Kim Jong III posted:

I just saw this mentioned on Twitter and it raised my blood pressure to insanely high levels:

https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/313504/boss

Half half "women are vapid whores" and 100% disgusting.

quote:

Check out the curriculum vitae of one Willard M. Romney: $200 million in the bank (and a hell of a lot more if he didn’t give so much away), apex alpha executive, CEO, chairman of the board, governor, bishop, boss of everything he’s ever touched. Son of the same, father of more. It is a curious scientific fact (explained in evolutionary biology by the Trivers-Willard hypothesis — Willard, notice) that high-status animals tend to have more male offspring than female offspring, which holds true across many species, from red deer to mink to Homo sap. The offspring of rich families are statistically biased in favor of sons — the children of the general population are 51 percent male and 49 percent female, but the children of the Forbes billionaire list are 60 percent male. Have a gander at that Romney family picture: five sons, zero daughters. Romney has 18 grandchildren, and they exceed a 2:1 ratio of grandsons to granddaughters (13:5). When they go to church at their summer-vacation home, the Romney clan makes up a third of the congregation. He is basically a tribal chieftain.

Professor Obama? Two daughters. May as well give the guy a cardigan. And fallopian tubes.

quote:

Some Occupy Wall Street types, believing it to be the height of wit, have begun to spell Romney’s name “Rmoney.” But Romney can do better than that — put it in all caps: R-MONEY. Jay-Z can keep his puny little lowercase letters and the Maybach: R-MONEY doesn’t own a flashy car with rims, R-MONEY does billion-dollar deals with Keystone Automotive and Delphi. You want to make it rain? R-MONEY is going to make it storm, like biblical. Rappers boast about their fat stacks: R-MONEY’s fat stacks live in a beachfront house of their own in the Hamptons, and the bricks in that house are made from tightly bound hundred-dollar bills. You have a ton of money? R-MONEY has 200 metric tons of money if he decides to keep it in cash.

quote:

Romney wasn’t some Wall Street bank-monkey with a pitch book. He was the guy who fired you. He was a boss, like his dad, and like his sons probably will be. Barack Obama was never in charge of anything of any significance until the delicate geniuses who make up the electorate of this fine republic handed him the keys to the Treasury and the nuclear football because we were tired of Frenchmen sneering at us when we went on vacation. Obama made his money in part through political connections — no, I don’t think Michelle Obama was worth nearly 400 grand a year — and by authoring two celebrity memoirs, his sole innovation in life having been to write the memoir first and become a celebrity second. Can you imagine Barack Obama trying to pull off a hostile takeover without Rahm Emanuel holding his diapers up for him? Impossible.

quote:

From an evolutionary point of view, Mitt Romney should get 100 percent of the female vote. All of it. He should get Michelle Obama’s vote.

Bombadilillo posted:

I have 5 daughters 0 sons. This makes me as hell even though I should ignore the idiocy.

Imperialist Dog posted:

Huge post ahoy which just combines everyone's thoughts an advice, so feel free to skip. Posting it here because I think I'm about to be unfriended

Mo_Steel posted:

jojoinnit posted:

Remember the ruckus the Bush sons caused over those eight years?

Edit: Now that I've kept reading, what the hell is this? Modern journalism?


Everytime I think he's peaked with the fellatio, he manages to choke a little more down.

Glitterbomber posted:

If I ever found out someone I was debating with was using this autism festival of a chart I'd never stop laughing, please don't advise people to debate like robots.

Glitterbomber posted:

If I ever found out someone I was debating with was using this autism festival of a chart I'd never stop laughing, please don't advise people to debate like robots.

CellBlock posted:

Isn't the occurrence of homosexuality greatly increased in later born sons? If a guy has five sons, it's pretty likely, especially towards the last couple, that at least one is gay.

I mean, that's cool and all, but not to the GOP.

Kim Jong III posted:

I just saw this mentioned on Twitter and it raised my blood pressure to insanely high levels:

https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/313504/boss

Half half "women are vapid whores" and 100% disgusting.

jackpot posted:

Copy/pasting from an old post I made about voter fraud; use it if it's helpful, or let me know if it's poo poo:

Something skeptics need to keep in mind is that when you're talking about voter ID and bans on same-day registration and the like, voter suppression strategies like these aren't meant to keep all minorities and college students from voting. Not even most of them. What it's meant to do is keep enough of them from voting. What may sound like an insignificant percentage of people, when considered against the population of an entire state, becomes a lot more significant in a close race. So by making it just a little bit harder for a certain group (black people, college students, old people) to vote, the point isn't to chisel off 10% of that population - that's way too obvious. But take a state like Florida, which has around 12 million registered voters, and suppose you can shave off just a quarter percent of them...that's 30,000 votes, a big chunk of which you know would go to your opponent. But hey, it's not like 30,000 votes is enough to make a difference in a state as big as Florida, right?

To make voter fraud work what you'd have to do is register to vote in a different precinct under a totally different identity - and every time you voted you'd be committing a major felony. Or, and maybe this is easier, you'd have to pay someone to either a) vote for the guy they weren't already going to vote for, or b) stay home. The first state I found on google, Connecticut, can put you in prison for two years if you're caught voting twice. So why do it? How much money would you need to be paid in order to risk going to prison for two years? As a politician, how much money would you have to spend to buy the votes of enough people to make a difference in a race? And you'd have to keep in mind, every one of those bought votes is a person willing to break the law - what's stopping them from blackmailing you in the future, or selling you out in an effort to plea bargain out of some crime they're accused of? One guy with proof of a bought vote would be enough to kill your career and probably send you to prison. This is why voter fraud is a load of horseshit - it just doesn't make sense. There's far too much risk, and too little gain to make it worthwhile.

Amused to Death posted:

You want to know who fathered more daughters than sons?








And last I heard, Reagan single handedly brought down communism by strangling the Soviet Union with his bare hands, that's basically the most alpha male thing a person can do.

Sarion posted:

Huh? It has nothing to do with "how to debate" and everything to do with "are we debating/discussing in good faith?"


I've never heard of anything like this. I mean, to the extent that if you have a lot of kids, its more likely that at least one of them will be gay; then yeah I suppose its true. But if you had 15 kids, and one of them was gay; I don't know why the odds would be greater that its the 15th child rather than the 1st.

CellBlock posted:

I don't know why it happens either, but there is a fraternal birth order effect on homosexuality. (It's not a major factor, but it's a factor.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_order#Sexuality

Kim Jong III posted:

I just saw this mentioned on Twitter and it raised my blood pressure to insanely high levels:

https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/313504/boss

Half half "women are vapid whores" and 100% disgusting.

Emy posted:

I looked around that website some more, and I didn't manage to find a single good/informative article. I guess that article is pretty typical of "National Review Online".

Kim Jong III posted:

I just saw this mentioned on Twitter and it raised my blood pressure to insanely high levels:

https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/313504/boss

Half half "women are vapid whores" and 100% disgusting.

Bruce Leroy posted:

Even worse than the misogyny is the total lack of skepticism and misunderstanding of science and probability.

1. Correlation does not equal causation. Just because there is a correlative pattern between a group of people and the sex ratios of their offspring doesn't mean there exists any causality between the two variables, nor does it mean that specific variable they're looking at is the causative one for the dependent variable, that the causation is in the direction they think it is, etc. You need to try and falsify your hypothesis, not just look for confirmation and stop looking and analyzing once you get results you like.

2. Lack of statistical analysis. Just because this author counted up the number of male and female children of people on the Forbes billionaire list doesn't mean it's statistically significant. The data could simply be random and by chance, not the sign of a statistically significant pattern, but you'd have to actually do statistical tests to figure it out rather than just accepting it as significant because it supports his preexisting hypothesis (i.e. a confirmation bias) that offspring sex ratios are correlated to and caused by some kind virility and/or other qualities of their biological fathers.

3. Not understanding probability. There's an equal chance of fathering male and female children, and just because one sample might have something different from a 50-50 male-female ratio doesn't mean that the pattern is some kind of biological aberration to be studied. A coin flip has the same ratio of heads and tails, but it doesn't mean that if you did a thousand flips and 75% turned up heads that there's something special or lucky or flawed about that coin. The idea behind the coin's probability is that it will eventually even out over time as the flips approach infinity, so there's nothing inherently special about an apparent run of heads or tails. Similarly, just because a person or group has a skewed offspring sex ratio doesn't necessarily mean there's a aberrant pattern occurring, but rather that runs of off-balance sex ratios exist and don't necessarily indicate anything beyond simple chance and lack of human comprehension of the rules of probability. Again, there's a lot of testing and analysis that needs to be done simply beyond being incredulous as to the randomness and chance of a certain offspring sex pattern occurring (i.e. kind of an appeal to incredulity fallacy).

4. Convenient definitions of "success" and "status" to support the a priori hypothesis. It's interesting how the author is defining status in such a way that it leads to data which supports his preexisting conclusion that those males with greater status tend to have more male children. The problem with this is that he hasn't substantiated that this is the only, best, most salient, or otherwise notable signifier of status and success, causing him to exclude a large amount of data that would impact the final analysis. Money surely is an important signifier of status but it's certainly not the only one and isn't necessarily stronger or better than others. By solely focusing on wealth, the author isn't accounting for these other variables upon status and is therefore not taking a truly accurate picture of how status and offspring sex ratios might possibly correlate. More importantly, he hasn't established how important of a variable financial wealth actually is, which is important because, historically speaking, fiat money is an incredibly new innovation and may not have as strong and salient of an influence as he's assuming.

You also need to take into account moderating variables, such as behavior. The author asserts, "Romney should quit pretending that he’s an ordinary schmo with ordinary schmo problems and start living a little larger. He should not be ashamed of being loaded; instead, he should have some fun with it. " He doesn't realize that, at a certain point, many people stop being enamored with wealth if it looks like the wealthy have disdain for people who aren't wealthy, which is actually a problem for Romney in this election, as he seems like he is some aloof, out of touch rich guy. So, acting in a certain unattractive manner could at least partially negate sex selective advantage from wealth.

My favorite part of all of this is how he's intentionally excluding variables that would put Obama as high status, especially since Obama has two daughters. Honestly, what's higher status than being the leader of the most powerful nation in history? And if we look at US presidents, the last three all only had daughters (Sasha and Malia, the Bush twins, and Chelsea Clinton). Moreover, because presidents are elected, isn't that a more valid measure of "status" than wealth, as it's the electorate deciding whether or not you are worthy of such a high position rather than just racking up a lot of zeroes in your bank accounts? The author clearly realizes this which is why he has to minimize what it means to be elected as president, claiming, "Barack Obama was never in charge of anything of any significance until the delicate geniuses who make up the electorate of this fine republic handed him the keys to the Treasury and the nuclear football because we were tired of Frenchmen sneering at us when we went on vacation." So, Obama's not of high status because he wasn't really elected by the majority of Americans, he was chosen to be president by an unmanly group of effeminate intellectuals, not real man's man, red-blooded Americans. There are also plenty of potential dog whistles, like the emasculating comment about Rahm Immanuel changing Obama's diapers and alluding to how attractive Ann Romney is but saying nothing of Michelle Obama.

5. Not factoring other important variables. One important thing you have to note about the "data" this author uses is that many of the Forbes list billionaires are from societies that value sons over daughters, like China and India, which frequently results in things like sex-selective abortions, IVF sex selection. and other measures to assure that they have male children and heirs. So, it's certainly possible that some of these billionaires (as well as millionaires and other wealthy individuals who could afford the required procedures in those societies) made sure that their wives had sons and not daughters through whatever means, thus entering in a moderating variable that would be skewing the natural biological data.

Bruce Leroy posted:

This guy is a douchebag but he knows most people are knowledgeable or skeptical enough to actually question this because it already confirms what they want to believe. Just look at the one commenter on the NRO site who literally says that it must be true because it's "un-PC."

CarterUSM posted:

That one comment alone made me want to hit that dude until he stopped moving. For gently caress's sake.

quote:

"Know them by their fruit". It's a matter of fact that Romney has done abundantly well with his time on earth, money being the least important.

The real deal is that libs burn with sheer jealousy over this guy. Mr. Theresa Heinz, a previous VP candidate had a net worth of 3x Romney, isn't that true?

That is one powerful family photo, btw.

Bruce Leroy posted:

Even worse is when the illogical nature of their beliefs is clearly demonstrated with refutations in their own arguments.


So, "libs" are just burning with jealousy over Romney's money and success but they weren't jealous over an even richer guy like John Kerry (notice the emasculation and incorrectly stating that Kerry was the VP candidate on the Kerry-Edwards ticket)? Maybe that's because it's not about jealousy but rather about disagreement with his policy positions and Romney's aloofness and being tone-deaf to the problems and lives of middle class and poor Americans? No, it just has to be because they're only selectively jealous of virile Republican men and not nancy boy Democrats.

The emasculation part is the funniest aspect to me. Kerry is the actual medal-earning Vietnam veteran while Romney is a chickenhawk who protested in favor of the war but refused to serve by using multiple deferments and being a bullshit missionary in loving France.

Cowslips Warren posted:

Compare to someone like Obama who has two daughters: pretty much any offspring they have is theirs...

Cowslips Warren posted:

I don't understand 'biotruths.' Is it some way to justify both genders wanting multiple sexual partners to increase offspring fitness, or is it some way to try and justify why men need sex and women who like sex are whores?

Cowslips Warren posted:

I don't understand 'biotruths.' Is it some way to justify both genders wanting multiple sexual partners to increase offspring fitness, or is it some way to try and justify why men need sex and women who like sex are whores?

Bruce Leroy posted:

If there are scientific and biological reasons for these phenomena, then the author doesn't have to feel guilty for living in and perpetuating a sexist society and he especially doesn't have to do anything to change it.

Armacham posted:

Just so you guys can brace yourselves, Rush Limbaugh is claiming Hurricane Isaac is a conspiracy by Obama. http://rt.com/usa/news/rush-limbaugh-obama-hurricane-335/

quote:

The fat ladies of RT have no shame.

Rush never "blamed" the democrats for hurricane Isaac.

He simply mentioned that some ignorant negroes blamed president Bush for hurricane Katrina, and stated that the Republicans will not blame the Democrats for hurricane Issac, should it disrupt the Republican convention.

That is all he said.

However, the not too bright fat ladies at RT were either too drunk of Viru Valge vodka, or they were simply not intelligent enough to comprehend what Rush said.

WARNING TO ALL RT READERS: the fat ladies at RT have a history of jumping the gun with their headlines.

Parem peske oma jala vahed.

CarterUSM posted:

It is certainly of no import at all that most of these biotruths are perfectly congruent with patriarchytruths.

Armacham posted:

Just so you guys can brace yourselves, Rush Limbaugh is claiming Hurricane Isaac is a conspiracy by Obama. http://rt.com/usa/news/rush-limbaugh-obama-hurricane-335/

quote:

The fat ladies of RT have no shame.

Rush never "blamed" the democrats for hurricane Isaac.

He simply mentioned that some ignorant negroes blamed president Bush for hurricane Katrina, and stated that the Republicans will not blame the Democrats for hurricane Issac, should it disrupt the Republican convention.

That is all he said.

However, the not too bright fat ladies at RT were either too drunk of Viru Valge vodka, or they were simply not intelligent enough to comprehend what Rush said.

WARNING TO ALL RT READERS: the fat ladies at RT have a history of jumping the gun with their headlines.

Parem peske oma jala vahed.

Armacham posted:

Just so you guys can brace yourselves, Rush Limbaugh is claiming Hurricane Isaac is a conspiracy by Obama. http://rt.com/usa/news/rush-limbaugh-obama-hurricane-335/

Rush posted:

“The National Hurricane Center is Obama. The National Weather Service is part of the Commerce Department,” he says. “It’s Obama.”


“You know what it is in the media, it’s all about the hurricane hitting next week and they’re not talking about [Vice President Joe] Biden, They are talking about this Hurricane Isaac thing,” Limbaugh continues. “We, who live in south Florida, become experts on it and we don’t need the national hurricane center; we don’t need all these weather dolts analyzing this for us.”

Armacham posted:

Just so you guys can brace yourselves, Rush Limbaugh is claiming Hurricane Isaac is a conspiracy by Obama. http://rt.com/usa/news/rush-limbaugh-obama-hurricane-335/

Glitterbomber posted:

If I ever found out someone I was debating with was using this autism festival of a chart I'd never stop laughing, please don't advise people to debate like robots.

Imperialist Dog posted:

Because I offer facts and take up a contrary position to you does not mean I am being rude to you. Without concrete facts it is impossible for either side to have a fair, rational argument. Facts and opinions are very different and it's important to treat them differently. There are unlimited opinions and everyone is entitled to them, but there is only one set of facts. We should try to understand what that is and make our policies accordingly. We don't always succeed in understanding the facts of every case, but it's important not to give up. If we start treating facts like opinions and opinions like facts, we're left with everybody having their own and no means to discover the way forward. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. When we have a problem, like welfare cheats, our response should be dictated by the fact that so few people on welfare are actually cheats, proportionally, that it costs more money than it saves to weed them out. When you base your policy response on the opinion that there are too many welfare cheats, you end up with a program that loses money because you ignored the facts of the case. If you say the statistics are "skewed", it means you do not believe the statistics; you believe them to be lies. This is not your fault because you have quite reasonably come to the conclusion that statistics can be manipulated by unscrupulous people to say things that may not reflect the truth. But you need to understand that it is through statistics and the sifting of large amounts of data that we can arrive at truth, even if said truth contradicts what we "know" to be true. To use an American example, a thin, tall, bookish-looking man passes you in the street. He is reasonably well dressed, wearing old-fashioned glasses, but appears quiet and shy. Is he more likely to be a librarian or a farmer? The answer is a farmer, because statistically, there are 20 times more male farmers in the United States than there are male librarians, even though everything about his description fits our mental image of a librarian. However, until you spend some time actually going through statistics and numbers and learning which ones are accurate and which ones are bullshit lies, and more importantly, learning how to detect whether numbers have been manipulated or not, it is difficult to have a discussion on it.

Imperialist Dog's Cousin posted:

You tend to speak to people or come off as arrogant and condescending. I do not dismiss your facts however, most of your facts do not apply to Ottawa and while you spout statistics what you don't seem to understand is that the stats have margins of error and are based on the types of questions asked. If the question is worded one way, you'll get different stats than if the question was worded differently. I work with a woman at Ipsos Reid here in my building and she herself has confirmed this. I would take her word over stats than someone who does not work in this type of research. Your American example again, does not apply to Ontario. I do not need or want a lesson on statistics as I'm a pretty intelligent person and have gone to school. I've also worked in government and with research companies so have a very good understanding of how it all works. "Skewed" doesn't mean lies, the definition is "having an oblique or slanting direction or position". One would be extremely naive to believe whole-heartedly in the conclusion brought about by statistics.
All this is to say that while you are attempting to speak "policy", I'm speaking real-world and experience. However, you need to remember that although you are very intelligent, your demeanor needs work. I am also intelligent and resent being spoken to as a child or a student. At 46 years of age, I enjoy a great debate, do not enjoy hissy fits when I don't agree with someone. Quit trying to educate the educated and have a little respect for your aunt as well.

Imperialist Dog posted:

Yay, I got a response! We've got dodging the question, argument from authority, triumph of experience over facts, and argument as personal attack.

Bruce Leroy posted:

jackofarcades already covered most of it, but to expand a little, it's a way of noting when people are trying to find a scientific, and therefore objective, justification for their preexisting biases, especially those relating to gender norms. In this case, there are several involved, the most notable of which is the line "The conventional biological wisdom is that men select mates for fertility, while women select for status." This author is trying to find a biological justification for the social norms being harsh on women for superficial beauty, especially as they age, and the expectation of rich heterosexual men having attractive wives (but generally not the converse, because women are supposedly mating/marrying for status and wealth, not beauty). If there are scientific and biological reasons for these phenomena, then the author doesn't have to feel guilty for living in and perpetuating a sexist society and he especially doesn't have to do anything to change it.

This is the main point, if something is natural via , then there's no expectation or responsibility to change things because it's just the natural way things are. Another classic example of this is racist poo poo like that of the infamous book "The Bell Curve," which argued that Blacks, Latinos, and pretty much everyone who isn't White or Asian has a lower average IQ. The resulting argument from that is that because average racial IQ differences are innate, it's not society's fault that some groups end up doing better in school and having better childhoods and adult lives, and "how racist of you to expect Blacks to do as well in school as the innately smarter Whites?!?" That way, we don't actually have any obligation to do anything about systemic racism in our society and people with privilege (i.e. White people) can keep their privilege without feeling guilty.

The association of the color pink with girls being a remnant of humanity's hunter gatherer past is another classic, but fairly innocuous example. It still relies on flawed science, ignorance, and other bullshit, which is why it needs to be stamped out whenever possible. In this particular case, color preferences for children are a recent social construct, which is obvious from late 19th century magazine and other writings which actually reversed the gender color assignments, with boys being associated with pink.