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#4577 Jan 19 2018 at 6:28 PM Rating: Decent
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someproteinguy wrote:
No it's true. Party line votes have increased from approximately 60% in the 1970s to around 90% today.


You know what other change occurred right about that same time? The implementation of the two track rule in the Senate, and shortly afterward (mid 1970s), reducing the cloture vote from 2/3rds of the Senate to 3/5ths. What these changes did was make it easier for a minority party to sustain a filibuster on any specific piece of legislation. It no longer stopped other business, and you didn't have to get more than a small number of folks "on the other side" to end these filibusters, so the need to write legislation that reaches across the aisle was reduced.

The result is that the parties themselves have become more polarized, the legislation they write is more partisan. Specifically because they can be so. This is clearly not a feature of whether we use direct or proportional representation, since that didn't change over this time period. Filibuster rules did. You want fewer party line votes, and less partisan parties, and less partisan legislation? Make the filibuster stronger. I know it sounds counter intuitive, but that really would fix the issue.

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By adding additional voting blocks to the mix, yes. There's no reason we need to rely on people having to jump ship to support a party that's the polar opposite of their own just to have a decent amount of dissent.


Except that nationally, the percentage of each party doesn't change that much from cycle to cycle. The same can be said for smaller parties which would now presumably gain more national seats. So while you'd shake things up a bit initially, over time, you'll still have polarization and party line votes. It's not like the 22 members of the house in the Green party in this hypothetical future, representing the 5% of voters who voted Green, are going to chose to vote anyway other than in accordance with the Green Party platform. If anything, I'd argue that by increasing the number of third party members into the mix, you'll have *more* partisan voting, since right now any given Dem or GOP rep may represent a wide swath of positions on various issues important to the party, but to varying degrees. Smaller parties tend to be super focused on a smaller number of issue. A representative from a smaller party is going to be very much about what his party stands for. If his positions are slightly different, he'll go join (or form) a party that perfectly matches those positions (or those his constituents want). Right now, a Democrat elected from a district with a large military base, is likely going to vote differently on funding for military bases than the norm of his party. In your scenario, he'd be replaced with a guy from a different smaller party and that seat will become more aligned with a party than it was before.

Now in terms of voting coalitions to achieve a majority, your point is valid. I suppose it depends on how we define "partisan". Although you used the term "party line voting", which is not quite the same thing. I'd argue that having more smaller parties will increase the amount of party line voting among the representative body, precisely because there's more granularity in the parties themselves. Again though, we can call this a semantic difference.


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]The point is that the two cases are close enough that it doesn't matter much. Other than a few minor cases of dissent, made at the risk of alienating the party as a whole, there's very little of this happening. I appreciate that you went through the trouble of pulling up cases of dissent, but those are becoming increasing rare, and much less relevant than they were 50 years ago.


Again though, I don't think that has to do with how we elect representatives, so changing how we elect representatives isn't the way to fix it.

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Right, but 33%-40% of them are primarily concerned that they have the D or R in font of the name. If you aren't willing to change your vote from one party to the other (and many people consistently vote for one party of the other) than does it even matter if the person is representing "you?" At that point there's no need to tailor the person to the district's culture at all, you only need them to be less offensive than the opposing side.


It matters a lot. That one person, right there, is beholden to the voters in his district. And in most districts, a shift of a few percent of voters will make the difference to holding or losing that seat. It's also not just about shifting votes, but voter attendance. Ironically, not having mandatory voting allows for a high degree of party loyalty voting, while still allowing for personal like dislike to affect the outcome in a district. So yes, when people vote, they vote along party lines, but the same percentage of voters in each party aren't going to show up and vote each time.

Dunno. I just don't see the problem you're trying to solve here.

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I think that somewhere near 99% of voters like that system.
You know, if you could at least try to find a source for this claim it'd make this whole discussion a lot easier. Smiley: tongue

I'm not going to be some nutjob and demand proof of everything you say in a friendly forum debate, but this one kind of stymies discussion a bit.


Purely anecdotal and speculative on my part. I'm pretty sure that if you asked any group of people if they want to be able to vote directly for the person who represents their US congressional district, or would prefer that person to be selected by a political party based on say national proportional vote and some system of seat assignment, a very very high percentage of them would prefer the current system. Again though, despite me asking you multiple times what exact method of proportional representation you are proposing, you haven't actually described it to me, so I can only speculate. But if we were going to something like a closed list method (voters don't vote on the "who" in the list, just for the party, which then selects which members on their list sit in which seats, after the fact, based on their proportion of votes), I would not be surprised if 99% of folks here in the US would respond with something ranging from bewilderment at why you'd ever do something like that, to straight up outrage, followed up with "This is why we have the 2nd amendment".

If you have a more modest proportional representation proposal, which you think more people would be ok with, then tell me what it is. Right now, I'm guessing.


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So at worst it's exactly the same as now, where we don't know how much average income, education level, wears white after labor day, geographical differences, police jurisdictions, etc. affected the outcome. All we know is that people who are acting in their own self-interest made those decisions maybe using some of what's above, and maybe not, behind closed doors. Except we're trying to do it in the open, in a way the fairly represents both parties, instead of favoring one over the other to an unnecessary degree.


That's the point (the bolded bit). We know who made the decision. My point is that the vast majority of people will never know the exact process used to make the decision, how it was weighted, calculated, etc, much less even understand it, no matter how "open" and "transparent" it is. What really matters is knowing who made a decision and whether the population likes or dislikes the result of that decision. How the sausage is made is less important than whether it tastes good. And if it does not taste good, who do I blame for this?

We can reward or punish political parties and their elected members, because we have the power to vote. What is our recourse if the "fair and non-partisan" process results in something we don't like? We don't really have one, right?

That's a problem. It may be non-partisan. It may be fair. It may even be "better". But it's not remotely democratic. I think that things that are political in nature should be subject to political processes. And that means that the voters have some reasonably direct say on things. Either by directly voting, or by voting in or out representatives who made the decisions. For all its flaws, redistricting by the party in power preserves this. Any other method does not.

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In the end you put in place objective criteria to determine when it's gone too far. Which is what the supreme court is weighing in on right now. Having a metric to determine if the districts are drawn fairly is half the battle.


Again. Who writes the metrics? Who decides what is "fair"? I say, let the voters decide if they like or dislike the results, and give them the power to vote for/against the party that created that result.

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Thus we need to make sure there's sufficient ability to transition between those in power, and cycle new groups into the mix. Perhaps think of it this way: Trump is the first real outsider to be in office in generations, and while I may disagree with his policies, having some 'fresh blood' in the politics is good for the country. How do we make the system more amenable to people like him getting elected?


I think the parties do have shakeups like this from time to time. I'm going to put on my partisan hat for a bit here, but we've seen two relative decent shifts in the GOP over the last 50 years or so. People forget that when Reagan showed up on the scene he was blasted as being an outsider to the party, wasn't a "true conservative", etc, etc. Today, we think of the GOP as being pretty much defined by his politics, especially in terms of economics and foreign policy. It's hard to say at this point if Trump will be that sort of change as well. I suspect so. He represents a further shift away from social conservative positions, and even more focus on small government economics, focus on foreign policy, etc, etc. Reagan needed the religious right block to win majorities, but Trump has figured out that blue collar workers can fill in that gap (and that frankly, he doesn't need the religious right nearly as much as they need him). So he focuses on jobs and gains votes. It's all the economy for him.

And if that remains the same, and if the current economic figures are any indicator, the guy will win re-election in a freaking landslide in 2020. I could be wrong though.

On the Dem side? I don't know if there's been much changes. They've been moving steadily in a direction for that same period of time. Honestly, I think they've just become more and more obsessed with their social justice agenda, and while that worked for them in the 60s and 70s, has resulted in a steady decline ever since. I suspect that this will hit a tipping point for them in the next decade or two, and will force a change in their party. What that will be, I have no clue. But right now, they desperately need to clear the old guard out and get some fresh blood in there. The aging 60s era activists who are running things today are not working for them IMO.

Edited, Jan 19th 2018 4:37pm by gbaji
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#4578 Jan 20 2018 at 2:32 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
It's hard to say at this point if Trump will be that sort of change as well. I suspect so. He represents a further shift away from social conservative positions, and even more focus on small government economics, focus on foreign policy, etc, etc.



Heh.

Heh...heh.

Hehehehe.






BWAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!




Trump got support from the GOP on the platform of "rape everybody to enrich the already rich". If you think otherwise you're a bigger tool than I ever imagined.
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#4579 Jan 24 2018 at 9:02 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
Trump got support from the GOP on the platform of "rape everybody to enrich the already rich". If you think otherwise you're a bigger tool than I ever imagined.


The fact that so many are stuck in this old worn out narrative is somewhat the point. At a certain point, the whole "OMG! You guys are so stupid if you don't see how this is all about hate, bigotry, rich people taking from the poor, rich people destroying the environment, rich/evil people doing evil things, etc, etc" narrative fails in the face of actual results which don't remotely support it. The more you scream this from the top of your lungs, the more out of touch you appear to everyone else.

You can get away with convincing people of a perception that is different from reality for a while, but not forever. The fact is that most people see their personal conditions improve when the GOP is running things. They are certainly seeing the dramatic difference when Obama was in the White House compared to Trump. They see their job opportunities improve. They see their pay increase. They see their lives get better. And the louder the nutty left insists on demanding the opposite, the more they start to dismiss what those people are saying entirely.

You kinda need to be at least somewhat based on reality. But, increasingly, that's just not the case. Heck. I'm reasonably certain you don't even believe this BS yourself. You just keep repeating it, I suppose out of some kind of hope that maybe others will? Dunno. Makes no sense to me, but there it is.
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#4580 Jan 25 2018 at 8:35 AM Rating: Good
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A Pot wrote:
You kinda need to be at least somewhat based on reality.
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#4581 Jan 25 2018 at 10:59 AM Rating: Excellent
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I like how we have one thread with a defense of conformation bias, and another where we're condemning it going on at the same time. Not that that's exceptionally surprising on it's own, of course, but given we only have like 4 active threads it's a pretty impressive accomplishment.
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#4582 Jan 25 2018 at 11:53 AM Rating: Excellent
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You're talking about the Big Bird thread, right?
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#4583 Jan 25 2018 at 12:47 PM Rating: Excellent
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Of course. And for that matter, if Big Bird is real, how could have the On the Armenian Genocide taken place? That delicious slice of poultry would never have made it through a genocide alive.

It's all clearly a fabrication. Smiley: disappointed
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#4584 Jan 25 2018 at 1:05 PM Rating: Good
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Big Bird hasn't apologized for the genocide.
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#4585 Jan 25 2018 at 1:06 PM Rating: Excellent
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A turkey is a Big Bird but if I told you that Big Bird committed genocide, you'd call me a liar. Think about it.
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#4586 Jan 25 2018 at 1:15 PM Rating: Excellent
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Snuffleupagus is actually a PTSD hallucination from all the guilt Big Bird feels for all the atrocities he committed during the genocide.

Edited, Jan 25th 2018 2:16pm by lolgaxe
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#4587 Jan 25 2018 at 2:04 PM Rating: Excellent
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I don’t think you guys are taking Palpitus1’s feelings into account

I approve
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#4588 Jan 25 2018 at 2:16 PM Rating: Excellent
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No, no, I'm totally am taking his feelings into account. What I meant is that Big Bird is a fabrication, and that he couldn't possibly exist because of the Armenian Genocide, and there's just someone going on T.V. and pretending to be Big Bird and faking the whole thing.

But no one understood me because they're obviously liberals speaking an entirely different language from me and are overly reliant on using conformation bias to prop up their narrative. If people simply would move from their tightly-bound viewpoints every now and then they'd have much different observations.

Edited, Jan 25th 2018 12:18pm by someproteinguy
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#4589 Jan 25 2018 at 2:34 PM Rating: Good
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someproteinguy wrote:
No, no, I'm totally am taking his feelings into account. What I meant is that Big Bird is a fabrication, and that he couldn't possibly exist because of the Armenian Genocide, and there's just someone going on T.V. and pretending to be Big Bird and faking the whole thing.

But no one understood me because they're obviously liberals speaking an entirely different language from me and are overly reliant on using conformation bias to prop up their narrative. If people simply would move from their tightly-bound viewpoints every now and then they'd have much different observations.

Edited, Jan 25th 2018 12:18pm by someproteinguy


My lease isn’t up for quite a while, I prolly won’t be moving from my tightly held viewpoints. Plus moving costs are a *****
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#4590 Jan 25 2018 at 2:34 PM Rating: Excellent
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What's the point of tightly binding this viewpoint if I'm just going to be moving around?
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Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#4591 Jan 25 2018 at 2:48 PM Rating: Excellent
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Professor stupidmonkey wrote:
My lease isn’t up for quite a while, I prolly won’t be moving from my tightly held viewpoints. Plus moving costs are a *****
Not to mention it's hard finding people who will still like you after making them move heavy furniture in exchange for tacos. Not that I'd know anything about that, of course. Smiley: um

Jophiel wrote:
What's the point of tightly binding this viewpoint if I'm just going to be moving around?
You should hire someone to help obviously. There's any number of day laborers who can move a set of goalposts for a nominal fee.

It's all about thinking outside the box! Smiley: schooled

Edited, Jan 25th 2018 12:50pm by someproteinguy
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#4592 Jan 25 2018 at 3:24 PM Rating: Decent
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someproteinguy wrote:
I like how we have one thread with a defense of conformation bias, and another where we're condemning it going on at the same time. Not that that's exceptionally surprising on it's own, of course, but given we only have like 4 active threads it's a pretty impressive accomplishment.


Except that confirmation bias is not present in either thread. Confirmation bias is when one sees or acknowledges only things that support a conclusion that has already been reached. Making claims that fly in the face of reality, absent any support at all, isn't confirmation bias. It's just blindly repeating something without even attempting to provide support for it. Finding support for a position is *also* not confirmation bias. Otherwise, all argument could be dismissed as confirmation bias:

personA: I hold position X, and here's 3 pieces of data which support it

personB: Confirmation Bias!!! You must be wrong...

personA: WTF? That's not how it works dude.


It's a pretty normal argument form to produce an argument and provide data to support it. The counter is to either prove that one or more of the facts the argument is based on are wrong (and are key to supporting the argument) *or* that there's some kind of logical fallacy or gap between the data and the conclusions. You can't just dismiss the data itself as confirmation bias because it "confirms" the argument. At the risk of repeating myself, that's not how it works.

Edited, Jan 25th 2018 1:25pm by gbaji
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#4593 Jan 25 2018 at 5:03 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Confirmation bias is when one sees or acknowledges only things that support a conclusion that has already been reached.
gbaji wrote:
It's that this study confirms what I'd been observing myself. I frankly don't care what he writes about in his book in addition to this.

Man, it's so easy it's not even really fun any more.
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#4594 Jan 26 2018 at 8:30 AM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
Man, it's so easy it's not even really fun any more.
I don't know, it's kind of amusing watching the excuses he comes up with for making all the same mistakes, year in and year out, instead of actually trying to stop making those mistakes. I've never seen anyone work so hard to keep from learning before in my life.
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#4595 Jan 26 2018 at 10:07 AM Rating: Excellent
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Gbaji: "I've seen a lot of black cats so I bet all cats are black"
Vet: "There are many black cats..."
Gbaji: "See?! I was right! The data proves it!"
Vet: "...and also many white, brown and orange---"
Gbaji: "Shut up no one cares I was right so right the data proves I'm right the vet said cats are black and I'm so right who cares what else the vet said no one cares because I'm right"
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#4596 Jan 26 2018 at 12:55 PM Rating: Good
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There's really only one type of cat: Horrible.
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#4597 Jan 26 2018 at 1:03 PM Rating: Excellent
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#4598 Jan 26 2018 at 6:46 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Confirmation bias is when one sees or acknowledges only things that support a conclusion that has already been reached.
gbaji wrote:
It's that this study confirms what I'd been observing myself. I frankly don't care what he writes about in his book in addition to this.

Man, it's so easy it's not even really fun any more.


Information "in addition to this" is not "in contradiction to this". Confirmation is not bias. The word "bias" in the phrase "confirmation bias" is not just window dressing. You have yet to provide any argument that anything in Haidt's work contradicts my observations, thus my observations and conclusions are not biased. They are "confirmed".

It's only bias if I am presented with two different facts, one which supports my position and one which refutes it, and I ignore the one that refutes it. I have not been presented with the later. Now, if you, having read the whole of Haidt's book, wish to quote from it, and show me where something he has said refutes my position, you're free to do that. And if you do, I'll gladly address that (ie: not ignore it).

But you haven't bothered to do that. So.... what? Just saying "you haven't read the book" is meaningless. If I do read the book, am I going to find anything that refutes my observations that liberals haven a tendency to be wrong about what conservative positions are, and more importantly, *why* they hold them? Cause I'd pay attention if that was the case. But you haven't bothered to even make this claim, let alone support it.

Heaven forbid we actually have some kind of facts or data to support what we say though.
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#4599 Jan 26 2018 at 7:06 PM Rating: Default
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Jophiel wrote:
Gbaji: "I've seen a lot of black cats so I bet all cats are black"
Vet: "There are many black cats..."
Gbaji: "See?! I was right! The data proves it!"
Vet: "...and also many white, brown and orange---"
Gbaji: "Shut up no one cares I was right so right the data proves I'm right the vet said cats are black and I'm so right who cares what else the vet said no one cares because I'm right"


Except that's not accurate. Here's a more accurate version:

gbaji: I've noticed that every cat I've ever seen has four legs. I wonder if having four legs is an normal feature of cats?
vet: Here's a set of data about cats
gbaji: Interesting. This data confirms that all cats normally have four legs
vet: I also wrote a book about cats, describing their behavior, food likes and dislikes, how to raise them properly, etc.
gbaji: That's great. I'm not interested in owning a cat. Just was checking to see how many legs they have
Jophiel: OMG! You didn't read his book about cats so you can't possibly conclude that cats have four legs!!!
gbaji: Um... You're kidding, right?
Jophiel: But i read the book, and you didn't, so I know more than you. I'm special!
gbaji: Ok. Did the book mention that cats don't normally have four legs?
Jophiel: Irrelevant! You didn't read the book! so you can't say that cats normally have four legs.
gbaji: Yeah. I think I can. Unless there's some data that refutes my observation and the vets data. Is there?
Jophiel: But! But! You didn't read the booooooooooook! You're cherry picking data. It's confirmation bias!
gbaji: /facepalm


Yup. That's about it, right there. So... Um... Is there anything in the book that refutes what was in the study?

Edited, Jan 26th 2018 5:07pm by gbaji
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#4600 Jan 27 2018 at 12:35 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
gbaji: Interesting. This data confirms that all cats normally have four legs
vet: I also wrote a book about cats, describing their behavior, food likes and dislikes, how to raise them properly, etc.
gbaji: That's great. I'm not interested in owning a cat. Just was checking to see how many legs they have

So you think that how conservatives think & act is a completely separate topic from how liberals think and act.

That's... an amusing defense? Ah well, you keep on telling yourself what you need to tell yourself.
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#4601 Jan 27 2018 at 4:44 AM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
gbaji: Interesting. This data confirms that all cats normally have four legs
vet: I also wrote a book about cats, describing their behavior, food likes and dislikes, how to raise them properly, etc.
gbaji: That's great. I'm not interested in owning a cat. Just was checking to see how many legs they have

So you think that how conservatives think & act is a completely separate topic from how liberals think and act.

That's... an amusing defense? Ah well, you keep on telling yourself what you need to tell yourself.



Gbaji: I always suspected that oxygen was flammable
Scientist: Oh, it is flammable, and in addition to that, every living person on the planet needs it to-
Gbaji: Ah, ah ah, that's enough out of you, science boy!! You have confirmed what I had already perceived. There is literally nothing else I need to know about oxygen. Let's get rid of all of it before it burns our planet down!
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