Bernie Sanders in 2020? Here is his long history with pseudoscience

[Amused]

You cannot claim to be pro-science and a Bernie supporter. He denies more science than he accepts. From medical woo to ignorance about farming science, his is a world filled with pseudoscientific nonsense.

No matter what your political belief, to support a person with such an unhealthy denial of science only serves to set us back as a country and a society. We already have that now

https://medium.com/the-method/berni...-long-history-with-pseudoscience-204afbe830d7

 

[Victorian Gray]

No fan of Bernie but that's nothing but a 'hit piece' by a guy with a somewhat dubious background.

 

[Blackjack200]

Nice hit piece, but you should have gone with shirtless Bernie singing with Soviets.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1089909214213038081

 

[blankslate]

Which is why Sen. Warren should have ran in 2016 so Bernie would've sat out as her economic policies were in line with Bernie's.
And as such Sen. Warren's economic ideas are much better than Hillary lesser of two evil economic policies that still would not have solved the middle class problems that have led to many non-voters in recent years.

Sure maybe Bernie is not educated enough on science and superstitious but his economic policies are better than every republican's and simply better than too many corporate dems.

And he can be brought around on issues of scientific import that affect voters.
The obvious being climate change.
I respect science very much and based on the economic policies that he endorses would gladly have had to have sent someone like Neil Degrass Tyson to brief a President Sanders on a regular basis because he could be pushed unlike a Trump.

As I recall the retort many of you had for us who believed that Hillary was to centrist was that we could push her on certain issues more than any republican

Well guess what? Bernie's acceptance of climate science show the same for him as well

 

[Moonbeam]

Anti science? Nuclear is a disaster and GMO's make farmers criminals who can't own their own seeds or their land gets soaked with herbicides, etc

 

[DigDog]

Why would one back Bernie? So that he can again go on Real Time and say "im going all the way" then drop out for Hillary the next day?
He betrayed his supporters in 2016, 2020 is too soon. He can run in 2040 when he's 300 years old.

 

[Brainonska511]

GMO's make farmers criminals who can't own their own seeds

You act like farmers are idiots who can't make business decisions.

Seeds have been patent-able since the early 1930s. All farmers who choose to buy hybrid seeds from any seed company are likely to face the same licensing issues, whether they're growing organic, GMO, or non-GMO. If they don't want the benefits of hybridized crops, they are free to choose seeds that are not under patent. Regardless, saving hybridized seeds is a waste of time, since the generation that would grow from the hybridized crop would not be as hearty as the parent.

 

[Blackjack200]

Why would one back Bernie? So that he can again go on Real Time and say "im going all the way" then drop out for Hillary the next day?
He betrayed his supporters in 2016, 2020 is too soon. He can run in 2040 when he's 300 years old.

Rather vote for Kamala Harris so she can deliver public services by putting 100% of the population in prison.

 

[realibrad]

No fan of Bernie but that's nothing but a 'hit piece' by a guy with a somewhat dubious background.

Lol, the guy's bio.

"Middle School Teacher, Father, Blogger"

 

[realibrad]

Huh, he really did say cancer was caused by...

http://time.com/4249034/bernie-sanders-alternative-medicine-cancer/

"When the human spirit is broken, when the life force is squashed, cancer becomes a possibility,"

and

"The manner in which you bring up your daughter with regard to sexual attitudes may very well determine whether or not she will develope (sic) breast cancer, among other things"

That was over 40 years ago when he was in his late 20's, but damn is that stupid.

 

[Blackjack200]

Lol, the guy's bio.

"Middle School Teacher, Father, Blogger"

I saw that too. Some of his "science" is absolutely precious.

 

[nakedfrog]

The first two sentences in the OP are a bit over-the-top. I don't see anything particularly distressing here.

 

[Blackjack200]

Huh, he really did say cancer was caused by...

http://time.com/4249034/bernie-sanders-alternative-medicine-cancer/

"When the human spirit is broken, when the life force is squashed, cancer becomes a possibility,"

and

"The manner in which you bring up your daughter with regard to sexual attitudes may very well determine whether or not she will develope (sic) breast cancer, among other things"

That was over 40 years ago when he was in his late 20's, but damn is that stupid.

It is, but the other way to look at it is that those are the dumbest comments this guy could find on record, and that's going back all those years.

 

[realibrad]

The first two sentences in the OP are a bit over-the-top. I don't see anything particularly distressing here.

You don't think what he said is distressing, or, you don't think its a problem because of how long ago it was?

 

[realibrad]

It is, but the other way to look at it is that those are the dumbest comments this guy could find on record, and that's going back all those years.

Well, he did sponsor a bill in 2013 to pay for vets to get alternative medicine. So he seems to still be sticking to his positions.

 

[pmv]

That all seems laughably minor stuff.

The nuclear issue is, in my opinion, by no means clear-cut, there are arguments on both sides (not to mention a long history of lies, corruption and creative-accounting associated with that particular industry that makes it even more difficult to work out the truth of the argument).

I don't really know about GMO - not sure what's so terribly wrong with giving consumers information. It seems very naive to assume "it's science, so it's good" when it's also commerce.

I've always rolled my eyes a bit at the hippy alternative-medicine type beliefs associated with certain strands of 'the left' - the middle-class type who shop at Whole Foods (itself owned by a hard-right-winger, no?). But it's a minor side-issue compared to everything else. Those sorts of slighly-cranky traits are almost independent of left-right politics. You find people with them across the whole political spectrum.

That the article concludes with the bizarre suggestion that such faddishness is a specific trait of 'the extreme left' really does the writer's credibility no good at all (not to mention the implication that Sanders is himself 'extreme left' - he really isn't...the _actual_ hard-left regard even Corbyn as a conservative backslider, and Sanders is to the right of Corbyn)

There are more important weaknesses one could find in Sanders, I think, if you wanted to. E.g. he didn't, from what I could see at this distance, strike me as being exactly up-to-speed on racial politics or sensitive to the concerns of African-Americans, and he's just plain old (that being a problem with Corbyn as well). And he has never been subject to the full onslaught of the Republican machine, so has never really been tested. But that article was weak.

 

[Blackjack200]

Well, he did sponsor a bill in 2013 to pay for vets to get alternative medicine. So he seems to still be sticking to his positions.

JMO, but I don't give a shit if someone wants to go get a massage or acupuncture. There are benefits to them even though I know that there is no medical benefit.

 

[realibrad]

JMO, but I don't give a shit if someone wants to go get a massage or acupuncture. There are benefits to them even though I know that there is no medical benefit.

If they want to use tax payer money I think its a problem. We should not be paying people to get medical treatment that is not medical treatment.

 

[realibrad]

That all seems laughably minor stuff.

The nuclear issue is, in my opinion, by no means clear-cut, there are arguments on both sides (not to mention a long history of lies, corruption and creative-accounting associated with that particular industry that makes it even more difficult to work out the truth of the argument).

I don't really know about GMO - not sure what's so terribly wrong with giving consumers information. It seems very naive to assume "it's science, so it's good" when it's also commerce.

I've always rolled my eyes a bit at the hippy alternative-medicine type beliefs associated with certain strands of 'the left' - the middle-class type who shop at Whole Foods (itself owned by a hard-right-winger, no?). But it's a minor side-issue compared to everything else. Those sorts of slighly-cranky traits are almost independent of left-right politics. You find people with them across the whole political spectrum.

That the article concludes with the bizarre suggestion that such faddishness is a specific trait of 'the extreme left' really does the writer's credibility no good at all (not to mention the implication that Sanders is himself 'extreme left' - he really isn't...the _actual_ hard-left regard even Corbyn as a conservative backslider, and Sanders is to the right of Corbyn)

There are more important weaknesses one could find in Sanders, I think, if you wanted to. E.g. he didn't, from what I could see at this distance, strike me as being exactly up-to-speed on racial politics or sensitive to the concerns of African-Americans, and he's just plain old (that being a problem with Corbyn as well). And he has never been subject to the full onslaught of the Republican machine, so has never really been tested. But that article was weak.

I don't think that his comments about cancer are laughably minor. Saying that women are more likely to get breast cancer depending on her sexual attitudes is pretty bad. Not going to destroy a country, but, that type of belief is pretty harmful when spread.

 

[thraashman]

I don't really know about GMO - not sure what's so terribly wrong with giving consumers information. It seems very naive to assume "it's science, so it's good" when it's also commerce.
.

There's a couple issues with GMO labeling. First, it's not always easy to source if a food contains a GMO or not, thus increasing the costs to determine that. Second, there is literally no reasons why a food being GMO would cause it to be any less safe. Third, it's a scare tactic using a logical fallacy assuming that natural means safer/healthier. The entire GMO labeling concept is actually a push by organic foods lobbying groups to push people to question GMO. It's literally a corporate group that's trying to trick people into hating a competing product by appealing to fears. Which is funny because organics have lower yields, higher carbon footprints, use more land, usually use more pesticides, and have never been shown to be any healthier.

 

[pmv]

I don't think that his comments about cancer are laughably minor. Saying that women are more likely to get breast cancer depending on her sexual attitudes is pretty bad. Not going to destroy a country, but, that type of belief is pretty harmful when spread.

But that particular point is going back 50 years. If he claimed that exact thing today it would be a problem, but I don't care what he said in the 'late 60s'. It actually sounds depressingly similar to the sort of stuff our future monarch has a track record of coming out with (and we don't get a choice about him!).

It does, I suppose, illustrate the kind of attacks he hasn't really had to face, and hence demonstrates the weakness of claims about how much better he would have done than Hillary. That's the one thing I give her - she's been in the firing range for a long time, and stood up to it (even if she didn't actually come under sniper fire that time!).

 

[Starbuck1975]

But that particular point is going back 50 years. If he claimed that exact thing today it would be a problem, but I don't care what he said in the 'late 60s'. It actually sounds depressingly similar to the sort of stuff our future monarch has a track record of coming out with (and we don't get a choice about him!).

It does, I suppose, illustrate the kind of attacks he hasn't really had to face, and hence demonstrates the weakness of claims about how much better he would have done than Hillary. That's the one thing I give her - she's been in the firing range for a long time, and stood up to it (even if she didn't actually come under sniper fire that time!).

This article also demonstrates the lack of meaningful attacks against Sanders. Nothing in that article speaks to Sanders’ character. What is the attack ad against Sanders from this article? That he supported holistic medicine in the 70s at a time when many people saw promise in them as the west gained exposure to eastern medicine?

 

[Moonbeam]

Well, here’s the deal. I have been watching some fishing videos, especially West Coast ones. You never know when society will collapse and you will have to feed yourself. So I think that’s why the first thing that jumped into my head reading and wishing to describe to you how I see the tack you have taken in this thread came up as it did like this:

Imagine you live in a village of starving people by the sea and you and your brother know how to fish, and you and he go down to the shore and spend the day arguing about which lure will catch the most fish. Now imagine an encyclopedic desplay of arguments pro and con presented in treatise form and how impressive it would be to the starving.

This is sort of what I mean by the term, pin head engineer.

Democracy is dead. Sanders not Clinton is the one that says it. Here you are talking about some money spent by veterans on acupuncture when there are huge issues among them that are all in their heads. What the fuck do you really know about how to heal them and even if you did what the f good would it do because democracy is dead.

Why not go for somebody who sees what the real issue is and harps on it, constantly points it out. Forest for the trees, man. Democracy is dead, purchased by the 1%. How about we tell the 99% they lost the class war. They are worried about which lure will catch the most fish while they starve to death and turn to cannibalism.

 

[hal2kilo]

Agree nuclear is not the answer to global warming. Never been a fan of holistic medicine. Hell, I think chiropractors are a scam. Never intend to vote for another ancient relic (I can say this as I'm 64). So I don't care. Which is opposite of UC.

 

[realibrad]

Agree nuclear is not the answer to global warming. Never been a fan of holistic medicine. Hell, I think chiropractors are a scam. Never intend to vote for another ancient relic (I can say this as I'm 64). So I don't care. Which is opposite of UC.

Why do you think nuclear is not the answer to global warming?