Cont: The Trump Presidency: Part 19

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Ladewig said:
Maybe I’m missing something. Isn’t a handgun much, much better than a rifle for home defense.
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I guess it depends on your definition of better. But yeah.

However, this statistic might make you question having one.

A handgun in your home is seven times more likely to be used to kill a member of the household or an acquaintance of the household than a stranger.
 
acbytesla said:
A handgun in your home is seven times more likely to be used to kill a member of the household or an acquaintance of the household than a stranger.
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All the more reason to have a gun: Someone in your household probably wants to kill you. I sleep with a pillow under my Glock.
 
acbytesla said:
However, this statistic might make you question having one.

A handgun in your home is seven times more likely to be used to kill a member of the household or an acquaintance of the household than a stranger.
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I don't think that's very relevant. Statistics are useful for populations, but not for individuals.
 
Belz... said:
I don't think that's very relevant. Statistics are useful for populations, but not for individuals.
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Indeed. Every individual is unique and thus ineluctibly irreducible to the statistics of more than one!

The creed of the "unique American" for whom the rest of the world is irrelevant and inapplicable.
 
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Lurch said:
Indeed. Every individual is unique and thus ineluctibly irreducible to the statistics of more than one!

The creed of the "unique American" for whom the rest of the world is irrelevant and inapplicable.
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I don't think you understood my meaning.

"People who X are more at risk of Y" is a general statistic. It doesn't mean that one person who X's is more at risk of Y. For example, people tend to drive pretty badly, and end up in accidents of their own making. There are statistics for that. But you can't tell whether one person owning a car will get into an accident of his or her own making. That was my point. I'm not sure I'm explaining that clearly.
 
Population statistics tell you about populations, they tell you nothing about individuals, yes. Assuming that population statistics can be used to predict the characteristics of individuals is the root cause of prejudice, and it's simply wrong.

For example: the average male height is greater than the average female height, but that doesn't mean my brother is bound to be taller than my sister. My brother is 5 ft 9", and my sister is 5ft 10".
 
At the risk of being dragged down the same rabbit hole yet again...

Stacyhs said:
What I find terribly sad is that so many people feel they have the need to carry a gun on them...even to church. Doesn't say much for us as a country that they feel so unsafe.
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Norman Alexander said:
Nope.

When that happens, the gun-nuts will want to carry bigger guns and more guns than their imaginary attackers who have guns. Logically this will lead to all Americans packing as many heavy weapons and ammo as they can carry everywhere they go.
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I think the false assumption here is that some people feel they “need” to carry a gun because they’d feel “unsafe” otherwise.

My case is I feel quite safe when unarmed, which I am when traveling in a state that does not honor my concealed weapon permit. The only “active shooter” scenarios I’ve been involved with was when I was an officer in a high crime area and I was dispatched to such. Maybe it’s because I saw the reality of such incidents that I now like to be prepared for them, no matter how slight their likelihood. It’s not so much that I now feel “safer” when armed, more that I feel better prepared - “empowered” as it were.

And it’s not only mass shootings where a gun wielded by a responsible citizen can be beneficial. Many “smaller” encounters - someone going berserk with a machete, a man about to stab someone, for instance - where an armed citizen may find themselves in a position to prevent injury or death to a fellow citizen or citizens.

Add to that that for 8 1/2 years I was required to be armed when off duty. That amount of time is plenty for such to become ingrained a habit. One I still have after 30 years off the force.

Perhaps there exist paranoid gun nuts who carry with little or no training and with John Wayne fantasies. But those I know who do carry do not come close to meeting that description, and I suspect it’s mostly a caricature fostered by those who oppose citizen carry of concealed firearms.
 
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Belz... said:
I don't think that's very relevant. Statistics are useful for populations, but not for individuals.
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Yes and no.
If you showed that statistic to every gun owner, the vast, vast majority of them would say, “yeah, but that statistic includes all the idiots who don’t know how to handle a gun. I’m a responsible gun owner and I while I am prepared to shoot an intruder to death, I would never ever shoot a family member to death.” And yet, at the end of the year, the folks who ended up killing an intruder would be outnumbered 7:1 by the folks who killed a family member or acquaintance.

The height of men and women is not quite a useful analogy. Unless the statistics were such that if you chose 8 men at random and 8women at random and then paired them up. And the results were 7 of those pairings resulted in the man being taller than the woman, then it would be a useful comparison.
 
I don't suppose anyone will be surprised by this, but Donald Trump thinks the Constitution is "like a foreign language", can't read it without stumbling and blames everyone else for his inability to do so.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/202...ter-with-the-constitution-very-stable-genius?

But the president stumbled, trying to get out the words in the arcane, stilted form the founding fathers had written. Trump grew irritated. “It’s very hard to do because of the language here,” Trump told the crew. “It’s very hard to get through that whole thing without a stumble.” He added, “It’s like a different language, right?” The cameraman tried to calm Trump, telling him it was no big deal, to take a moment and start over. Trump tried again, but again remarked, “It’s like a foreign language.”
 
Belz... said:
I don't think that's very relevant. Statistics are useful for populations, but not for individuals.
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Really? I think that stat says a lot to the individual thinking about getting a gun for their safety. More likely than anything, that gun will be used for suicide or killing someone you know than defending yourself against a stranger. The easy availability of that firearm is far more likely to affect your life negatively than positively.
 
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Armitage72 said:
Heck, I've been able to recite the Preamble from memory for decades, although if I did it out loud it would likely have the cadence of the song from Schoolhouse Rock.
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That's OK. I find myself doing "conjunction function" and "I'm only a bill" all the time.
 
I found Hawthorne hard to follow until several chapters in.

It may be worth pointing out I was 16.

A few well done period productions have helped me understand the cadence more.

How a person can reach 70 after a lifetime of swimming much closer to circles of power than I have still has trouble with mild legalese (the Constitution is very "easy reading" on that scale) is astounding.
 
Delphic Oracle said:
In the U.S. we have "national security letters" which can compel companies to cooperate with authorities while simultaneously placing them under gag order.

Lots of countries have some mechanism like this.

So why target Huwawei specifically?

Has any existing Huwawei infrastructure been demonstrated to perform in a way that would (intentionally) compromise a secure connection/share information with unauthorized parties?
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Some problems, but probably just bad coding and QC. And many other USA companies have issues, and look at Intel and its pretty much entire 86 chips.
 
Trump Retweets

Oliver McGee PhD MBA
@OliverMcGee
@POTUS’ PROMISES MADE, PROMISES KEPT on TRADE! As @SpeakerPelosi spent $5K on Gold Pens to sign an Impeachment Hoax, @realDonaldTrump used a $1.99 Sharpie Pen to sign a $200B China Trade Deal, adding to 7M JOBS the @WhiteHouse created in 3 years that @BarackObama didn’t!
 
Trump Tweets

The Democrat Party in the Great Commonwealth of Virginia are working hard to take away your 2nd Amendment rights. This is just the beginning. Don’t let it happen, VOTE REPUBLICAN in 2020!

They didn’t want John Bolton and others in the House. They were in too much of a rush. Now they want them all in the Senate. Not supposed to be that way!

Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is now asking for “fairness”, when he and the Democrat House members worked together to make sure I got ZERO fairness in the House. So, what else is new?

USA! USA! USA!
 
Matthew Best said:
I don't suppose anyone will be surprised by this, but Donald Trump thinks the Constitution is "like a foreign language", can't read it without stumbling and blames everyone else for his inability to do so.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/202...ter-with-the-constitution-very-stable-genius?

But the president stumbled, trying to get out the words in the arcane, stilted form the founding fathers had written. Trump grew irritated. “It’s very hard to do because of the language here,” Trump told the crew. “It’s very hard to get through that whole thing without a stumble.” He added, “It’s like a different language, right?” The cameraman tried to calm Trump, telling him it was no big deal, to take a moment and start over. Trump tried again, but again remarked, “It’s like a foreign language.”
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I would so hope that all those gaffes are included in the documentary.
 
Matthew Best said:
I don't suppose anyone will be surprised by this, but Donald Trump thinks the Constitution is "like a foreign language", can't read it without stumbling and blames everyone else for his inability to do so.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/202...ter-with-the-constitution-very-stable-genius?
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Here's the thing...

If it were any other politician or president, they might have a point (sort of)... languages do evolve over the years, and the constitution is written in a way that varies from what people would expect in contemporary speech. Heck, just look at the misunderstanding about the term "high crimes" when referring to impeachment. And, as expected, it is a complex document. If (for example) Obama or Bush made a comment about "the constitution is a wonderful document but I am unused to the language patterns" I wouldn't have criticized them for it.

But Trump has made a big deal of how smart he is. When you spend so much time and effort bragging about just how smart you are, then an inability to understand something like the constitution suggests your claims about intelligence are overstated.
 
Belz... said:
I don't think you understood my meaning.

"People who X are more at risk of Y" is a general statistic. It doesn't mean that one person who X's is more at risk of Y. For example, people tend to drive pretty badly, and end up in accidents of their own making. There are statistics for that. But you can't tell whether one person owning a car will get into an accident of his or her own making. That was my point. I'm not sure I'm explaining that clearly.
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This is off topic, especially gun arguments, but I can't let this fallacy/misstatement slide.

Antivaxxers make this same naive argument that somehow unique individuals are not represented in the stats. Yes, they are.

I don't need a helmut on my motorcycle or my seatbelt in a car because I'm a careful driver. Those unsupportable arguments are still made.


Not all statistics are equally generalizable and they are not always appropriately applied. But a blanket, 'it can't happen to me' argument is ********. You can (in another thread) look at specific studies and see if your demographic was included and if the sample sizes were large enough. But just a general, those statistics don't apply to me, is more often than not, denial.
 
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Delphic Oracle said:
Ah, and "they" all do this chanting?
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Sure they do.:rolleyes:

Were I the despot of Iran, I would be making it my priority to exploit the division in NATO foisted by a crank president of the US.

Make hay while the sun shines and so forth.

Can they do that? I don't know. Idealogy gets in the way. If the Iranians took a moments thought, they would realise that their future is with Europe and the US is becoming increasingly irrelevant thanks in large part to the orange menace.

Will they seize that opportunity? I don't know that either, but they should.
 
Matthew Best said:
I don't suppose anyone will be surprised by this, but Donald Trump thinks the Constitution is "like a foreign language", can't read it without stumbling and blames everyone else for his inability to do so.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/202...ter-with-the-constitution-very-stable-genius?

But the president stumbled, trying to get out the words in the arcane, stilted form the founding fathers had written. Trump grew irritated. “It’s very hard to do because of the language here,” Trump told the crew. “It’s very hard to get through that whole thing without a stumble.” He added, “It’s like a different language, right?” The cameraman tried to calm Trump, telling him it was no big deal, to take a moment and start over. Trump tried again, but again remarked, “It’s like a foreign language.”
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My speculation: He can't read. It was more prevalent then. Now he rehearses a little more what he's supposed to read so he can appear like he's reading it. It's why he goes off-script so often. It's his go-to when he can't read the teleprompter.


I thought this was typical:
Trump had selected the opening of Article II, the part of the Constitution that addresses a president’s election and the scope of his or her power.
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As was acting like a baby and blaming everyone else for his mistakes.
 
abaddon said:
Sure they do.:rolleyes:

Were I the despot of Iran, I would be making it my priority to exploit the division in NATO foisted by a crank president of the US.

Make hay while the sun shines and so forth.

Can they do that? I don't know. Idealogy gets in the way. If the Iranians took a moments thought, they would realise that their future is with Europe and the US is becoming increasingly irrelevant thanks in large part to the orange menace.

Will they seize that opportunity? I don't know that either, but they should.
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China and Russia are at risk of taking advantage of Trump's incompetence.

If Hong Kong citizens weren't causing so much trouble, I half expect China to pick this time to invade Taiwan. They are making noise about it.
 
acbytesla said:
Really? I think that stat says a lot to the individual thinking about getting a gun for their safety. More likely than anything, that gun will be used for suicide or killing someone you know than defending yourself against a stranger.
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Yes but you're losing sight of the fact that probability is not actuality. There are no dice rolled here. The results are deterministic. That driving a car entails a chance of death in the general population because of bad driving doesn't mean you'll be a bad driver yourself, for instance.

Anyway, maybe this should be another thread.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
This is off topic, especially gun arguments, but I can't let this fallacy/misstatement slide.

Antivaxxers make this same naive argument that somehow unique individuals are not represented in the stats. Yes, they are.

I don't need a helmut on my motorcycle or my seatbelt in a car because I'm a careful driver. Those unsupportable arguments are still made.


Not all statistics are equally generalizable and they are not always appropriately applied. But a blanket, 'it can't happen to me' argument is ********. You can (in another thread) look at specific studies and see if your demographic was included and if the sample sizes were large enough. But just a general, those statistics don't apply to me, is more often than not, denial.
Click to expand...

As usual you've managed to completely misunderstand the argument. Nicely done.
 
Matthew Best said:
I don't suppose anyone will be surprised by this, but Donald Trump thinks the Constitution is "like a foreign language", can't read it without stumbling and blames everyone else for his inability to do so.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/202...ter-with-the-constitution-very-stable-genius?

But the president stumbled, trying to get out the words in the arcane, stilted form the founding fathers had written. Trump grew irritated. “It’s very hard to do because of the language here,” Trump told the crew. “It’s very hard to get through that whole thing without a stumble.” He added, “It’s like a different language, right?” The cameraman tried to calm Trump, telling him it was no big deal, to take a moment and start over. Trump tried again, but again remarked, “It’s like a foreign language.”
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Because it has no pictures and isn't written in ******* Wiseguy.
 
Trump Tweets

Two stone cold losers from Amazon WP. Almost every story is a made up lie, just like corrupt pol Shifty Schiff, who fraudulently made up my call with Ukraine. Fiction!
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Another Fake Book by two third rate Washington Post reporters, has already proven to be inaccurately reported, to their great embarrassment, all for the purpose of demeaning and belittling a President who is getting great things done for our Country, at a record clip. Thank you!
 
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