I understand where everyone is coming from. I prefer discussion without personal attacks however this board is uncensored and so personal attacks are fair game so I have no problem with it. I just think it might be counterproductive. It's a cliche that no one has ever had their mind changed on an Internet forum but I don't believe that's true. I believe open discussion can lead to growth of perspective. But if there is any hope a liberal will be open to conservative or libertarian ideas, it's not going to be through personal insults. And the reverse is true of course. To the extent I have changed views on an issue to become more liberal it was not because someone insulted me. It was from learning facts and studying the issue. That's just my preference though, so as you were, carry on.

Don't you know, it wasn't Russia that won Trump the election it was Poland!!!  (I type too fast, so have a few typos).  LOL! 

The Media is in full TDS, Trump hate mode.  They are doing their best to spread the mantra of a Democrat victory.  I hope you are right, but I have a hard time trusting any Poles (polls). 

You missed an opportunity to blame autocorrect.

Right next to Hillary's?

If our Lucifer shares a bathroom with Hillary he really is in Hell.

I don't agree that historically important statues should be torn down either, but chanting "Jews shall not replace us" and other racist slogans vs. protesting racism and anti-semitism on the same moral plane? Seriously? We must live in parallel universes, you and I.

My impression was that the protests got violent when a large group of neo-nazis surrounded a smaller group of student counterprotestors who were standing near one of the statues. I have no idea who threw the first punch, but to me, a larger group surrounding a smaller group is clearly a threatening move. And James Fields, who allegedly drove the car that killed Heather Heyer, was I believe part of the Unite the Right demonstration.

I think we might move in parallel universes if we get our news from different sides. There is no objective news outlet anymore.

My understanding is that the Unite the Right group consisted of several sub groups, only one or a few were neo-Nazi or white supremacist. Those would be the ones shouting "Jews shall not replace us" and are the sick extremists to which I refer. On the other side, some or all are hateful and intolerant  of anyone that disagrees with them and "privileged white males" in particular. Their hatred is just as vicious and evil and violence against their targets is even publicly encouraged by their elected leaders (Maxine Waters).

So I'll modify my statement to say that while not all persons present may have been on the same repugnant moral ground, plenty on both sides were.

I don't think Trump is a racist, not in the sense of someone who thinks people with brown skin are inferior. I used the term "tone deaf" very carefully. I think he intended his remarks after Charlottesville to be even-handed and fair, and that he honestly couldn't understand the public outcry. And I'll even agree that he didn't say anything that was factually incorrect. But I compare the way he worded his remarks to the way other presidents have handled difficult social unrest. Can you imagine Reagan, for example, saying that both sides were at fault and leaving it at that? The violence was instigated largely by white supremacists marching openly in the streets. That is something they have a right to do as Americans and no one, I think, has suggested otherwise. But at the same time, I think most non-racist people would expect their President to express how counter their ideas are to mainstream American values and culture and the fact that he didn't do that until much later was, I think, an example of tone deafness on Trump's part. It's not that he said anything overtly racist, it's that he worded his statement in a way that many people, and not just liberals, interpreted as putting neo-nazis on the same moral plane as the anti-Confederate statue protestors. He just doesn't understand what is expected of him, at least by most Americans, as President in terms of leadership.

"Equal opportunity offender"... yeah, that's pretty much true. He manages, though, to offend not just individuals but groups and classes of people. I sometimes think he is just tone deaf to the subtleties of language, that it's not race specifically. The racial aspect just manages to draw attention to itself because it is the third rail of American politics, or would be for any other politician.

But they ARE on the same moral plane. They are two sides of the same sick extremist racist coin.  In fact I was under the impression that the neo-nazis were the less violent in that encounter.

First, one of these days you might actually admit that someone who disagrees with you knows something you know not. That someone is me, and I know scientists and our culture. Our data and their interpretation is as beloved to most scientist as your children are to you. Data are everything to a scientist, there just is nothing else. You simply do not understand how venal the insult is when you claim a whole field of scientists are lying. These are people who have worked longer and harder than most for far less material reward. We do for the love of science and finding things out.

Indeed, I think I’ll give you a really concrete example. There is a climate scientist here who used to get ice samples out of the poles. He went to get one out of a mountain glacier, and saw it was melting. His alarm was marked, that glacier had been there for around a half million years. He realized that if someone didn’t get ice core samples from these high places soon they’d be gone, and all the valuable information they contain with them (ice traps things in the atmosphere and can record climatic history).

He took it upon himself to do this. He didn’t have to, he was tenured and comfortably funded. But he realized he was one of the few scientists that could actually do it.  So he and his team have gone to just about every mountain glacier on Earth. They don’t use helicopters, they don’t exist in most of the places they’ve gone. We're talking about hiking up step mountains with heavy scientific equipment. He worked so hard at this he literally wore out his heart and had to get a transplant. He didn’t do this for grant money, he had plenty already. He didn’t do it for notoriety, he had it already. He went to these places because that’s where the data was. And I know that because that’s exactly what he told me when I was an undergraduate and asked why he was always a schleping off to the North Pole.

The problem is not the raw data. I'm glad someone is getting those ice samples. The problem is the computer modeling. And the massaging it all gets before it's given to the public.

It is Gibbons - when did you go?  We had Flynns at the Western Blvd location from about 1979 until 1994.

1970 for just one year.  Western Blvd of course.

Spygate is the biggest and most aggregious scandal in modern history.  It has a weaponized DOJ and FBI spying on, and conspiring against a duly elected president.  Its roots go all the way to the top of the BHO WH.  Yes, there is a reason the MSM has attempted to play this down, because the truth is very painful once it's revealed that the icons of the democrat party have been involved in criminal activity with foreign governments as well as actively committing sedition.   It's a legacy that will follow the party for decades to come and further reduce their influence and ability to hold public office.

I gotta say it looks like this part is true. As it came out bit by bit it was very confusing at first. One day in an attempt to wrap my head around it I googled "flow chart of the connections between Clinton and the Steele dossier and peter stzork (spell?) etc"   And what I pulled up was a flow chart showing how it went down. But then I noticed it was a left leaning website and the article was: "Look at the conspiracy theory the conservatives believe!"  So I presume if you get your news from only liberal leaning outlets, all these facts are spun as paranoid conspiracy theories with the implication that it can't be true because it is such a big tangled web of deceit.

Very good I thought. So how about we look at each connection individually and see if it is true or not. One by one, all these connections are proving to be correct. There IS NO confirmation that the Steele dossier was ever verified as true before it went to the FISA court. The texts between Stzzzzork and Page have been released and sure as hell DO show not only biased but language indicating that they intend to use what they're doing to attempt to de-legitimize the outcome of the election should Trump win. The "insurance policy" And so on and so forth.

On and on we are finding these small pieces to be true. And those of us who know people inside these various agencies are hearing more confirmation of the biased and prejudicial nature of the Russia investigation and associated fallout.

Steingar, even you yourself asked whether if one knows there is an evil Hitler and one is in a position to stop him might that be a reasonable course. Which leads me to believe that in some corner of your mind you admit that it's possible this is not a conspiracy theory invented by the right but that there may in fact be people trying to undermine President Trump from within.

Your news sources present these facts as a laughable conspiracy theory and those trying to uncover these facts as mounting unfair attacks on good innocent people, such as Strxzzzzck and Page.

But here is something that cannot be denied. Trump won the Electoral College fair and square. Nobody NOBODY can seriously believe Russia pulled that off against the will of American voters. You have to be in total denial about the repulsiveness of your Democrat candidate to believe anything but a greater appeal of Trump to tired and fed up voters is why he won.

Therefore everything these people are doing is sedition, attempting to overthrow a legitimately elected President of the United States. This will indeed go down in history as the biggest plot to seize power away from a rightly elected head of state to date. No wonder Democrats are fleeing the party in shame.