#imall4frogs

[imall4frogs]

A Tumblr Argument about the Felony Convictions of the 45th President of the United States

Tumblr blogger PhilosophicalConservatism opined:

“We must abide by the verdict of a court, but we need not accept the verdict (its accuracy). […] Just because you believe that someone has flouted the law in the past doesn't mean that you get to rectify that by pursuing asinine charges.”

I countered:

PhilosophicalConservatism retorted:

I preface my refutation with a reminder that trial by jury involves an unwritten, de facto dynamic in which judges administer law while juries administer justice. Journalist Dan Friedman posits that in pursuit of justice this jury may have convicted D. J. Trump of lying about his sexual encounters with porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. Mr. Friedman writes:

“The Manhattan DA’s office had to prove that Trump committed 34 felonies by falsifying business records as part of a scheme intended to violate a state election interference law. That state election law prohibits the use of “unlawful means”—that is, the violation of even more laws—to influence an election. That’s all pretty complicated.

At the outset of the trial, few people understood the case against Trump, let alone assumed he was guilty. But almost everyone, probably including the jurors, assumed he slept with Daniels and McDougal. Simple.

And yet, Trump’s lawyers, in their opening and closing statements, asked jurors to believe that Trump did not have sex with those women. It was a key part of their effort to show that prosecutors had failed to prove the complicated case. But Trump’s lawyers didn’t have to do that. They could have argued that the prosecutors had failed to make the multi-part crime they alleged clear enough to warrant a conviction.

Jurors, experts say, often decide cases based on whose story they believe. And judge Juan Merchan told Trump’s team: ‘Your denial puts the jury in the position of choosing who they believe.’ The jurors ultimately sided with the prosecutors and with Daniels, who for years has offered a consistent and specific account of a sexual encounter with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada.”

So the jury in the “hush-money case” may have convicted Donald Trump for lying, and in my estimation that verdict is almost perfectly just.

(BTW When phoned and quizzed about their electoral preferences most independent voters will simply hang up. That makes the independent vote a powerful swing factor that polls don’t capture. November will tell.)

[philosophicalconservatism]

Response To An Earlier Post

imall4frogs

Sir, you greatly overrate your candidate’s legal and oratorical chops, and you greatly underestimate the skills Harris will bring to any debate. She is a successful prosecutor. Yes. She is...

Philosophicalconservatism

We have seen Harris on a political debate stage before. She is not competent there. Tulsi Gabbard (who is no Demosthenes of Athens) humiliated her. When she has to speak extemporaneously on political subjects she is terrible. We have seen it over and over again. Why do you think the Democrats are shielding her from the media so carefully?

So I am fairly confident that a Vance or Desantis V.S. Harris debate would have gone precisely in the way that I described ( a one sided domination). Trump V.S. Harris however will be interesting.

[argumate]

As you related your disappointment with spiritual themes in popular culture I was reminded of a Voyager (Star Trek) episode titled “Sacred Ground”. In the episode Janeway must endure a sacred initiation in hopes of discovering a cure for a comatose crewman (Kes). The episode handles the sticky subject of spirituality well, and is worth a look.

I watched the pilot episode way back when and that was enough for me.

[tanadrin]

As you contrasted liberal’s and leftist’s perceptions of justice I was reminded of a scene from the movie “Ghandi”. In this scene Ghandi angers an authority and is arrested. He assures his frantic wife, “British law must see me released in the morning.” By next morning two cops dutifully drag a bruised, disheveled Ghandi to his home and throw him onto his own porch. Ghandi says, “I told you about British law.” Wiping blood from his head his wife says, “And I told you about British policemen!”

[quakerjoe]

You do realize that one of two people will be the President of the United States on January 20, 2021–yes? Either the incumbent or the Democratic nominee will hold the office, and that’s a legacy as old as Jefferson and Hamilton. If you can not stop trashing both aspirants to the office may I suggest that you pursue the acquisition of a passport as well as some means of leaving the country? Your laments are so doleful as to finally become comedy.

You know what’s really funny? Everything about YOU. I’ll tell you why, since you bothered to ask. I at least owe you that much since you didn’t ask anon.

I get this sort of banter every now and again so I thought I’d display it and answer the question at hand.

First off, this “#Murica, love it or leave it!” horseshit has two facets to it in response.

ONE: “Go fuck yourself. If you’re so willing to lie down and take it in the ass for one of the parties constantly screwing you, you’re pretty useless. Why don’t YOU leave since you’ve clearly given up the fight? “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” comes at a price, sometimes a high one, and you have to FIGHT for it. If you’re willing to just bend over and take an elbow deep fist in your ass from the Democrats so it can jerk off the GOP while its dick is constantly forced down your throat, then perhaps YOU are the one who needs to pack up and fuck off to Saudi Arabia or North Korea. Maybe Russia or China are more your speed.

 TWO: Are YOU going to pay my way if I decide to give up on America and abandon my home and the nation that I love? I may not love your precious politicians, but I’m still proud to be an American. I served, am a vet, but THIS is not the nation I signed up to defend. This era of US history is the Big Sellout, and you, dumbass, are a part of that.

 You people had chances and opportunities to make this a better place than when you found it, but over the five decades I’ve been alive all I’ve seen is people fighting to get in line to buy the government snake oil like it’s a Cabbage Patch Kid or the new iPhone. It’s pathetic how much the US lacks vision or has any real pride or dignity worth talking about. We’re not #1 at fuck-all anything worth bragging about unless it’s how bad the education system has gotten or that we’re the TOP nation in the world for incarcerated citizens per capita and it’s mostly geared towards men who happen to have a dark complexion.

 The rich and powerful exist here because WE ALLOW it. People  like you, you defunct Fox “News” fan, are either a cheering fan for the status quo of yesteryear with Biden who wants to turn back the calendar to a time that BROUGHT US TRUMP in the first place OR you’re a trump fan who has NO IDEA… well, no ideas or thoughts about anything. Trump’s shown us who we really as a nation apparently- deluded, self-centered, selfish assholes, and the WORLD can see it. Not all of us, granted, but as a generalization, we truly suck. Such a waste of enormous potential, especially given all the resources we’ve had over the years.

 As a result, we’re being overwhelmed by a virus that’s killing us by the thousands and perhaps millions some day. But, since we no longer believe in or do science anymore, nothing much is coming to save us. If/When the time comes that its run its course and should we find a vaccine, there are still anti-vaxxers who’d rather die than take a cure. Then there are the religious zealots who think Jesus will protect them. You know; the ones who are dropping like flies these days? Those assholes; the hypocrites who think they’re part of ‘the faithful’ who, if you believe in that sort of thing, do Satan’s bidding more than Jesus’.

 If you’re not boiling mad at the GOP for literally doing everything they can to go out of their way to keep the US a hateful, racist, peddler of death nation bent on keeping its citizens poor and undereducated, you’re not a part of the solution. If your fucked-up solution is to have those not happy with the butt-hurt they peddle move to another country, it shows you’ve got no pride or respect for your country or yourself. You’re weak, ignorant, selfish and stupid all rolled into a big burrito of go fuck yourself.

If you’re not making a fist so tight that your nails are digging into your palms when you hear that the Democrats are literally forcing us to choose one racist sexual predator that can’t hold a thought or form sentences as the “champion” to replace the incumbent one, you’re DEFINITELY not a part of the solution. Also, you’re an idiot, an asshole, and totally a Biden Bro.

 What will it take for YOU to open your window and shout out “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” eh? You people rolling over for Biden are pathetic weaklings who sold out women and #MeToo and sold your souls to #MeTooExceptBiden, allowing the bar to be set to the same, low, cesspool standard that the GOP glorifies in. You sold out party, country, woman, minorities, and everything that was once even remotely good about the party that allegedly represented the working class so that the party leaders can keep their cash flow from Big Pharma, the Insurance lobby, Big Oil and the Military Industrial Complex. You’ve turned the Democratic party into yesterdays feckless, weak and worthless GOP while the current GOP drags the country even FURTHER to the fucking right. You’re aiding and abetting the foulest elements of the nation’s existence.

Your attitude has cost us our place on the world stage and most of our allies while we crawl under the covers with bedfellows we once considered enemies because they treat their people like shit. Now WE are one of those shithole countries you people used to rant about… AND YOU’RE PROUD OF IT and unwilling to stand up and fix it. Instead, you prefer those who are willing to do your job FOR you to just move elsewhere. Loser. Listen, if you’re too much of a wuss to stand up to the establishment that’s using your tax dollars to bail out the rich while pissing table scraps down upon you, that’s on you. You’re too stupid to know better. I get it. But until YOU get off YOUR ASS and hold your government accountable, you’ve got no room to criticize those who ARE doing it.

We’re in the middle of a pandemic and the ONE GUY who has been fighting for his decades-long career for UNIVERSAL health care was someone YOU opted out. American apparently hasn’t suffered enough to grow a pair of whatever motivates it to stand up to the wealth inequality. The US idolizes the rich and instead of fighting for a chance to live at least a DECENT life without having to worry about going tits-up and pear-shape because of hospital bills or job losses, they’d rather just piss away their fortunes and futures so that people with more money than they can spend in a lifetime of ten could possibly spend, all while THEY pay little to ZERO taxes, leaving YOU stuck with the bill. That’s on YOU if you’re willing to bend over and just take it in the ass and take it dry; no kiss, no lube, not so much as a feel-around. That’s YOU.

You, sir, are the problem. Clearly, with people like you, the US is simply BEGGING for 4 more years of trumplefuckery. Perhaps you even deserve it. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but who am I? I’m just one of the few willing to call anyone out on their bullshit, from the GOP overall to Pelosi’s feckless approach, to Schumer’s “kid who gets beaten on the schoolyard daily” approach to trying to appear useful. I’ll shit on Liz Warren for not backing a Progressive approach and getting behind Sanders EARLY; screwing her friend and ally AGAIN like in 2016. I’ll call out all the other “candidates” who say one thing while their track records show that they’re pretty full of shit. I’ll DEMAND that we have a party that’s transparent and willing to fight to drag us BACK to the Left instead of the “oh, let’s settle for plutocracy and oligarchy because it’s better than fascism” route. Fuck that, fuck them, and of course fuck you too. Thought I forgot about you? Oh, this is all about you, you spineless goon.

 So let me know if you and your ilk are willing to throw your precious few dollars into a GO FUND ME to finance my move to another country. This includes my family, all our belongings, and of course a home once we get there. Naturally, you’ll be finding us ALL gainful employment there and the costs for the passports, visas, and whatnot and you’ll of course be lining us ALL up with jobs. I’ve got a big family, so it’s going to be pretty goddamn expensive. Shit, just ME moving is going to cost more than you’d be willing to cough up.

 In the mean time, I’m going to remain here, giving the finger to the GOP, the Establishment/Corporate owned Democrats, and people like you. Seriously, you’re an idiot.

@ imall4frogs He’s talking about people like YOU.

[panatmansam]

Magic is not real. However, where magic is concerned some folks sense a conspiracy of silence within the scientific community. The silence is not hostile. Science simply has no words for “the spirit”. Science cannot so much as discuss the spirit of the letter “a” as it moves across fonts. Cognitive science lacks a rigorous, scientific definition of the term “concept”, and so no science may discuss things of the spirit. Am I wrong? 🤓

No, you are absolutely correct and it is interesting that this subject came up because I was just listening to The Restoration of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Continuing Case Against Scientism. 

Synchronicity.

Great comment, thanks.

[brainstatic]

Your political stance confuses me. Please help me understand; what does your idea of “victory” look like?

I’m afraid I don’t understand the question. There’s no win condition to human civilization, it just keeps going.

[imall4frogs]

@staff

Your new app design is such an ergonomic disappointment that it has caused me to fat-finger the Complaint button and report two—TWO—posts for something. I don’t know what. Each of my reports was a mistake, but I can not recall, modify, or delete either of them. This new design sucks out loud. What were y’all thinking?

Disappointed in Dallas,

imall4frogs 🐸

[wilwheaton]

If signed into law the AHCA will simultaneously balloon the deficit AND make health insurance unaffordable for millions of our working poor. It's not conservative and certainly not liberal ideology at work here. This reeking bill is pure plutocracy at work, for the 1/10th of the most wealthy 1% are the only winners. My postcard to my Rep: "It was hard to swallow, but you passed the AHCA 💩. Here's a dry corncob. You've earned it."

There is nothing conservative about the Republican party. The only thing they conserve is money for the massively wealthy.

[argumate]

At the level of computer hardware what happens during a program halt?

programs are so far removed from computer hardware these days that this isn’t really a meaningful question; we’re all running applications inside JavaScript VMs inside processes inside virtualised containers inside hypervisors and while there must technically be “hardware” at the bottom of the stack somewhere it’s not like you’re ever going to actually touch it.

but if you were a program running “directly” on the cpu in an embedded system then you simply wouldn’t ever halt, and if you ran out of things to do you might enter an infinite loop or put the processor to sleep until the next interrupt came in, which if you have disabled interrupts would be forever.

regular programs running under an operating system will halt by making a syscall or interrupt that transfers control to the kernel which will then dismantle the process, close its files, unmap its memory, and resume execution of whatever other program is running.

[brainstatic]

I've now been exposed to Ben Shapiro, and I may need treatment. Shapiro is smart enough to know that his stance is toxic nonsense, yet he continues. Might ol' Ben be a sociopath?

Not sure what makes you think he’s smart? Racists pay him to tell them racist things, he does very well for himself, especially for a stupid person.

[mudwerks]

About "Marianne and Mary Kay, 1976" -- Looking at their tee shirts reveals that these girls who look so similar are in fact at opposite ends of the musical spectrum. I mean The Rolling Stones and The Yes could not be any more dissimilar, yes?

ooooo...that is very true.

So now I'm wondering if Marianne inspired the Leonard Cohen song and Mary Kay started that cosmetics company.

[wilwheaton]

Good Sir, please remind your followers that the next President will probably have to nominate two additional Supreme Court judges in addition to filling Scalia's vacancy. Remind your followers that this election is not just "business as usual", but rather this election is a fulcrum capable of leveraging the proclivities of the victor into law well into the next century. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I keep saying this, but I’ll say it again: Reagan infected us with Scalia for THIRTY YEARS, and we’re going to spend another decade, at least, trying to recover from the damage he did to our country.

There’s a very good chance that the next POTUS will nominate 3 or ever 4 judges to SCOTUS. Donald Trump, and the extremists he leads, represents, and has surrounded himself with, can not be allowed to have that responsibility.

[argumate]

Have you read “Godel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter? Please be merciful and answer with a “yes” or “no”.

but now if I answer “no” it’s not clear if I’m merely rejecting your foolish addendum!

[memeengine]

imall4frogs:

“Out of Our Heads” (Alva Noe) has provoked some odd thoughts in me. Now I wonder if our kind is curious because our eyes both face forward. Such an arrangement would leave us forever curious as to what might be behind us. ;-)

This is from some correspondence with imall4frogs, a fellow blogger who also walks the line between deep thoughts and manual labor!

I've blogged lots about "Out of Our Heads", but this was actually a direct response to the post I made about Pierson's Puppeteers, speculating about whether body layout and position of sense organs can have an effect on one's sense of identity.

For some reason this suggestion that curiosity is related to forward facing eyes seems to take the discussion to a whole new level!  In a sort of throw-away response, I suggested that maybe our particular sense configurations could be the reason we imagine an objective world out there beyond our subjective experiences.  If you're interested in philosophy, this matters!

So, let me un-throw-away the idea, and see if I can unpack it a little!

Humans are visual animals.  Vision seems to be our primary sense.  Yet there are many situations where vision is somehow limited and we must get information from the other senses:

We rely on touch in the dark.

Touch also informs us about pain etc in our own bodies, which is invisible to the visual system.

Sound can travel around corners, and through many obstacles, whereas vision requires "lines of sight" to be unobstructed.

In sum, we know there is lots out there beyond what we can see - our other senses inform us.  If not for these subsidiary, but farther reaching senses, might we assume that what we saw was all that there was??

Like, imagine I see a man walk around a corner and out of my sight.  The rawest way to interpret that is: "there was a man, and now he no longer exists."  Why do we attribute permanence to something we see only temporarily?  In the context of this discussion, one reason might be that we continue to hear the man's footsteps even after he's out of sight.

Analogy is powerful, and I can believe that a human learning that one sense has the incomplete picture could infer that all senses could be fooled.  Thus we can believe in all sorts of things we have never actually experienced directly with our senses: atoms, black holes, The Great Wall of China, and "Objects in Themselves" as philosophers might say.

Cool.  This could be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of wondering how our particular sensory setups might influence our thinking!