I recently saw a news piece that said in America there are standards for "organic" vegetables fruits and grains, but any fish can be called organic because there is no standard at all.

To be fair, GMO is a bit of a nonsense term as well, technically encompassing everything from crops selectively bred for taste and yield to those with various animal and or bacteria genes spliced in. I wish there were GMO labels and levels, telling us the method of modification, the source of the new genes if any, and even the expected benefits and hazards so we could make informed choices. I still can't believe the ballot proposition to require such labels in California failed.

*promote

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2018/12/fox-sports-roundball-rock-nba-on-nbc-theme-john-tesh-video

https://www.12up.com/posts/6241647-fox-bringing-back-iconic-nba-on-nbc-theme-music-for-college-basketball-broadcasts

https://awfulannouncing.com/fox/fox-sports-is-bringing-john-teshs-roundball-rock-to-select-college-basketball-broadcasts.html

I thought I was going crazy in hearing this rad NBC's NBA theme earlier!

I can believe that a plant based diet is healthy, but there’s no way that study proves “No exercise, all you can eat weight loss”.

There are a multitude of problems with it, starting with the tiny sample size and selection bias.

It's as if Trump, the GOP, and their voters, can't pass 6th grade civics. America isn't a dictatorship, as much as it is heading that way with the current administration and the GOP. If there's two parties that have opposing views, the solution isn't "our way or the highway" but find the middle ground. Seems since Obama took office, the GOP's definition of middle ground is agreeing to 80-99% of their demands. This is of course because of religious indoctrination, where authority isn't earned, but given by divine right from God to only a select few, and it's everyone's place just to shut up and take it.

Its kind of comical how terrified american police officers always appear in these videos. The contrast between the police officer and the woman's composure is too much, they may want to consider improving their selection procedure and training techniques.

the elephant in the room, and no one wants to admit it right or left, is that the history of police /judicial systems has never been good. Im not saying it to advocate for anarchy but basically everywhere, always, police abuse their power, while preventing very little crime / providing justice. I dont pretend to know all of history, but I never get much of a response when I say this and I thinks its because power corrupts no matter what, and there will always be minority others to justify abusing. The very very best you can hope for is to have enough oversight so as to make the corruption spread out, obscure, and minimal but even then...

For a long time I thought the US police was at least more effective in closing cases but between the US getting its ass kicked in the drug war despite the militarized police and a report I saw about poor coordination across state lines leading to murders and missing persons cases going unresolved for decades

Can you show me where I argued against the statement, "Blanket racial statements are wrong and racist."

If not, perhaps you should go back and take some refresher English classes (preferably some Logic classes too).

Just like Newtboy, you're trying to put words in my mouth. Until you learn how to actually parse sentences and assemble a logical argument there's just no point.

And, in case you had trouble figuring it out, words like "likely" and "could" tend to defuse the "blanket" nature of statements. I can make a ton of statements using those words that are 100% correct.

"A randomly-selected group of Black Americans likely has a lower income than an equal-sized group of White Americans."

Explain to me how that's wrong. For that matter, explain to me how it's a "blanket" statement.

And, just to be clear, there's a wide chasm between using such a statement and arguing against the proposition that such statements are bad. People do bad things all the time that they fully acknowledge are bad. Simply doing a thing does not mean you think it's good.

https://videosift.com/top?range=all&order=votes&topsubmit=select

Not entirely inaccurate though.

Except in some countries in Europe where the population is still over 90% European, what business have 50 white people got hanging out together without any visible minorities? Odds are they either self-selected into that group, or they live in a very white bubble. Either way they are likely mistrustful of people who don't look like them and could be swayed by one or two strong voices to persecute those they see as "other".

If they allowed her husband and their therapist to testify and present his notes as evidence, they could at least prove she told the same story in 2012 with no interest in going public with her story or even naming Kavanaugh privately...or that she's an evil supergenius that started planning this fraud 6+ years ago.

Yes, there might be reasons to want to prevent his appointment, but it's a stretch to believe this successful professional wife and mother would knowingly upend her life and the lives of her family permanently in hopes of delaying his confirmation slightly and smearing his name as a likely best case scenario if she were making it up. It also doesn't make sense that she would request a formal FBI investigation since lying to them is a crime they often prosecute harshly.
It's possible she's a liar and a nut sacrificing herself for short term political gains, but it really seems unlikely.

I do agree, there are a lot of reasons why someone might want to prevent him from being selected. I have a few myself.

To be fair, the Kavanaugh situation is beyond he said/she said. There is literally no way to prove anything and there are a lot of reasons someone might want to prevent him from being selected.

And then we can largely agree. Can we agree even further though that listing only one combatants crimes can become misleading?

America dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Prior to that they fire bombed virtually every other Japanese city, killing 100 thousand in Tokyo alone.

The fighting on the ground on the islands reads like one long list of horrific war crimes against dehumanized Japanese victims again and again...

I know the illustration shouldn't be necessary, but presenting a single sided selection of choice facts can be extremely misleading, and the video here, like many on Israel today, does exactly the same thing.

@bobknight33 --

I'm interested in what your thoughts on McCain were in 2008, when he was the Republican candidate for president. If I looked back at your comment history from that era, would you have criticized him in the same ways back then? Were you OK with him being the Republican nominee?

Opinions can legitimately shift over time. But, that's usually a gradual process. If your opinions on McCain shifted radically in a short span of time (since, say, 2016 -- a date I've completely randomly selected for no particular reason), you might want to consider that perhaps some external actor is more responsible for that shift than your own internal feelings.

You are, of course, welcome to your own opinions. However, it seems possible that this one is not precisely "your own". McCain's willingness to break away from groupthink and be a "maverick" was one of the things that people on both side of the aisle respected the most about him.

Heh I can understand why you think so. No I was talking Truman. Granted he wasn't as completely unaware as Trump was when he was elected. But he'd only served in the senate for two years before he was pushed in as VP. Note that the VP selection process was really different even though it was only ~70 years ago.

Once he got selected he became president that same year. Instead of working along Roosevelt's post-war plan and he refused to be a part of the grand alliance (meetings between the leaders of the big 3 powers that came out of that war).

Instead he started threatening the USSR with nuclear war if they worked toward developing nuclear weapons or expanded their territory... the so called Truman Doctrine.

He also played a fairly big roll in starting the whole middle eastern mess we're still dealing with to this day. Though that obviously goes back to the political failures after the Great War.

Guy was a dumb-ass who by reports of those around him didn't know WTF he was doing half the time.

Natural selection I suppose. Testosterone overdose.

@newtboy
Short sighted tribal reasoning was electing a lying cheeto with anger issues because it wore red.
Fair enough

"Objecting to using race as one of many criteria for admission in favor of a single test that clearly benefits your group..."
I see the misunderstanding, I specifically did not ask for a test benefiting a group, but instead specifically asked for one that did NOT. I'll quote myself again:"a color blind computational method of creating a qualification score for candidates."

Since the school admission examples seem to be encouraging misunderstanding, let's change fields. The NBA draft doesn't come down to a single score, but it does have a best effort by professional experts to select the top candidates based upon ability and projected ability at the sport of basketball. By all appearances, that process could be said to "clearly benefit 'a' group", but because I am confident the process is color blind and selecting candidates based upon ability I like it.

To introduce race as a consideration instead is racism, period. You can argue that fighting racism with racism is justified or even desirable, but at least have the honestly to call it that.