You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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MajGenl.Meade
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by MajGenl.Meade »

Ms. Noem being the governor 'n all
North Dakota investigators appeared to be skeptical that Ravnsborg didn't know he had struck and killed a pedestrian on the night of Sept. 12, 2020.

In the video footage from two separate interviews between investigators and Ranvsborg, made public by the South Dakota Department of Public Safety on Feb. 24, the police tell the attorney general that they found Boever's reading glasses inside the Ford Taurus that killed him.
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For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts

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Scooter
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Scooter »

Mississippi AG: Curtailing reproductive rights will empower women

In just a couple of months, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a case that will test the constitutionality of Mississippi's latest abortion ban. It's the first key showdown on reproductive rights since conservatives gained a dominant, six-member majority on the high court.

It's also, of course, a case that puts the future of the Roe v. Wade precedent in great jeopardy.

As The Mississippi Free Press reported this week, Mississippi's Republican attorney general is already imagining the societal landscape in the event the justices scrap the nation's existing reproductive rights.
Ending most legalized abortions will "empower" more women to pursue careers while also raising children, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch told a Catholic television host late last week. She is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that guarantees women the right to abortion before fetal viability, when the state defends its 15-week abortion ban in December.
"Think about this: the lives that will be touched, the babies that will be saved, the mothers that will get the chance to really redirect their lives," Fitch said last week. "And they have all these opportunities that they didn't have 50 years ago. Fifty years ago, professional women, they really wanted you to make a choice. Now you don't have to. Now you have the opportunity to be whatever you want to be. You have the option in life to really achieve your dream and goals, and you can have those beautiful children as well."

The Mississippi attorney general added, "Just think about the uplifting, the changing of course for women that have for these new babies, these women. And everyone knows it's all right, it's acceptable. You can have these beautiful children and you can have your careers. And so this really gets into, how do we empower women? How do we prepare for that next step? And we have to look at it with this whole vision and strategy. And I just think God has given us this opportunity to be here."

In other words, women will have amazing choices just as soon as the government forces them to remain pregnant against their will. The key to "empowering" women, the argument goes, is to curtail their reproductive rights.

At the heart of Fitch's argument appears to be a degree of confidence in societal progress. In the recent past, women with unwanted pregnancies could expect years of terrible burdens and closed doors. As the Mississippi Republican sees it, those days are over — so if the Supreme Court allows states like hers to ban abortions, the affected women need not worry about their futures.

There's no shortage of problems with such an argument, starting with the obvious fact that the fight is not solely one over financial and societal benefits. The core question is whether the government should have the authority to dictate Americans' reproductive choices, not whether those Americans will maintain life choices in response to a government fiat.

But making matters worse is that Fitch's pitch overlooks the fact that millions of women in the United States continue to face dire financial circumstances, with limited access to affordable childcare, and no paid maternity leave. This isn't a relic of some regressive past; it's the status quo.

New York magazine's Ed Kilgore added, "As it happens, Mississippi is the only state that has no equal-pay law prohibiting gross discrimination against women — with or without children — in the workplace. It is probably the last place in America where it can be credibly argued that women have such an idyllic existence that there are no choices to be made and thus no need for a 'right to choose.' It has the highest poverty rate, the highest infant-mortality rate, and the lowest per capita income of any state."

Empowering women is a worthwhile goal. There's little to suggest Mississippi is pursuing that goal the right way.
"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu."

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ex-khobar Andy
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

And in fact she (Mississippi AG Lynn Fitch) did make it up.

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Scooter
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Scooter »

The world is going completely stark raving howler monkey mad.

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"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu."

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BoSoxGal
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by BoSoxGal »

Scooter wrote:
Sat Oct 02, 2021 1:39 am
The world is going completely stark raving howler monkey mad.

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Waste of ECMO resources it seems. Almost a million dollars a week to provide ECMO care. If he survives he’ll be in a fragile physical state for many months to come and he’s going home to a fucking idiot who STILL doesn’t believe in vaccines.

Yes stark raving mad indeed.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Sue U
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Sue U »

If medical care resources have to be rationed, I'm just fine with putting these twits on a waiting list.
GAH!

ex-khobar Andy
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

When I was at school we had a CCF - Combined Cadet Force (USA think ROTC) - in which we would play at soldiers for a weekend or two here and there. Mainly route marches and camouflage drills and obstacle courses designed to bring out the manly virtues of unit cohesion and all for one and one for all and generally being clueless fucking idiots.

One thing that was drilled into us was the wisdom of the crowd. The example always used was distance. "How far is that tree over there?" You can see how an artillery unit in the Napoleonic Wars (which had ended 150 years ago but we were not anxious to be up to date - it might appear to some that we were like those pushy Yanks, always striving for the latest thing) might want an answer to that question before the invention of optical range finding gear. Ask a crowd of people for an answer (your unit) and average the results and it's surprisingly close to the truth.

We were on a route march. We knew we had to observe stuff and we would have to answer to a superior officer (i.e., an acned youth of 16 who had miraculously been awarded sergeant's stripes) on our observations. The march was from Wellingborough to Northampton and we'd get the bus back. We happened upon Sergeant Forgotten Hisname along the way. "How many arches are there on that viaduct you passed a couple of miles back?" It just so happened that this was an environmentally conscious recycled question from last year when my brother had done the same march so I had taken the precaution of counting them when we marched past the viaduct. 17 IIRC. Props to yours truly. "How far is it from Wellingborough to Northampton?" Well we knew what to do. There were something like a dozen of us and we pooled our guesses. "Ten miles!" said our corporal, confidently. Sergeant Hisname was standing under a signpost. He rapped it with his baton (really). We looked up. The left finger pointed to Northampton, 6 1/2 miles away. The right finger said Wellingborough 5 1/2 miles.

Since then (60 years ago) I've trusted the experts rather than random crowds. Saves time.

Big RR
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Big RR »

Of course, that presumes that one is able to identify legitimate "experts" and that the experts all have the same, or at least similar, positions. Crowds are notoriously untrustworthy, but then so are many so-called "expert".s

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by MajGenl.Meade »

NEW: A school administrator in Southlake, Texas, advised teachers last week that if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also have a book with an "opposing" perspective.

Listen to the audio recording obtained by @NBCNews: https://t.co/vS0IjlROMu pic.twitter.com/yPtM1ncjgV
— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 14, 2021

It came four days after the Carroll school board, responding to a parent's complaint, voted to reprimand a teacher who had an anti-racism book in her classroom.

In the recording, Ms Peddy told staff to "remember the concepts" of a new state law that requires teachers to present different points of view when discussing "widely debated and currently controversial" issues.
https://news.sky.com/story/teachers-in ... f-12434441
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts

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Gob
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Gob »

Homework; Were the Nazis really ALL bad, didn't some of their ideas have merit. (2 sides of A4, hand it in by Wednesday.)
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

Burning Petard
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Burning Petard »

On the other hand, we must have purity of thought. I was in a class, learning about personnel management for working under extreme weather conditions, such as chemical processes out doors in the summer of South Texas. Similar jobs, but in the winters of Minnesota. The instructor said the Nazis had done some very well documented experiments with human subjects on this topic, including dunking in arctic waters and carefully noting body temperature changes over time and point of death. All of the records were carefully preserved, but by UN treaty, because of the circumstances which produced this data, none of it was to be used for guidance in preparing modern standards for prevention and treatment of hypothermia.

snailgate.

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Guinevere
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Guinevere »

Torture is not science. Does that really need to be said? :evil:
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Guinevere wrote:
Sat Oct 16, 2021 6:36 pm
Torture is not science. Does that really need to be said? :evil:
Isn't it?   How about the way products are systematically destroyed — think of things like the NHTSA crash tests for cars or airliners, for example — in order to improve them or make them safer?   Sure, machines do not feel pain or emotional distress as do humans; and yes, there are computer simulations you can run or human analogs you can employ.   But when push gets right down to shove, the only REAL way to know how something will affect a human...          ... is to see firsthand just what it does to a REAL human.

Surely one of the best ways to honor or commemorate those who were forced to 'participate' in the Nazis' medical 'experiments' would be to use whatever data was amassed to advance medical knowledge and treatment, leading to the betterment of humanity as a whole.
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Crackpot
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Crackpot »

It is non a contribution they wished to provide. Do you know how much children’s crash safety could be improved with just a few relatively healthy age appropriate cadavers to work with?
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Crackpot wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 1:15 am
It is non a contribution they wished to provide.
Agreed — no quarrel with that point.   But willing or not, they WERE in effect guinea pigs, and data WAS gathered.   We should not ignore it merely because it was gathered using non-voluntary subjects.

That would be like saying we don't need to learn anything about skyscraper safety (both in terms of structural stability as well as providing for the safety of the occupants and, if necessary, the means to effect their rapid and orderly evacuation should one or more exit route be inaccessible) from the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11 because it wasn't a planned and controlled demolition.

And by the way — 'cadavers' is the term for the bodies of persons already dead.   And they DO test things like child-safety seats, seat belts, and air bags on size- and weight-appropriate crash test dummies loaded to the gills with sensors...
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Crackpot
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Crackpot »

Problem is “the greater good” is a powerful motive. Acceptance of ill gotten data in one case will encourage it in others.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

Burning Petard
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Burning Petard »

I strongly believe 'the greater good' is a strong and socially important value. Humans are social critters.

Unhappily, those who speak publicly of actions 'for the greater good' usually are calling for actions that involve sacrifices of others for the speaker's benefit.

snailgate

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Guinevere
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Guinevere »

No, it’s not for the greater good. Science has ethics and ethical standards. Science has rules regarding experimentation, requiring all sorts of controls. What came out of those labs is not science. Trying to whitewash torture by claiming it provided data for the “general good” is obscene.
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Guinevere wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 11:31 pm
No, it’s not for the greater good. Science has ethics and ethical standards. Science has rules regarding experimentation, requiring all sorts of controls. What came out of those labs is not science. Trying to whitewash torture by claiming it provided data for the “general good” is obscene.
I'm not trying to whitewash anything.   It's just that if the Germans dunked subjects into tanks of freezing water and made detailed observations as to the process and progression of hypothermia, for example, this is data, valuable data, that could not be obtained in any other manner (unless you actually think that someone would volunteer to let themselves be frozen to death, or even close to death, on their own).   Science can't wait for another incident like the Titanic, when a thousand subjects hit the water so we can perform autopsies and try to extrapolate findings and conclusions that way.

Same thing with treatment of wounds.   Knowledge gained from treatment of wounded soldiers, both on the battlefield as well as immediately upon their removal from it, led to such things as the now nearly universal acceptance of the "Golden Hour", as well as techniques for the treatment of gunshot wounds ... something that is paying HUGE dividends given the increasing number of shooting incidents in the civilian world.   Or should we eschew those advances because they came about as the result of another atrocity — war?

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
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rubato
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by rubato »

systematic torture does not produce "data" it produces" torture porn".

yrs,
rubato

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