Thank you, TexaCan, for the sincerity of your comments...to include the compliment.

The quote that came to mind regarding the use of TDS as explained in that definition...pro & con, comes from Mark Twain: "The rule is perfect: In matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane." It is given with tongue firmly in cheek.

Also, from W. Somerset Maugham: "The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth."

Last, yet not the least, "Loyalty to the President is great, but loyalty to truth, integrity, and country is even better."---Charles Krauthammer

BTW, just out of curiosity, are you living on a beach in the Mobile area...or somewhere else in 'Bama?

I’m very familiar with the highly respected Mr. Krauthammer! He was a beloved and honored guest on Fox for many years! I’m aware that this came from one of his articles.

I have always enjoyed your quotes and you always supply them! That was my point!😌

I see no changes in the exchanges of insults from both sides as long as President Trump is our President and the line between the liberals and conservatives get wider and more severe. As a conservative Christian, I see the very moral fibers of our country being eroded! Especially the senseless slaughter of the unborn! I will continue to use TDS as a response to the insults that are continually thrown at this President and my beliefs as a conservative and a Christian. Now would be the perfect time for me to have an appropriate quote?!?🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

Thank you, Although we don’t agree on many things politically, I do respect and enjoy reading your many tid-bits of knowledge that you continually share in your comments! I appreciate and respect men and women that can be friends despite their different political beliefs! That seems to be getting more rare as time goes by.

We bought a simple 3 bedroom frame home on “sticks” (my own technical building term) on the Fowl River that runs into Mobile Bay. They are rebuilding our dock and installing a boat lift so we haven’t been able to do any exploring in our boat. Our boat is too big to load and unload with both of our health issues so it’s just sitting beside our home! He bought it for me, hoping that I would be more confident in going further out in the Gulf!! It didn’t work! I still want to be able to see the shoreline! Our neighbor tells us that we are app. 6 miles to Dauphin Island by boat! We’re 10 miles by car to the “sand between my toes” beach on Dauphin Island! I’m so thankful that we were given the last Custom Home to build that put us in a position to finally be able to live this last adventure. My husband has dreamed of this for so many years!

By Lee McIntyre

While watching the House impeachment hearings, I realized my two decades of research into why people ignore, reject or deny science had a political parallel.

From anti-evolutionists to anti-vaccine advocates, known as “anti-vaxxers,” climate change deniers to Flat Earthers, science deniers all follow a common pattern of faulty reasoning that allows them to reject what they don’t want to believe – and accept what they favor – based on a misunderstanding of how science deals with evidence.

As I’ve been watching the hearings, I’ve noticed that a number of characteristics of this type of reasoning are now being embraced by President Donald Trump and his congressional supporters.

There are five common tactics used by science deniers. In 1998, brothers Mark and Chris Hoofnagle (a lawyer and a physiologist) wrote an early blog post about science denialism. That was followed by further work by econometrician Pascal Diethelm and public health scholar Martin McKee and cognitive scientists John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky. All identified the following factors as characteristic acts of science deniers:

Believing in conspiracy theories;
Relying on cherry-picked evidence;
Relying on fake experts (and dismissal of actual experts);
Committing logical errors;
Setting impossible standards for what science should be able to deliver.

These elements are present when those who deny the Earth is round or who believe vaccines cause autism insist that there is a governmental cover-up of the real evidence on their topics. They can be seen when Ted Cruz tries to discredit climate change with talk about the anomalous world weather pattern in 1998 due to El Niño. And they’re evident when intelligent design theorists complain that evolution by natural selection still has not been proven.

Trump and his defenders in Congress echo this pattern. Even though Trump has firsthand knowledge of some of the facts under dispute – whereas his supporters may not – all seem to have bought in fully to the idea that the actual political situation is not the one pictured in the mainstream consensus of facts and evidence, but instead is based on an alternative reality.

Here are the five ways Trump and his allies use the same strategies as science deniers:

Conspiracy theories: During his questioning of Ambassador Bill Taylor and other witnesses at the impeachment hearings, Republican counsel Steve Castor repeatedly pursued a debunked conspiracy theory involving an alleged plot in which the Ukrainian government – and not the Russians – interfered with the 2016 presidential election because they were out to get the president.

Cherry-picking: Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that President Trump told him, “I want nothing from Ukraine. I want no quid pro quo.” Trump and his supporters focused on this statement as evidence of his innocence, despite the fact that in other testimony by Sondland that day, he said, “Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky…Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the president.”

Discrediting experts: President Trump has repeatedly – and falsely – claimed that State Department and CIA employees such as Bill Taylor, George Kent, Fiona Hill, Alexander Vindman and others who have testified in the impeachment hearings are “Never Trumpers,” a term for Republicans who do not support Trump – and who therefore have no credibility. His supporters have latched onto this tactic. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said on Sept. 20, after the whistleblower complaint was made public: “It looks to me like another deep-state attack.”

Illogical reasoning: Trump supporters have claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky never complained that he felt pressured by Trump to do the investigations into the Bidens that Trump sought. Trump himself has described the July 25 conversation he had with Zelensky in which he asked for the investigations as “perfect.” But news reports have shown that Zelensky did in fact feel pressured, and analysts have pointed out that Zelensky would risk losing crucial U.S. support were he to anger Trump by saying that he felt pressured.

Double standard for opponents: Trump claimed that written testimony from the whistleblower was unacceptable, despite the fact that he himself had only given written testimony in the Mueller investigation. Some of his supporters seem to agree and have tried to compel the whistleblower’s in-person testimony.

What might be behind the similarities between Trump defenders and science deniers? Perhaps, like science denial, all fact denial is basically the same. All ideology supports the reflex to believe what you want to believe. Scholars have studied the role of identity in shaping belief and concluded that sometimes even empirical beliefs can be tribal, reflecting what the other people on your team want you to believe. Adherence to a belief is not always based on evidence. The danger, of course, is that even as new facts come in, people won’t change their minds. This is the direct opposite of good empirical reasoning.

It is the hallmark of science that beliefs should be based on evidence, and that people should be willing to change their beliefs based on new evidence. This means that people should be able to specify in advance what evidence, if it existed, would be sufficient to get them to change their minds.

But are Trump and his congressional supporters doing that?

Like science deniers, no amount of evidence seems sufficient to change their partisan beliefs that the phone call with Zelensky was proper and that Trump “did nothing wrong.”

Even when the facts are overwhelming, congressional Republicans seem, like science deniers, willing to contort their beliefs and torture their logic, to stick to the party line because that is who they are.

As Senator Lindsey Graham recently put it, “I don’t care what anybody else says about the phone call … The phone call, I’ve made up my own mind, is fine.”

In science, such behavior means that one is eventually read out of the profession – you’re not fired, your tenure isn’t revoked, but you’re no longer taken seriously anymore.

In politics, it is not yet clear what the consequences might be.

As I've traveled I-10 many times through Mobile on my way east to visit Family and friends, I am somewhat familiar with your location. My son used to be stationed at Eglin AFB near Fort Walton Beach, Florida. He left the Air Force long ago, so I do not use that route anymore. However, if doing so again in a trip east, I would love to stop close by and have a chat over coffee/tea and/or a meal. Of course, I would contact you well ahead of time.

I am glad that you and your husband found happiness in the Mobile area, as it is beautiful*. The Sgt. Major & I found ours upon retirement here off the shore of Lake Whitney. If a visit looms, we could discuss the Lake Whitney area's activities in your absence. As you may remember, I live in Laguna Park/West Shore Acres. Our Bosque County Viet Nam Veteran's group has its annual BBQ on the Circle 13 ranch off Texas state highway 56, just off the western edge of the lake.

Have fun but take care, my absentee Texan.

*I am leery of the threat of hurricanes in that general area.

Jack and I would love you to stop by for a homemade fish dinner! By then we should have a variety of fish in our freezer or fresh ones just caught!

We’re pretty protected from the hurricanes here. That’s why we wanted a few miles off the actual coast line. Katrina only caused the water to back up to about 4 feet here, which caused very little damage with the house up on 10 foot piling.

You know what they say, “You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take the Texas out of the girl!”
(That’s my version) 😂😂😂😂

By Lee McIntyre

While watching the House impeachment hearings, I realized my two decades of research into why people ignore, reject or deny science had a political parallel.

From anti-evolutionists to anti-vaccine advocates, known as “anti-vaxxers,” climate change deniers to Flat Earthers, science deniers all follow a common pattern of faulty reasoning that allows them to reject what they don’t want to believe – and accept what they favor – based on a misunderstanding of how science deals with evidence.

As I’ve been watching the hearings, I’ve noticed that a number of characteristics of this type of reasoning are now being embraced by President Donald Trump and his congressional supporters.

There are five common tactics used by science deniers. In 1998, brothers Mark and Chris Hoofnagle (a lawyer and a physiologist) wrote an early blog post about science denialism. That was followed by further work by econometrician Pascal Diethelm and public health scholar Martin McKee and cognitive scientists John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky. All identified the following factors as characteristic acts of science deniers:

Believing in conspiracy theories;
Relying on cherry-picked evidence;
Relying on fake experts (and dismissal of actual experts);
Committing logical errors;
Setting impossible standards for what science should be able to deliver.

These elements are present when those who deny the Earth is round or who believe vaccines cause autism insist that there is a governmental cover-up of the real evidence on their topics. They can be seen when Ted Cruz tries to discredit climate change with talk about the anomalous world weather pattern in 1998 due to El Niño. And they’re evident when intelligent design theorists complain that evolution by natural selection still has not been proven.

Trump and his defenders in Congress echo this pattern. Even though Trump has firsthand knowledge of some of the facts under dispute – whereas his supporters may not – all seem to have bought in fully to the idea that the actual political situation is not the one pictured in the mainstream consensus of facts and evidence, but instead is based on an alternative reality.

Here are the five ways Trump and his allies use the same strategies as science deniers:

Conspiracy theories: During his questioning of Ambassador Bill Taylor and other witnesses at the impeachment hearings, Republican counsel Steve Castor repeatedly pursued a debunked conspiracy theory involving an alleged plot in which the Ukrainian government – and not the Russians – interfered with the 2016 presidential election because they were out to get the president.

Cherry-picking: Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that President Trump told him, “I want nothing from Ukraine. I want no quid pro quo.” Trump and his supporters focused on this statement as evidence of his innocence, despite the fact that in other testimony by Sondland that day, he said, “Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky…Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that these investigations were important to the president.”

Discrediting experts: President Trump has repeatedly – and falsely – claimed that State Department and CIA employees such as Bill Taylor, George Kent, Fiona Hill, Alexander Vindman and others who have testified in the impeachment hearings are “Never Trumpers,” a term for Republicans who do not support Trump – and who therefore have no credibility. His supporters have latched onto this tactic. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said on Sept. 20, after the whistleblower complaint was made public: “It looks to me like another deep-state attack.”

Illogical reasoning: Trump supporters have claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky never complained that he felt pressured by Trump to do the investigations into the Bidens that Trump sought. Trump himself has described the July 25 conversation he had with Zelensky in which he asked for the investigations as “perfect.” But news reports have shown that Zelensky did in fact feel pressured, and analysts have pointed out that Zelensky would risk losing crucial U.S. support were he to anger Trump by saying that he felt pressured.

Double standard for opponents: Trump claimed that written testimony from the whistleblower was unacceptable, despite the fact that he himself had only given written testimony in the Mueller investigation. Some of his supporters seem to agree and have tried to compel the whistleblower’s in-person testimony.

What might be behind the similarities between Trump defenders and science deniers? Perhaps, like science denial, all fact denial is basically the same. All ideology supports the reflex to believe what you want to believe. Scholars have studied the role of identity in shaping belief and concluded that sometimes even empirical beliefs can be tribal, reflecting what the other people on your team want you to believe. Adherence to a belief is not always based on evidence. The danger, of course, is that even as new facts come in, people won’t change their minds. This is the direct opposite of good empirical reasoning.

It is the hallmark of science that beliefs should be based on evidence, and that people should be willing to change their beliefs based on new evidence. This means that people should be able to specify in advance what evidence, if it existed, would be sufficient to get them to change their minds.

But are Trump and his congressional supporters doing that?

Like science deniers, no amount of evidence seems sufficient to change their partisan beliefs that the phone call with Zelensky was proper and that Trump “did nothing wrong.”

Even when the facts are overwhelming, congressional Republicans seem, like science deniers, willing to contort their beliefs and torture their logic, to stick to the party line because that is who they are.

As Senator Lindsey Graham recently put it, “I don’t care what anybody else says about the phone call … The phone call, I’ve made up my own mind, is fine.”

In science, such behavior means that one is eventually read out of the profession – you’re not fired, your tenure isn’t revoked, but you’re no longer taken seriously anymore.

In politics, it is not yet clear what the consequences might be.