Things we empirically know, for sure and with absolute certainty beyond a shadow of a doubt. 

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Things we empirically know, for sure and with absolute certainty beyond a shadow of a doubt. 

1.  Numbers are absolute and not so easily refuted.  Opinions are always important but numbers have an absolute value to them which demand respect.  When 41 state polls are released in the election’s final weekend and one candidate is only leading in 3 of those 41, we benefit from respecting the numbers more than partisan political pundits.  Now that we have witnessed such clear disdain for the school of Nate Silver and blind allegiance to the school of Dick Morris and can speak to who came out on top of that battle, should we not also reevaluate the value of the numbers on climate change and other matters of science?  The case of “Silver v. Morris” is a clear and measurable example of the conservative dismissal of empirical evidence in favor of, for lack of a better term, “something else that makes me feel better”. 

2.  If I ever go down in an airplane in the Andes and am facing below-zero temperatures, blizzards and avalanches, no food, no hope of rescue and the Abominable Snowman, I want STINGER on my plane!  I just read through the RCP Electoral Map Thread and I have never experienced such unwavering confidence in light of such an obvious losing cause.  You are a stalwart of leadership when facing a 50 point deficit in the 4th quarter!  Even HR threw in the towel on Romney last week.  The only one who was even remotely as confident as you was TRAP, who we all know well enough…no comment needed.  How do you avoid the reality of truth so well?  I need you on my plane when it goes down.  Blind allegiance to punditry is a cornerstone if not a foundation of the political problems in this country.  It’s not as much the leaders which creates our problems but the citizens who refuse to look at measurable reality and then hold leaders accountable for that which we can measure. 

3.  When unfortunate incidents such as Fast and Furious and Benghazi occur, we should investigate them.  After we investigate them and have been unable to indict anyone of neither negligence nor criminal activity, we should grieve our losses and move forward.  If only one of the many media outlets continues to litigate the case, we should eventually get around to questioning the media outlet not those who are not guilty of any crime. 

4.  Laws which are written and passed by the Legislative branches, signed off by the Executive branch and validated by the Supreme Court are American laws.  When pursuant elections don’t change these outcomes, these American laws are reinforced and solidified.  Individuals can disagree with their preference for these laws but to call them anti-American is simply wrong.  The Affordable Healthcare Act has stood up to and surpassed every single possible test in American politics. 

5.  Obama is not the worst President of all time as most of you have wanted to believe.  Apparently, he also always had a chance at reelection.  The “whistling past the graveyard” and “rearranging the chairs on the deck of the titanic” was all bluster.  For Obama to be reelected after the unprecedented money spent against him and the negative imaging slung against him, is nothing short of astounding.  The time has come for the conservatives to acknowledge the changing demographics of this country or they will become quickly irrelevant.  The Tea Party movement funded directly by corporate interests and fueled by latent racist innuendo, has hurt the Republican Party and subsequently hurt the United States.  Obama’s reelection grades Obama as no worse than a good President at this juncture and is a direct indictment of the Tea Party as a failing entity in American politics.  Lindsey Graham: “If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m going to go nuts.  We’re not losing 95 percent of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we’re not being hard-ass enough.” 

The white, heterosexual male clinging desperately to his privileges is philosophically a sad sight but politically, it is and will continue to be a killer.  We measured that outcome last night. 

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The above are essentially the underlying pinning of most of the discussions on this board that have occurred over the past several months and years of Obama’s administration.  Never before has it been so possible to point to the correct side of these discussions as it is now in a post Obama reelection:

Yes, Obama is legitimate. 

Yes, A.C.A. is law of the land. 

Yes, quick Fox News cover stories such as Fast and Furious, Benghazi, et al.  while unfortunate, do occur in a dangerous world.  The Right’s perseveration with them speaks more to political partisanship than political integrity and prostitutes healthy investigative processes of our own government. . 

Yes, the epic nature of Right’s refusal to recognize science over faith, academia over bluster, empirical evidence over ideology and reality over mythology could not have been illustrated better than in the Right’s absolute refusal to accept the polling data in lieu of desperate hope fed to them by the snake oil salesmen of conservative media.  We can measure this now beyond the shadow do a doubt. 

Yes, the electorate of this country is diverse and expanding.  Just look at the crowd at Romney’s concession speech vs. Obama’s celebration speech.  Those were two very different Americas.  One is winning and one is losing.  While the conservatives will be forced to expand their “tent”, it will only be because of the progressive force in this country that has always moved us forward and always moved us to a better place. 

Re: Things we empirically know, for sure and with absolute certainty beyond a shadow of a doubt. 

Mathematics in and of it self is strictly speaking, meaningless and entirely abstract.  Math is systematic treatment of magnitude, relationships between figures and forms, and relations between quantities.  How the magnitudes, figures and forms, and quantities are recognized is subjective.  It's not a matter of doubting the logical progression, there's nothing to doubt.  Math is definite.  The doubt is in the research prior to the math.  One can agree with the ends without agreeing with the means. 

It’s not as much the leaders which creates our problems but the citizens who refuse to look at measurable reality and then hold leaders accountable for that which we can measure. 

Refuse to look at measurable reality but hold leaders accountable for measurable reality? 

I think I understand what your getting at but please rephrase. 

If only one of the many media outlets continues to litigate the case, we should eventually get around to questioning the media outlet not those who are not guilty of any crime. 

Re: Things we empirically know, for sure and with absolute certainty beyond a shadow of a doubt. 

Originally Posted by Galen Sevinne

For Obama to be reelected after the unprecedented money spent against him and the negative imaging slung against him, is nothing short of astounding. 

Thats a two way street.  In fact, I think Romney was too "gentlemanly" to him.  Romney and Co. had to balance their negativity towards Obama because even though Obama hasn't done a good job, many people still liked him.  If Romney went too negative, he most certainly wouldn't have been able to get some Dems to pull the lever for him.  While I personally think Obama is a narcissist and his actions don't line up with his rhetoric, he has a media that was willing to do anything not to portray him in a negative light.  That, in turn, leads to an uneducated populous from learning of his negatives. 

Obama and his minions ran one of the most negative campaigns of recent times and its why he won.  They actually blamed Romney for killing a guys wife because Bain capital closed the plant he worked at.  None of it was true of course, but that resonates with low information voters.  Ads like that and many others that painted Romney as an EVIL MAN! ( also not true, btw) were what locked up the LIV for Obama. 

This didn't help either:

Obama did nothing in New Jersey and as Chris Matthews said, Sandy couldn't have come at a better time for Obama. 

Re: Things we empirically know, for sure and with absolute certainty beyond a shadow of a doubt. 

Originally Posted by Sirdowski

What a tool.  He seriously just dropped in to post a gloat thread. 

I knew he was childish but LOL. 

aww....you've missed me. 

I wasn't gloating.  It's really a rare moment on this board when the answers to debates are revealed.  I have always been a fan of sharing truth as I think you are as well.  We are similar in that manner but we also differ in many ways. 

When I see that 2+2=4, I celebrate 4.  When you see that 2+2=4 and 4 scares you, you deny 2. 

Galen, though I don't blame you, as it is the illness of modern thought in academia (which you are no doubt a product of), I'm afraid you mistake truth with mere fact.  I seek truth, you seek fact.  So while you and your liberal cohorts arguments may be brilliant in composition, they are so within a narrow scope; as when pushed in the direction of first principles (where inextricably truth lies) they crumble like a house of cards for want of basic relevance. 

Plato recognized that all intellectual inquiry must reflect whether it is moving towards or away from first principles.  The result of moving away is mere facts without reference, as knowledge never lies on the periphery.  In the Phaedrus Plato remarks:

"They will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome, having the reputation of knowledge without the reality." 

I can't help but feel your cause was in Plato's mind when he wrote:

"The excessive love of self is in reality the source of all offenses; for the lover is blinded by the beloved, so that he judges wrongly of the just, the good, and the honorable, and thinks that he ought always prefer his own interest to the truth." 

What devastating outcome could possibly follow when mindset of "own interest" is shared by the masses?  Liberalism will reveal this in the times to come. 

Re: Things we empirically know, for sure and with absolute certainty beyond a shadow of a doubt. 

Originally Posted by Sirdowski

Galen, though I don't blame you, as it is the illness of modern thought in academia (which you are no doubt a product of), I'm afraid you mistake truth with mere fact.  I seek truth, you seek fact.  So while you and your liberal cohorts arguments may be brilliant in composition, they are so within a narrow scope; as when pushed in the direction of first principles (where inextricably truth lies) they crumble like a house of cards for want of basic relevance. 

Quite the flamboyant argument.  I am not sure your arcane approach is working for this particular OP though.  I was simply pointing out that the infinite nature of the back and forth arguments on this board do reach finite conclusions.  These conclusions should be acknowledged in order to promote a wider participation in realistic thought - especially when it comes to politics. 

A.C.A. is constitutional in relationship to how our nations determines constitutionality.  To continue to frame it as unconstitutional from this point forward is irrational. 

Investigations into Fast and Furious were a giant waste of national resources in an futile exercise in partisan politics.  By refusing to acknowledge this, Fox News continues to waste American neurotransmitter potential on Susan Rice's role in Benghazi. 

My favorite Thing we empirically know, for sure and with absolute certainty beyond a shadow of a doubt is by far though, the pre-electoral polling.  You can complain about the "illness of modern thought in academia" but Nate Silver, representing "academic thought", delivered a clear and absolute smack-down of non-academic thought represented by the Dick Morris' of the world as well as our local posters right here at 24x7 who relied on nothing more than emotional masturbation to follow Morris into, to reference your hero, Plato's Cave.  Academic experience gave the majority of pollsters and Nate Silver the intellectual tools necessary to predict a future absolute reality.  Joke academia all you want and while it might not predict the outcomes of love, yet (see Gottman et al.)...it did predict a political opinion drawn from a wide assortment of demographic variables almost perfectly.  This was a huge win for Academia. 

Originally Posted by Sirdowski

Plato recognized that all intellectual inquiry must reflect whether it is moving towards or away from first principles.  The result of moving away is mere facts without reference, as knowledge never lies on the periphery.  In the Phaedrus Plato remarks:

"They will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome, having the reputation of knowledge without the reality." 

I can't help but feel your cause was in Plato's mind when he wrote:

"The excessive love of self is in reality the source of all offenses; for the lover is blinded by the beloved, so that he judges wrongly of the just, the good, and the honorable, and thinks that he ought always prefer his own interest to the truth." 

What devastating outcome could possibly follow when mindset of "own interest" is shared by the masses?  Liberalism will reveal this in the times to come. 

In commenting on your flamboyance, I have always been more in the school of Aristotle than Plato.  I am sure that comes as no surprise to you. 

The argument you make, and have made here in the past, is really nothing short of a romantic variation of attacking the messenger.  If evolution threatens religion then attack the voice of evolution: science.  If polling suggests the other candidate is winning then attack the voice of polling: methodology.  If liberal cohorts arguments may be brilliant in composition then attack their voice: academia. 

You deny man's ability to know absolute reality yet you are determined to express your certainty of God.  You can't have it both ways.  Man's intuitive leap towards science is bunk, yet his intuition of God is certain?.  Sorry if this is offensive but I can't but imagine you sitting around in your Wednesday night men's bible study group discussing ways to deny evolution as well as secularism.  You deny the teachings of academia, yet you uphold the teachings of Wednesday's night bible study?  You laugh and look down on he who sits at the desk of academia, yet you laud he who sits in the pew of the cloth.  In their essence, they are same.  In only their experience, do they differ.  By siding with Plato over Aristotle, you set your own intellectual trap right here.  You can only unravel your trap through Aristotle but you then lose the strength of your premise about the essence of things.  You just can't have it both ways. 

You degrade your own argument of the lover is blinded by the beloved by blindly loving your own form of beloved.  You claim your beloved is absolute and apart from experience yet its essence, outside of faithful experience, is no different than the essence of mine found through academic experience. 

Intellectual relativism is a dead end street, as much in your world as mine.