Bob is posting Christopher Hitchens videos?!? Have the wolves begun living with the lambs!?!
Do you know what he said about Christian fundamentalism @bobknight33? It’s not flattering.

As a side note, and on topic with the video, every terrorist act perpetrated in America since 2017 has been committed by a right wing “Christian”.
The United States Department of Homeland Security reported in October 2020 that white supremacists (all right wing Christians) posed the top domestic terrorism threat, which FBI director Christopher Wray confirmed in March 2021, noting that the bureau had elevated the threat to the same level as ISIS.
A 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that out of the 85 deadly extremist incidents which had occurred since September 11, 2001, white supremacist extremist groups were responsible for 73%, while radical Islamist extremists were responsible for 27%. The total number of deaths which was caused by each group was about the same, though 41% of the deaths were attributable to radical Islamists and they all occurred in a single event — the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting in which 49 people were killed by a lone gunman. No deaths were attributed to left-wing groups.
-wiki

“ It’s your insistence that Jewish people, and the existence of Israel, have always fundamentally been invaders that I was objecting to as it is so intensely at odds with factual history.”
No…it is at odds with your position and is not what I said.
It is factual history that fighting age European Jews came armed and forcibly displaced the natives after being offered sanctuary for their most needy. It is not factual that I claimed it was ever thus. That is clearly not what I said, I said for 10+- years they were getting along as refugees, then started coming in HUGE numbers illegally and taking over.

Those are facts.

I also mentioned a native Jewish population that were not refugees or invaders. Some of them supported the invading Zionists, some didn’t. I’ve never heard of one who opposed them.

“ You gave a brief nod on not being a scholar of Palestinian history, but then proceed to just count all Jewish refugees as good as Zionist aggressors from day 1(or close enough), and the local Arab population as nothing but pure, kind caring victims of these invaders.”

Not even close to true, I said many stood behind the Zionists when they started coming en masse, and didn’t say but seemingly few to none of the native Jews opposed them. I also was clear that at the beginning the refugees acted like refugees, not invaders….I mistakenly gave them more time being grateful than you say they were, according to you Palestinians position is they began the invasion in the 20’s….and theirs is the opinion I care about. I never claimed ALL Arabs were welcoming, but the “nation” as a whole (despite being not self ruling at the time) welcomed a huge number of refugees considering their own population. Way more than elsewhere.

Edit: Britain, who facilitated this invasion, only took in 80000 European Jews in the decade before and during the war, and they were only given transit visas to stay temporarily until they found other accommodations. All of England took in fewer Jewish refugees in all pre war history than Palestine did….England took in 80000, most on temporary visas, Palestine took in 60000 permanently in 1935 alone, and 130000 in 33-36.
Pre-immigration Palestine had about 700000 people. In 1944 European Jews ignored the 1500 visa limit per year and came by the hundred of thousands per year after already completely overwhelming the native population.
Palestine was forcibly invaded by a foreign population exponentially bigger than the native population while Britain kept them too weak to oppose it physically.
That’s an invasion…not on day 1. 🤦‍♂️

“ without being able to writeoff Israel as invaders from day 1, nuance enters the calculus and suddenly the conflict is flooded with shades of grey ”

Again, I said day 3, not day 1, and went on to say that meant 10 years later. Get off your high horse and READ buddy.

I guess I’ll stop here. If you aren’t going to read what I wrote and insist on arguing red herrings you made up yourself, you can do that alone.

Nothing you’ve said changes or excuses the fact that masses of armed violent invaders came to take the land from the natives by force and were successful. The exact date this happened is not only y highly subjective, it’s completely besides the point.
Nothing you’ve said changes or excuses the inhuman treatment they’ve subjected the innocent native civilian population to for 70 years…but you’ve tried.
Nothing you’ve said changes or excuses the intentional targeting of trapped civilians by the military….serious war crimes Israel commits daily.
Nothing you’ve said even hints that you consider Palestinians worthy of consideration themselves, possibly not even human status, definitely not peaceful existence.

Bye

“ my solution would be every able bodied Jewish man and woman join the French (or Polish, Russian, British) army and fucking fight…”

I agree that’s the noble thing to do, but I can’t condemn the ones that choose to seek safety in numbers with Jewish Palestinians as exclusively invasion minded aggressors. My 6 million tag was maybe a bit sharp, but you also know that the Nazi’s took Paris and as much as it sucked to be French or European under Nazi occupation, you also know adding Jewish to that carried a lot of extra consequence and danger to your family.

My POV is agnostic of everything save Isreali people today having a right exist as a nation. Which at this point from my POV leaves 1947 as somewhat academic.

It’s your insistence that Jewish people, and the existence of Israel, have always fundamentally been invaders that I was objecting to as it is so intensely at odds with factual history.

You gave a brief nod on not being a scholar of Palestinian history, but then proceed to just count all Jewish refugees as good as Zionist aggressors from day 1(or close enough), and the local Arab population as nothing but pure, kind caring victims of these invaders.

I will state again, that is ahistorical propaganda and NOT what actually happened. And for my POV, its enough generations back as to be Academic, but for your POV it is fundamental because without being able to writeoff Israel as invaders from day 1, nuance enters the calculus and suddenly the conflict is flooded with shades of grey because lots of parties all contribute to the bloodshed, and many with reasonable motivations from both sides yet too.

Please find me any reputable sources to refute the reality of 1920-1940s Palestine:
-Mass Jewish immigration fleeing European oppression raised tensions between Jewish and Arab Palestinians.(as one must expect)
-Arab palestinians were already chaffing and resisting British colonial rule(as one must expect)
-These tensions led conflict, initially more ‘civil’ with the Arab majority trying to refuse all business, sales and trade with all Jews.
-Escalation followed throughout that time, but in drips and drops and NOT a ‘surprise the Zionist army has arrived’! style of aggression

The violent escalation was a fight here, a beating there. Little individual fights, escalating into deaths. Retaliations slowly grew, with each side exchanging small escalations.

-the culmination of this was eventually all out civil war, and the Jewish side immediately accepting a UN mandated 2 state solution

-this culmination coinciding with the end of WW2 and revelations of the true extent of the holocaust can’t be ignored, it certainly shaped the Jewish mindset in the conflict.

-Their mindset was pretty clearly not inaccurate either, as the immediate response of all neighbouring Arab nations was a declaration of war on the new ‘state’, with bold claims of how quickly the Jews would be swept into the sea. The confidence was so high, a call was sent it for ALL Arab palestinians to abandon and flee the entire region of Palestine to better enable the complete cleansing of the land.

The above is all pretty much inarguably factual, and I’d bargain you could get an Arabic and Israeli scholar together to more or less agree on those facts which is saying alot.

——
Propaganda from both sides would like to declare that the Arabs harboured deep Nazi sympathies, and thus Israel was pure and true in all it did. Or from the other side, more or less your narrative of Zionist bad guys launching invasion from day 1(ish).

Both though are just sprinklings of half truths, with anti-British resentment naturally breeding some leanings towards the axis, and even genuine Nazi cleanse the Jews believers. And absolutely Zionists featured prominently within the Jewish population. Neither of those partial truths though make the propaganda of either side true, but instead just an incomplete and intentionally biased picture.


Again, please find me sources demonstrating I’m terribly wrong on all that, but the only ones I can find are clearly biased and the accurate accounts paint the picture above, the propaganda very, very clearly copies the real story more or less with just deletions of inconvenient bits

Maybe let’s try a different tack to common ground.

It feels like the fundamental difference is on the reasonableness of the actions of the Jewish population in the 40s. I count it within reason enough to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as a nation, while you count it a foreign invader from day 0(or maybe day 5 or 6).

What would you have had the Jewish European people in the 30s/40s do?

I’d like to rule out ‘wait patiently for legal avenues of immigration’ on account of at least 6million doing that, but…

It depends on the first answer, but if your answer includes the option of seeking refuge amongst the Jewish population in Palestine, then the followup:
What you have had the existing Jewish Palestinian population and new refugees do with themselves once in Palestine?

I kinda feel your POV requires the belief that, again humbly waiting for fair treatment was gonna work out well for them…

I’ve been working on this video for months and, unfortunately, in the past week, events in the U.S. have proved just why it’s so important to tell these stories. Every day, it’s becoming more dangerous to be a queer person in this world despite the fact that our modern culture is fundamentally shaped by the queer trailblazers in the past. -Polyphonic

Professional economist here (hence, perceived as right wing) who began studying economics due to concern about climate change (hence, perceived as left wing).

[1] The classic statement of when markets 'work' is the 'first fundamental theorem of welfare economics'.

[2] 'work' in this sense means 'leads to a Pareto-optimal outcome', which means an outcome in which no one can be made better off without making someone worse off. This is a low standard: an outcome in which I have everything is Pareto-optimal.

[3] the conditions for the welfare theorems are generally not satisfied in practice. Here, as alluded to in the ad, carbon emissions are 'externalities': if an oil company sells you gas, which you then use, both of you are better off, because you're assumed to have taken into account the effects of your exchange, and decided to proceed; other parties have not, so may be worse off.

[4] in general, failure of the welfare theorem conditions isn't enough to make the case for government intervention: the outcome may still be 'constrained' efficient - meaning that, given the inherent constraints in the problem (e.g. asymmetric information), the market outcome is Pareto efficient.

[5] again, even if it is, you may not like the particular constrained efficient outcome the market yields (e.g. I get everything).

[6] in the case of externalities, the theory is pretty well established - if we want efficient outcomes, we need to align the private and social costs. There are two basic market-based tools for doing that: quantity tools (e.g. carbon permits) and price tools (e.g. carbon taxes). Which performs better depends on the sort of market imperfections.

[7] obviously, we will never have a perfect estimate of the efficient price or quantity of carbon to emit in a given year. Equally obviously, to me at least, this is a classic case of an externality with a well developed body of theory pointing in the direction of some level of controls.

[8] in my experience: people familiar with the economic theory tend not to be 'pro-market' or 'anti-market': they tend to want to understand how the market can be used to deliver societal objectives and, when it can't, how to correct its imperfections.

Oops this turned into a semi rant. But I am legitimately open to discussion here, and am curious to get your thoughts on a few points Bob. That is, IF you're willing to actually think about them beyond the level of repeating talking points.

I find it interesting how divergent the two overall "sides" are in this country, in terms of where they focus. None of the issues brought up in this video are really on the radar of most progressives, beyond being aware some on the right are talking about them. And I'm guessing a lot of the concerns progressives discuss rarely come up in your chosen media landscape. A lot of the issues in the video are largely off of my radar, and I have to wonder how you feel they should be addressed - like, actual proposed solutions rather than just complaining about / worrying about them.

We only dedicate one day to remember our fallen soldiers

How many should there be? Arguably we have more than one already: there's Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and it seems that Sept 11th is often used for the purpose as well.

I'd argue we should spend more time acknowledging and understanding the principals behind WHY our soldiers died in the various conflicts which caused them to fall in the first place. Let's make sure our citizenry appreciates what we collectively rejected in the Revolutionary war. Why it was important that we kept the country together rather than allowing the south to split off in the mid-1800s. Why we chose to honor our diplomatic agreements and support our allies in WW1. Why we fought against the countries and governments we did in WW2. What our goals were in Korea and Vietnam, and what lessons we learned from those conflicts and from the Cold War in general. Commemorating and remembering those we've lost absolutely matters, but if we're ONLY doing that while forgetting why they fought OR ignoring what we learned then we're doing them an equal or greater disservice. Remember that America was built on the idea of forming "a more perfect union" - not a perfect one, a MORE perfect one - a work in progress. We're striving towards an ideal, not assuming we're already there. Learning from our past successes, failures, and our struggles around both outcomes is vital. If our self-analysis is no deeper than hero worship we'll never make real progress towards that theoretical perfect union.

The only mask that's gonna save us is duct tape on their mouths

Yeah, sound medical advice and evidence-based science is terrifying. Better to shut up those whose words we dislike, because we're reactionary authoritarian babymen. I truly do not understand being more afraid of reasonable safety measures than of a virus which has been shown to cause serious harm in the short and long terms. The only reason this "masks = liberal / maskless = conservative" crap came about is because politics has devolved to the level of team sports in the US, and one party has chosen "the opposite of whatever our political opponents say" as their entire governing philosophy. (And yes, ONE party - research and understand the GOP's 2020 platform if you want to argue the point.) This video even seems to reach a reasonable conclusion at the end, while coming up just short of that final logical leap to "maybe I should question what the public faces of MY side have been claiming in this Us vs Them madness." Seriously - keep going friend, you're almost there! George Washington was 100% right in wanting to avoid political parties being a force in the US, and it makes me immensely sad that his fears came true.

Big oil runs the world / the only wars to get fought are with the countries who have natural resources they want

Solid point here, no sarcasm. The US military has long been a tool of our profit-driven form of "free market" imperialism. A really great way to combat this, specifically with an eye to ending Big Oil's goddamn death grip on our foreign policy goals, would be an aggressive implementation of renewable energy projects. Remember the space race? America can be an absolute beast at clever engineering solutions when we dedicate ourselves to it. Fuck the petrostates, we have the available land and resources to absolutely kick ass in the realms of solar and wind power, and be leaders in the the post-hydrocarbon reality. We can certainly agree on that, right Bob? Left / Right nonsense fully aside, I think any reasonable American can agree on at least two points: let's stop sending heaps of cash to buy oil off of the Saudis (etc), and Fuck Cancer.

But if a white man acts too white he's white trash / he's a racist he's a bigot he's a monster

What the fuck is this horseshit? What does "acting too white" even fucking look like? Watching NASCAR on a sailboat while listening to polka? Typically when I see racism from white people it's in the form of denying that brown-hued people deal with any additional difficulties in life due to their skin tone, or denying that there have been structural obstacles for them through history, or lamenting that their white children are being burdened with a broader lens on culture or with (gasp! shock!) an accurate accounting of actual US history, including the ugly bits that we shouldn't be proud of (but MUST learn from). I'm progressive / lefty as fuck and there is no aspect of "white culture" or "acting white" which upsets me in the slightest. UNLESS one counts "denying racism exists / has ever existed" as a fundamental value of being white. Which... why would anyone want to claim that nonsense? If you want to listen to classic country music in a rusty pickup truck while driving to an evangelical church, then discuss hockey over Buds after 18 holes with the rest of your tractor pull team, then absolutely go nuts my fellow caucusoid! Just recognize and understand that your life experiences may not be the same as those of others. Further, if we care about trying to avoid unnecessary, avoidable unfairness in life (recognizing that life will never truly be fair, for anyone), then it might be reasonable for some governmental / legal / structural recognition in furtherance of that notion. There is absolutely room for legitimate policy disagreement here without being accused of racism. It's denial of others' reality which tends to garner the label of racist (sexist etc) - steer clear of denying the lived experiences of other people, allow for the possibility they may have encountered difficulties you haven't / won't, and we've room for further discussion.

Edit / final point: I voted the video back up to 0 from the -1 where I found it. Because while I disagree with a lot of the positions taken by the performer, they may have reached them through no fault of their own and with no true malice. Misinformation / disinformation is a devious shit of a motherfucker, and the rot it causes can run deep. It is painful to abandon deeply-held beliefs, on a fundamental level. If nothing else, the video gives us room to discuss some specific viewpoints held by people who think of themselves as good, but which can lead to harm.

Your video, the fundamental underpants of our society...no...that's, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 6 Badge!

The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender. The 14th amendment “due process clause” has been interpreted to also affirm a right to privacy.

https://www.aclu.org/other/students-your-right-privacy

Sure sounds like rights to privacy are right there in the bill of rights though, an addendum to the constitution, as explained in numerous Supreme Court rulings.

<SIGH>. I thought you said “Pedantry is tiresome. Tell your friends.” Maybe take your own advice?

Some light reading…. In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in McCorvey's favor ruling that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion. It also ruled that this right is not absolute and must be balanced against governments' interests in protecting women's health and prenatal life.[4][5] The Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: during the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.[5] The Court classified the right to choose to have an abortion as "fundamental", which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the "strict scrutiny" standard, the highest level of judicial review in the United States.

Precedent is just that until evidence proves otherwise.

Pluto was a planet until it wasn't. Truth evolves over time.

1857 Slavery was fundamentally ruled legal under Dred Scott. Truly a wrong decision and a study in judicial overreach.

In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment overturned the Dred Scott decision by granting citizenship to all those born in the United States, regardless of color.


Finally this is just a leaked draft opinion. One must wait to see if overturned and on what grounds .


That being said The left waited decades to get abortions. The right has waited 50+ years to get a legal argument that might overturn that decision.

50 years later and finally have a conservative court and a case that might alter Roe V wade.

@newtboy

“What genitalia you have has no bearing on your performance in sports”

I’m gonna try once to understand this. Are you saying you do not believe that people who are biologically male(By which I mean XY) have an advantage in athletics over people who are biologically female(by which I mean XX)?

If our disagreement is that fundamental there isn’t much sense to further discussion as we are viewing two entirely disjointed versions of reality.

“The fundamental problem is we decided to leave Afghanistan precipitously without a plan to get people out.”

Correct.

Who, exactly, @bobknight33, made that half assed plan with the Taliban in 2020 and didn’t involve the Afghan government (or our military it seems) in discussions? Who made that plan to be out 6 months earlier than we left, but by Jan 20 had made absolutely zero actions or plans to prepare for the withdrawal he planned to complete 6 weeks later? (He was far too busy trying to stage coups and perform frauds, whining, crying, and throwing tantrums to deal with the business of the presidency.) How was Trump’s (total lack of) plan and actions any better?

America without its institutions and laws is just dirt that people are standing on.

Joe Biden doesn't hate the institutions of the USA. He doesn't talk about them in broad strokes in every speech he gives in a negative way. He seems to recognize that 1/2 of the country doesn't like him, more or less, but doesn't talk about those fellow Americans like they are enemies of the USA.

By contrast, all the "can't trust the government" types, including the previous president, are saying in essence things that are fundamentally anti American. Which is not to say no oversight is needed, but oversight and regulation to stop power from running amuck are different and distinct compared to dissolving those institutions or hobbling them in favor of more centralized power in the executive branch.

Biden is delegating power across government bodies and institutions, rather than concentrating it on himself.

And he doesn't rage tweet at all hours of the day and night every fucking moment he has a plucky idea. Just look at the sheer volume of tweets that poured out of that monster https://www.thetrumparchive.com/

Almost like one guy is doing his actual job and one guy is literally sitting on his phone and watching TV all day.

And one guy seems to like America and working for the government and one guy cheers every time there's bad news. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-sean-spicer-newsmax-america-b1920400.html