Orton's Arm

GG's described himself as a liberal. Furthermore, he's written things like, (not an exact quote), "Molson makes me embarrassed to be a liberal." GG's contempt for Molson is a big reason why my post got under his skin. The last thing GG wanted to hear was that he was less rigorous of a thinker than Molson. Especially if it was true.

I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at, because your sentences border on gibberish. But you've thrown enough insults my way that you don't exactly have the standing to go crying to the mods if I'm not always nice to you. Nor was my post "stalking"--I merely mentioned your complacent acceptance of all things liberal as a contrast to the earnest truth-seeking I see in Molson. In your own mind, was the accusation against you unfair? Do you honestly see yourself as someone who seriously thinks about non-liberal points of view before rejecting them? I've seen no evidence whatsoever that you do this. Instead, you put labels on non-liberal points of view; and in labeling them you reject them. Adding detail--such as the reference to the '36 Olympics--helps you flesh out the label, while sparing you from thinking about the underlying point of view. You use this "label and laugh" technique every time a non-liberal point of view is presented. Are you aware that you do this?

You might want to read Bernard Goldberg's book Bias. Goldberg voted for McGovern twice--once in the primaries, and once in the general election. He worked at CBS for many years. But even to a liberal like him, the mainstream media has a strong leftist bias.

A good article. But there were times when I questioned the author's logic. For example, "The success rate with the No. 1 overall pick is not nearly as high as most would guess. In the 20 drafts held from 1986 to 2005, only six No. 1 picks have been voted to the Pro Bowl three or more times." The guy who got picked first overall in 2005 couldn't possibly have made the Pro Bowl three or more times, no matter how well he played. I felt the best parts of his article were the parts about offensive linemen, CBs, TEs, and safeties.

Molson and I don't always agree, but I don't see him as a bad human being. I honestly believe he's seeking out the truth, to the best of his ability. Are there times when he fails to sufficiently question his own ideology? Yes, but he's hardly alone. It's more likely that Molson will question his liberal beliefs, than it is for Tom to question his own views about race. Yes, Molson believes he already has the truth. But combined with that, there's an earnestness to learn more. And to be completely honest, I strongly prefer Molson's earnest acceptance of liberalism to GG's complacent acceptance of liberalism. GG simply refuses to listen to non-liberal points of view, or to consider even the possibility that any of his liberal beliefs might possibly be wrong. At least Molson will argue with you, which is a lot less arrogant than GG's quiet assumption that any conservative viewpoint is too stupid to deserve an argument.

O'Reilly isn't a "maggot," nor was his treatment of that issue a "cheap political stunt." For whatever reason, we're not deporting illegal aliens, even after they commit crimes. In this particular case, our government's moral failure directly resulted in a completely preventable drunk driving death. O'Reilly should be making an issue of this, so that similar deaths can be prevented.

I was going to reply to one of Tom's posts. Then I realized that further mud-slinging between Tom, his wife, and myself would only distract people from posts such as this. While you and I may have different views about race, you put the case against illegal immigration very well. As you point out, the people who create our immigration policy are generally able to shield themselves and their families from the consequences their policies create.

You can't even understand my posts, so how can you hope to understand a book?

You really think FDR was bothered by the Japanese aggression against the Chinese. If FDR was the anti-expansionist saint you portray him as, why did he hand the Soviets Eastern Europe?

Yup. More name-calling. That's so much easier than refuting the actual substance of my posts. Come to think of it, I've never seen you refute the substance of any argument. Which, by the way, is one of the reasons I call you an idiot.

My point--which as usual went right over your ugly little head--is that you misrepresented my terminology. Your original words were these--"as he terms it, 'racial purity'." I did not term anything "racial purity," because of the emotional baggage that phrase carries for brainwashed idiots like you. I simply spoke of a hope that races could continue to exist as they have in the past, which is certainly mild enough.

Whenever you post something, Lenin's phrase "useful idiot" always comes to mind.

I've never used the phrase "racial purity," but please don't let that stop you from putting words in my mouth. If you weren't allowed to misinterpret other people's posts, what purpose would your presence serve?

Speaking of intellectually shallow liberals, look who just showed up!

FDR didn't order the embargo because of his deep concern about oil. He ordered it because he wanted to get the U.S. involved in WWII; and knew the American people would refuse to go to war unless we'd been attacked.

Bill, I just don't want to see any races die off or get assimilated into other races. If that makes me a "racist" in the eyes of a few loudmouthed, short-sighted, shallow liberals, so be it. (I'm not accusing you of being any of those things. But most of the posts coming my way apparently have been written by people whose brains have been washed completely clean.)

It's amazing that the definition of "neo-Nazi" somehow got broadened to include anyone who opposes a change in America's current racial composition. My views on immigration were considered mainstream back in the early 1940s U.S., back when the nation was at war against Nazi Germany. Nothing that's happened since then has created a compelling need to make radical changes to our country's racial situation. Yet such changes are being made anyway . . .

Janissary troops didn't become a major factor in the Ottoman military until after the empire's initial rise. They were initially recruited from the families of peoples who had been conquered by the largely Turkish Ottoman Empire. Janissary soldiers were generally recruited by kidnapping boys from places like Greece and the Balkans. Boys were involuntarily taken away from their families, forced to convert to Islam, and taught to regard their respective army groups as their true families. While this kidnapping/brainwashing may have served to give the Ottoman Empire a strong standing army; it can hardly be repeated today. Tolerance of minorities is important if you don't want them to rebel--witness the relatively benign treatment the British Empire often extended to the peoples it ruled. But the absence of rebellion alone won't give you a strong empire. You need government officials to put the empire's interests ahead of their own; and you need soldiers willing to fight and die so the empire can live.

Thanks for once again being too stupid to unduhstand the most basic of concepts. When people who are very similar intermarry, you can still have a unified nation. That's the case whether it's people of different African tribes doing the intermarrying, or Norse marrying Danes and Saxons in England, or people from one Chinese province marrying those from another province.

Duke labeled the test/retest phenomenon "regression toward the mean." If you're trying to say my terminology is incorrect, you've just fallen flat on your face. Again. What we have here are two similar but distinct phenomena which can both be correctly labeled "regression toward the mean." Phenomenon A is the test/retest effect, as described by the Hyperstats article, and the Stanford and Duke websites. Phenomenon B is what Sir Francis Galton described as "regression toward mediocrity" and stems from the fact that there's a less-than-one correlation coefficient for parents passing on any given trait to their children.

You've made a number of good points in this post. Though Bush is a bad president, you're right to say Wilson was a worse one. But I disagree with your claim that the nation was more divided in 1917 than it is today. WWI was a very expensive war in terms of men--our losses were in the hundreds of thousands. Both Iraq wars together are a pinprick in comparison. The heavy toll of WWI made internal differences and weaknesses come to the surface.

If the Ottoman Empire is the best example of a successful multicultural society, I've won this debate. Man for man, the Ottoman Empire's WWI effort wasn't comparable to nations like England, France, or the U.S. Its early successes were due to unity among the Turks; just as the British Empire's strength came from unity among the British.

I did not make "claims" in the regression toward the mean debate. I pointed out statistical truths. You didn't understand those truths, so you ridiculed them. While I used Wikipedia and Hyperstats as my sources early on, I later found articles from Harvard, Stanford, etc., which also described the statistical truths I'd been trying so hard to communicate to you. You didn't understand those articles, because you're an idiot.

When you told us about your PhD work, I was wondering what on earth field could be so unchallenging that an idiot like you could succeed in it. Thanks for clearing up that mystery.

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because FDR had ordered an embargo on oil sales to the Japanese. The Japanese only had a limited supply of oil in reserve, and it wouldn't last them forever. They tried to negotiate an end to the embargo, but the offers FDR made were so one-sided he knew the Japanese would reject them. The oil embargo was one of a series of provocations FDR deliberately initiated against the Japanese. Others included a plan to double the size of the U.S. Navy, moving the Pacific fleet from California to Hawaii, etc. His hope was to convince the Japanese that war with the U.S. was inevitable, and that they ought to strike us soon while we were weak.