Again though, the hypocrisy here is stupid… because with Biden, the GOP said it was a problem, and the democrats said it didn’t matter.
This is the problem with taking partisan positions which aren’t based on any real moral or ethical code. Because folks here didn’t care about it when Biden did it… so they are hypocrites when you use it as a cudgel to attack Trump’s nominee.
Luckilly, this is such a minor issue compared to a veritable mountain of problems with Trump’s overall administration, but it should serve as an educational experience as to why we shouldn’t give “our” party’s folks a pass on shit based on partisanship.
You either think things like plagiarism are an indicator of important character flaws, or you do not. Either of those options are a tenable position for evaluating stuff. But only caring about it when it is applied to “the other team’s guy” lacks any kind of meaningful weight.
Just to be clear, I’m not in favor of plagiarism when anyone does it, no matter the political party. My wife is an English teacher and has to deal with this crap on a regular basis.
I was still a kid during Biden’s incident so had no opinion at the time!
Things can be a bit nuanced. Double standards can apply when one side claims something is an issue then is caught doing it. One may not believe the thing itself is a problem but the hypocrisy of the act is. Republicans and gay sex scandals fall into this a lot, where if it was a Democrat I wouldn’t consider it an issue but due to the Republicans stance it is. Granted plagiarism really doesn’t fall as smoothly in line here but as you noted the Republicans had issues with Biden, so it’s not unreasonable for Democrats that were ok with Biden to take issue here, less directly with Crowley but more with the people backing her that attacked Biden.
Also in regards to her it seems the publisher has pulled her book.
God yes, this. It infuriates me to no end that the answer to any line of questioning or criticism of the incoming administration is simply “you guys lost, get over it!”. It’s the ultimate in hypocrisy from a party and an ideology that has spent eight fucking years questioning, obstructing and flat out lying about EVERYTHING as a political strategy. Are they kidding us? Mitch McConnell saying with a straight face that legitimate questions about Trump’s cabinet appointments are simply sour grapes political obstructionism and the American people won’t stand for it? Bizzaro World!!
In @Malathor’s linked “Liberals are Done Debating” article, the author states (in reference to liberals) “When a group confuses its politics with moral doctrine, it may have trouble comprehending how a decent human could disagree with its positions.” Are you fucking kidding me? This is satire right? Like that sentence hasn’t literally defined Conservatism for the past decade.
Bottom line, I am sick to death of the ignorant ideological tribalism. This isn’t Ohio State vs. Michigan, this is the future of our nation, the future of our kids. If we reduce politics to winners gloating over losers, then we all lose. I think there are a lot of people in America who feel the same way I do, the same way @Timex does, and hopefully that comes into focus for the 2018 elections and we see a return to common sense centrist candidates, or maybe even Independents, for the next couple of election cycles.
As someone who used to be an academic, I’d say plagiarism can be an indicator of important character flaws, like a fundamentally dishonest personality. But far more frequently it’s due to something much more widespread and (in my opinion) less serious, namely laziness. Which is still bad, but a different and much lesser kind of bad.
While I’ve been harping on Crowley, I don’t know actually enough about her to say whether she has a fundamental character flaw or is just a lazy, careless person who’s always been surrounded by people who let her get away with it… There are plenty of people in the Trump Administration who clearly do have fundamental character flaws (e.g. Sessions) not to mention more power, so I should probably concentrate on them more.
Do you think support from Trump will be enough to cause normal Republican parents-to-be to look into the possibility of turning down vaccinations? I’m seriously worried crap like this will somehow normalize it as a legitimate choice. And prevent further mandatory vaccination legislation from being enacted.
They wear out after time, and I would gladly inject him with a syringe of every vaccine preventable disease just to make sure one of them got him. DDoS his immune system, basically.
If they do, I’ll be buying bras… I mean education knuckles, and give the parents of every kid at my sons school a choice: vaccinate your kid, or I perform oral surgery on your face using this*.
*exceptions for those kids who are medically unable to get them.
I believe this is all part of Trump’s environmental policy. First, we cast doubt on vaccines so that less people vaccinate their children. Step two, we repeal Obamacare to make it prohibitively expensive for the middle class to get medical care. Step three, we remove all regulation on businesses, allowing them to create disease-producing cesspools all over all country. Lastly, we close all the borders to ensure that we don’t end up with any outside sources of additional population. Within a few generations, the U.S. population will be in full decline, allowing us to use less land, consume less food, produce less garbage and, ultimately, vastly reduce overall carbon emissions.
I coached my kid’s Odyssey of the Mind team back in 2015. One of the girls on the team, a super sharp young teenager talked about this during one of the practices. My kid’s school is a pretty good school, and seems fairly liberal. This girl was talking about liking Trump back then–this may have been after he talked about vaccines as linked to the epidemic of autism during a Republican presidential debate–because of his stand on vaccines.
I tried to hide the utter shock I had at hearing this. I asked her if she was against vaccines, and she said she was, because she got sick after getting vaccinated.
-But you’re okay now, right?
-Yeah. But still.
I quickly aborted the conversation as we had to practice, and getting into a debate about vaccination and politics before coaching kids in creative problem solving seemed unwise.
I have a friend whose son got sick after getting vaccinated. This kid does not have autism. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Neither does his twin sister. But this friend of mine is certain that his kid “disappeared” after the first vaccination as an infant. They were terrified, but the kid later “came back” and there’s no harm done. The kid then fainted during another vaccination just recently, in the doctor’s office. The kid is fine, but Dad is super afraid and never-again. Since California has laws about this, about vaccination records if you want your kids in school, this friend of mine sought an exemption for his children. He found a weird old doctor hours away and took his kids to get examined by this dude, for $800 a piece, so that the dude would sign a paper saying his kids couldn’t be vaccinated. The old doctor has a practice based on one kid who has autism from early in his career, and this doctor thinks it was because of him vaccinating the kid. One kid over his whole career. This is what he bases his practice on now.
A super smart girl. A fairly competent dad. A doctor with a guilt complex. Reacting in fear and a total misunderstanding of what causation and correlation mean, because fear wins out over facts even in the wisest of us. And Donald Trump deals in fear.
So yes, rowe. I think plenty of Republican parents-to-be will go down this road.
Well that’s terrifying. I don’t know anyone local to me that’s anti-vax, just people I went to HS with. No idea how I’d react in person upon learning that. Wouldn’t be good, for sure.
This makes me burn with rage. I normally try to keep my cool about things, but the anti vax stupidity is so personal to me on so many levels. It basically hits a trifecta on some of the most important things to me. My kids, scientific literacy, and education.
If I were in the same room as RFK Jr. I would be spending that night in jail. And I don’t mean jokingly, the pure rage over his spreading of ignorance would lead to a bad outcome. I almost am tempted to sign in to my abandoned Facebook for the express purpose of seeking out those conservatives in my social circles, to see if they are celebrating this choice. Then picking fights with them. Or, if they aren’t, push them on why they support Trump when he does things like this. Basically logging in solely to verbally beat them for being stupid. And, if doing so made them never want to speak to me again? We have reached a mutual understanding.
Hence one of many reasons I stopped using FB years ago. But the temptation is real…
I had to double check, he’s Bobby Kennedy son and a lifelong Democrat. Seriously, Donald there aren’t enough fucking wack job in the Republican party, that you have to go and recruit Democrat nutcases, ugh.
I think the only think worse for the Republican party than electing Hillary Clinton President, was electing Donald Trump.
Jesus save us. The Trump administration is truly going to be a confederacy of dunces.
Fortunately, the science is pretty clear, so even his vaccine commission will have a tough time getting anything actually done. But they’ll try, I’m sure.
The first and likely only example of Trump reaching across the aisle and cooperating political opponents… and it’s for vaccine conspiracy crap. Of COURSE it is.
Repealing vaccine laws could lead to a massive public health crisis that could be directly tied back to the administration. It’s sort of like declaring war on your own constituents. Anybody with a thread of common sense would avoid being involved with that, so let’s hope that Trump isn’t able to change any policy or law that would lead to widespread changes in the way they currently are used. It’s really scary to have young children in a daycare or school with kids that aren’t vaccinated. It could be as damaging as detonating a nuclear bomb, only in a dispersed way across the country. At least rich privileged idiots are as susceptible to measles as underprivileged people. Or, as my friend puts it, “Trump perpetuates every moronic conspiracy theory rich ignorant people have.”
