in the defeat of incorrect people.

Donald Trump can't stand up to Hillary Clinton in a presidential debate. Ted, Marco and Carly can run right over her.

Trump is the candidate of the Zombie Tea Party. If he drops out the Zombies will zombie onto someone else, likely mostly the Republican nominee. Otherwise as a third party candidate, say, he'll be the poor man's Ross Perot giving us another Clinton and deju vu all over again.

--Brant

"When will they ever learn? When will they learn"?

I'm trying to picture what you are saying and all I do is laugh. There is no way Trump cannot stand up to someone, I don't care who it is.

Pat Condell has a few words for those offended by Trump:

video

Reagan was called the "teflon President" because the dirt didn't stick

Is Trump going to be the "boomerang President"?

It seems as if the dirt returns to the senders and sticks to them.

GENEVA — Weather-related disasters in the past two decades have killed more than 600,000 people and inflicted economic losses estimated at trillions of dollars, the United Nations said on Monday, warning that the frequency and impact of such events was set to rise.

The figures were released before a United Nations-backed climate meeting,starting next Monday in Paris, at which more than 120 national leaders will try to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and slow the rise in global temperatures.

Given the sharp reductions in climate related deaths over the last century, one should think twice about what this report actually means in regard to the threat level posed by human activity. The average AGW advocate will ignore the relevant context.

I don't care how it's explained away. This stuff is daffy.

1. Rearden romanced and married Lillian. Instead of having children, he adopted her brother.

2. Francisco laid Dagny only once or twice and never touched another woman.

3. Taggart Transcontinental was privately held and profitable.

4. Eddie Willers never loved anyone but Dagny from afar.

5. Ragnar's pirate ship never encountered the Coast Guard or US Navy.

6. Mulligan bought land in Colorado that no county tax assessor knew about.

7. Galt jammed every transmitter in America and broadcast on the same frequencies.

8. A dozen smart people brought down the government and destroyed a society...

9. ...with the expectation that they could rebuild everything later.

This isn't a list of Objectivist values. It's a list of things that some of the Atlas Shrugged characters did. I thought you were going to address the following from Galt's speech:

To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living.