Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

So this opinion you offer--utterly without fact, information, experience, perspective or content--is superior to educated and experienced professionals writing subject to other professional's approval and criticism?

You offer nothing but smart ass ignorant slurs--uninformed smart assed ignorant slurs--without professionalism, without personal contact or interview, with nothing to offer but the prejudices and misconceptions of your tribe, filtered through your own confusion,, your hostility, your emptyheadedness, ignoring responsibility, seeking points won instead of truth, producing noise instead of meaning, and playing to the cheap seats and meaningless empty gestures.

Instead you suggest Ugly Hedgehog for meaning, something to remember, to clutch and caress, and truth unvarnished.

Why don't you suggest four or five of your own posts, full of fact and superior knowledge demonstrating your superiority, something Nobel Prize worthy for all of us to learn from.

We await what you bless us with.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

So says an Obama supporter, no slimier administration in my lifetime than Obama's.

mwalsh Loc: Houston

Unlike you,

I have never laid claim to any degree of superiority on the UHH,

And, I have never done so while consistently demonstrating a frenetic sense of panic, hyperbole, and utter factless delirium,








Like you.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Well, I was wondering what happened to you Blurry. Thought maybe you'd left us.

If we want to be perfectly correct, I added third party descriptions of the corruption Trump supports, and I don't know whether these sources are Trump supporters or not, but the corruption is crystal clear, blatent, and profound.

BTW, in answer to your confusion, Obama's Cabinet and Obama's Administration in general was surprisingly free of scandal excepting only the examples that live in your imagination.

Glad to see you're back among us; I feared something had upset you life.

Keep trying, not lying....

Tom

letmedance Loc: Walnut, Ca.

Informed opinion is still just opinion and pablum for those that suffer confirmation bias like you.

incognito

Barney Frank Where are you? I know he is getting corn holed all the way to his bank thanks to Fanny Mae. Where is the outrage???

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Well, what you offer is just an opinion, isn't it? And yet you assume your opinion, without any basis whatsoever, no particular experience behind it, no logic, no facts or insight, is superior to professional writer's opinion with their great experience, personal contact with the people involved, education, and vast view of the world.

We can't all experience everything, so we listen to someone who has experienced something, Of course, who we choose to listen to is very important. For example, I never listen to you. You bring no insight, only rudeness and hostility; you bring no logic, only reiteration of emotional and inaccurate stories passed to you by others with no more knowledge than you; you pass along tribal hatred, with no original contribution, no new way to look at things, no ideas that are new, unusual, informative--you add no new insight.

I pass along the opinions I respect, opinions of lawyers, of politicians I respect, of people with new ideas or more experience than I have, professional authors who've been everywhere, done much, learned themselves what I don't know, and who want to pass this insight on. And I want to receive that insight, learn from it, try on those ideas to see if they help me understand the world better, or make me a better person.

When I learn something like that, I like to pass it along for you to try on, evaluate, and perhaps learn from.

In return for this, I get insults, lies denying what I and others say, and inaccurate stories passed from person to person to protect their provincial world view. I get people who can't figure their golf score debating economic theory of professional economists; people with merely a high school education, who often haven't been much of a success in their lives, arguing political theory, even those who don't know the meaning of the words they speak, and the history behind their ideas. These people need some opinions, some informed intelligent opinions from people who know, who have experienced the world, wrestled with ideas, seen good things and some very bad things, have seen more than you or I have, people who might have something to teach us, something for us to evaluate and measure, try on, ruminate upon, and finally reach our best informed opinion about, our best idea of how the world really works, what some things mean, examples of just how bad some people are and how good others are, what a nasty civil war looks lie from the inside, what torture really looks like, how the Pope lives and philosophers think, how the rich got that way and how science, greed, dishonesty and lies and idealism rule the world, and what we can do about some of them.

Interesting stuff.

And sometimes, valuable, too.

I like a lot of opinions, good meaty, informed, vivid, real, challenging opinions that I can chew on, grapple with, test and try out. Opinions I can argue with in my mind, laugh at sometimes, and learn from.

You'd soak up every word you could from a professional bass fisherman, or a professional hunting guide. You'd listen to evey thought of an NFL coach if you could, or any top craftsman with a skill you admire, someone who claimed Everest, or wrestled a bear, flew a fighter, or escaped from ISIS.

Their experience is a rich thing to experience, to share and admire, to learn from. But in life, in real life, In Your Own Life, you seek evasion and small-formed ideas, you seek reinforcement of bad ideas you already have, that have already let you down...you seek not to grow, not to learn, not to imagine, not to see what other are trying to tell you--for free!

You deserve more.

You deprive yourself when you accept less.

FRENCHY Loc: Stone Mountain , Ga

Barney Fiffe is a democrap , so, everything's OK !

sueyeisert Loc: New Jersey

All you're capable of of is insults since you can't refute anything. I suggest you read a newspaper and the national enquirer isn't a newspaper.

ole sarg Loc: south florida

OH NO!

You used reliable sources! Now you are in deep doodoo!

Had you used something like the Star you would have veracity with the right wingers. But oh no.....Not you!

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Hello, Sarge. Good to hear from you again. You've been gone too long.

I shrink in shame in using 'reliable sources,' as you charge, and will try to do better in the future.

Our first job as unreliable witnesses to reality is to seek out the opposition and define the beast.

Like the wise men who described the elephant, we don't all agree some of the time, or we always disagree oll of the time, but if we fight and struggle, we hope to get closer to an understanding of the beast, of each other, and of ourselves.

Some of us work harder at it than others.

Let us hear from you some more.

Tom

letmedance Loc: Walnut, Ca.

A lot of words Tom but opinion is still opinion and your informed opinion has proven wrong time and again. I am patiently awaiting facts and find it hard to put in faith in opinion formed without that fact. I am not a pawn of the talking heads.

mwalsh Loc: Houston

That was a heck of a lot of words to express that you are convinced that your opinion is more valuable, more insightful, and superior to the opinions of others on the forum.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Well, good buddy, you know nothing--absolutely nothing--by personal, verified experience, nothing you can truly state as a "Fact."

Do you measure the temperature every day, or do you read it in the newspaper, or on TV, or the Internet?

Do you do your own polling, personally, or accept the work of others?

When you hear an opinion, whether good or bad in your eyes, do you accept it, or reject it, or verify it by personal and verified experience?

Bullshit.

You accept what you read, what you hear, what you want to believe, and anything such as Truth is just 'fake news.'

My point is that 99% of all you know is opinion, someone else's opinion, textbooks, dictionaries, books and magazines, bar talk, the internet and so on. You couldn't possible verify personally all your knowledge.

If you had a Ph.D in a subject, 99% of all you know about that subject is Still OPINION--someone else's opinion.

It's a universal fact.

You can't deny climate change. You didn't take the ice samples at the poles, or measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, take ten thousand temperature readings in the various oceans of the world--even with a Ph.D, you accept that information from others and work from that.

Tell me six things you absolutely KNOW as indisputable fact, that You Measured, Collected, Quantified, and Now Accept, and Present to yourself and to the world AS FACT!

No my friend, you live--as we all do--on someone else's information, and which sources you accept, whose word is good for you, and what confirmation you have about it--you are still prisoner to someone else's opinions, and how you choose your sources, and who you trust is critical to an informed life.

And your answer is simply to deny what you don't wish to believe, what is uncomfortable, what doesn't fit your dreams, and that ain't honest, ain't satisfactory, ain't right, and don't get you nowhere, never, and forever.

You just fool the easiest person there is in the world to fool--happens every day--yourself.

One Rude Dawg Loc: Athol, ID

She's a deep thinker , I can tell, really profound.