Argument Clinic: The Destroying Parry

Is this the right room for an argument?

Is this the right room for an argument?

I’m going to try something here that I consider daunting: as a side effect of this module, I will attempt to offer a refutation of two important paradoxes/arguments that bedevil philosophers and skeptics. Not one, but two! In the interest of Argument Clinic, however, I am willing to fail in the attempt even though it may leave me covered with shame and ripped to pieces by The Commentariat(tm)

In fencing, a destroying parry is one in which the defender’s blade kills the momentum of the attacker’s blade, leaving them in a known position for a riposte.

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Monday Night

The diversity and wonderfulness of performing arts and music makes me so happy! I almost turned my “Sunday Night” posting in a huge list of diverse artists, but I thought it would be better to stick with just 2, and keep it focused on the story telling honky tonk side of things.

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Sunday Night

Johnny Vector suggested Bruce Cockburn’s “If I had a rocket launcher” and I am now quite the fan. First off, the sentiments really resonate with me: there are a lot of people in the world I wouldn’t hesitate to inhume if I they had the misfortune to step in front of my big-ass truck. I cried more over the deer I hit than I’d cry over Dick Cheney, for example, and I was mostly upset about that I had to write off my Toyota Tundra. I’d cheerfully trade a truck for some of these guys…

If I had a rocket launcher!!!!

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Let’s Practice for Some War Crimes

Military ‘exercises’ are a form of imperial messaging. Right now, the US has troops in Poland in what is being described with Orwellian irony as “anti-Russian aggression NATO exercises”[1]

The troops will rotate training in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia for the next nine months. The regional training exercises are also designed to test how U.S. forces respond on short notice to a possible conflict with Russia.

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A “Large Blowtorch”

I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want a pipeline going through their area.

Two workers suffered burns, one seriously, and another was unaccounted for after a large explosion and fire Thursday night (Feb. 9) at a 20-inch high-pressure Phillips 66 pipeline at the Williams Discovery natural-gas plant in Paradis, according to St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne and Louisiana State Police [nola.com]

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$1.6 Trillion, Plus or Minus $100 Billion

Whenever you talk to someone who says that they are “fiscally conservative” (and they usually follow it with “… and socially libertarian”) you are authorized to laugh at them. Indeed, you are deputized hereby to deliver derisive laughter. I’ve said many times that it’s impossible to be “fiscally conservative” and not be mind-blown upset about defense expenditures and pentagon financial fraud.

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