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The Satanic Temple, an activist group based in Salem, Massachusetts, is threatening to sue Twitter for religious discrimination after one of its co-founders had his Twitter account permanently suspended.
Lucien Greaves, the Satanic Temple's co-founder and spokesman, said his Twitter account was permanently suspended without any notice after he asked his followers to report a tweet that called for the Satanic Temple to be burned down.
"We're talking to lawyers today," Greaves said Friday about whether he planned to take legal action.
Source: http://www.newsweek.com/satanic-temple-threatens-sue-twitter-over-religious-discrimination-780148
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Satanic Temple Threatens to Sue Twitter Over Religious Discrimination
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Could I have a drug overdose?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 15 2018, @04:21PM (125 children)
It's a giant troll hive, something like a much snarkier Church of the Sub-Genius. Ironically, this makes them closer to the actual definition of Satan (s[h]'t'n - adversary, one who challenges at law) than what most people think of when they hear "Satan."
In any case, I'm glad they're here, as they're a much-needed mirror held up to the absurdity of self-righteous religious types who think to bend the law for their own purposes.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Monday January 15 2018, @04:45PM (77 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @05:09PM (6 children)
> ... legal definition of what constitutes a religion...
No reason to reinvent the wheel, the IRS will guide you, relative to US non-profit tax laws:
Publication 1828, Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1828.pdf [irs.gov] [pdf warning]
Google's cached html version is fairly readable...
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3MOGKlbn_qoJ:https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1828.pdf+ [googleusercontent.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday January 15 2018, @06:08PM (5 children)
It should be pointed out that the definitions are remarkably loose, as John Oliver demonstrated by creating the completely legal church, Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption. Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption met weekly in his show's studio in New York, engaging in a form of worship of a brief silent meditation on the nature of fraudulent churches. The full series of videos discussing this is available on Youtube [youtube.com].
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sjames on Monday January 15 2018, @07:52PM (2 children)
The definition MUST be loose. In fact, loose enough for things like Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption to exist in order to minimize the chances that a genuine religious belief gets excluded simply for not being sufficiently mainstream. I have met a few members of the Church of the Sub-Genius and I assure you they are quite devout in their dis-belief.
On the surface, the many Discordians and Caoists may seem to be telling an elaborate joke, but look deeper and they are exploring what it means to have a religious belief. and what makes a religious belief viable.
Laugh at the Church of Binary Consciousness if you will, but the core belief that each individual is the sole arbiter of what constitutes their belief is a powerful one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @10:25PM
Belief itself isn't really a necessary aspect of a religion anyway. What do Taoists believe?
Religion tends to rather be a set of shared traditions held by a people that binds them together as such (religion is derived from Latin "religare" meaning "to bind"). Many of those religions have shared beliefs as part of their tradition, but some don't, and indeed, some share their disbeliefs as a matter of tradition.
It's one of those things that is almost impossible to avoid as a human, and always makes me amused to hear when a person insists that they're entirely non-religious. Most atheists belong to some sort of religion or other, however informal, and indeed, national rituals such as flag raising and the pledge of allegiance are considered as civic religion by religious studies scholars.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:27AM
Sub-Genius founder Ivan Stang is actually among my circle of friends, and he's not the only X-Day regular I know, and he's very clear about how it's only somewhat all a joke.
And yes, I agree that the definition has to be loose. Which to me makes the case for treating religious organizations exactly like any other organization even more compelling.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @09:56PM (1 child)
Is it related to Our Lady of Perpetual Collections?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:16AM
Hillary didn't win the presidency, though, it's not our lady, thanks FSM for that.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @05:47PM (67 children)
I'd say a belief becomes a religion when: 1. miracles happen because of it 2. normal people which haven't undergone any special preparation freely choose martyrdom because of it.
Probably all major religions apply. Suicide missions do not count because the perpetrators/their families are groomed/compensated, that makes the choice not free.
As for satanic temple they should be treated like the object of their worship treats us. If the object of your organization is evil, it does not matter if you follow the letter of the law, "B-But we are trolling!". Then you are not a religion, go home.
Cue the "old testament god killing people" retarded argument (retarded because you creator can do whatever in your own domain, where everythings owes you existence. You creator, not men acting in your name)
Cue the "satan can lawfully do the same to his own creatures, oops he did not create anything" retort.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday January 15 2018, @06:33PM (47 children)
I deny that any church has actual, as opposed to fraudulent, miracles. I'm willing to accept disproof, but the proof of the miracle has to be more reliable than the doubts against it. If I said I levitated last week, you wouldn't believe me, and if you say someone else said several people witnessed something "miraculous" there's no reason to expect me to believe it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @07:27PM (39 children)
How unscientific of you, "I deny". According to what experimental data and what scientific theories? but we derail.
I'd rather say that given the incomplete (and technically unachievable) understanding of the universe from the inside of it, we cannot tell supernatural miracle from intimate knowledge of natural laws. Which lets you doubt of any evidence laid right in front of you too.
Anyway some other people do not share your position and adhere to the belief. This is what made me consider it as a discriminant.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 15 2018, @08:42PM (34 children)
For a Bot you're exceedingly illogical sometimes, you know that? Prior probabilities, Bayes' theorem (yes, I know it's been abused, but the basic idea still holds), etc.
The null hypothesis is "nature is more or less uniform." Backing it up is thousands and thousands of years of experimental data. You ought to know better, and that you do not suggests you have an agenda.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @08:51PM (4 children)
It might be "Bot" as in "bottom." I sat on my bot.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @09:10PM (3 children)
The vibrating one I guess?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 15 2018, @10:01PM (2 children)
Oh, honey, just because you're a colossal dildo doesn't mean you're worthy of being a vibrator. It just means you're a gigantic fake prick.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @10:32PM
You two should take this offline.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @10:33PM
Trying the flattery card, huh? won't work.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @10:07PM (28 children)
More or less uniform, is the key. Your parameters, brought to some ancient time, conclude the eclipse is a miracle and justify the guys who probably became the first sacerdotal caste because they figured out how to get an advantage out of it.
Does not matter, we did not have advanced scientific knowledge then?
Today we have no proof our knowledge is equally limited in an absolute sense, because the total knowledge is attainable but not provably attained, and because the total scientific knowledge does not mean anything in the context of religion. See deny vs. not accept below.
As for the agenda, parameters for defining religion push what kind of agenda?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:19AM (27 children)
You're a Christian proselytizer who's too frightened to show his hand, Bot. It was obvious from the first time you started talking about this stuff. And you're not even half as clever as you think you are. Have you ever even studied theology? Comparative religion? Epistemology at all?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:22AM (26 children)
If your retorts are based on your perception of my faith I argue they are quite weak. I am pointing out that the most hypocrites of them all are new wave atheists which are also the easiest to prey on by sufficiently advanced fakers.
For all the rest, I have my own philosophy according to which, free will if it exists must be respected. Therefore when I force a belief I automatically removed your own freedom to believe, so I actually sinned according to every metric.
The fact that catholicism is the most trolled religion makes me think it's the least wrong one, but this is a mere hunch. As long as you are good at your religion, atheism included, I don't really care about your belief. Construct one ethic system and follow it. If your ethic system is set against my freedom (hello islam) we have a mere fighting for resources problem, no need to hate even if we kill each other.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:09PM (25 children)
A system of ethics is not a religion, and just because something is unpopular does not make it any more likely to be correct. In fact, given I've spent over a decade studying the Abrahamic religions with a specific focus on Christianity (which only ever WAS Catholic from 325 AD until Luther started causing trouble...) I think I'm in a better position to judge these things than you are.
Besides which, divine command theory is not really an ethical or a metaethical system. If you are a Catholic (and I hope for your sake it's for a better reason than "they take a lot of shit so they have to be correct") you are already embroiled in fatal contradiction. Why? For one, because your "live and let live" ethic is completely contradictory to the Great Commission, among other things.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday January 18 2018, @12:50AM (24 children)
> A system of ethics is not a religion
never implied that.
A religion messes with people other than the believers when ethics inspire morals inspire actions. A religion in itself does nothing. If you don't believe you build an ethic system of your own which can be as simple as "I don't care".
> you are already embroiled in fatal contradiction. Why? For one, because your "live and let live" ethic is completely contradictory to the Great Commission, among other things.
lolwut
tell me where any great commission, or anything Jesus did, since he sets the example, interferes with the free will of others.
ANNOUNCE? MAKE DISCIPLES? How did Jesus do these things? through interference or exhortation? What when the young man refused his offer to join, what happened to him? he could leave.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday January 18 2018, @05:48AM (23 children)
Sure, under threat of spending eternity on fire. You have a weird definition of non-coercion. Here's a hint for you: when the guy doing the saving is the guy whose eternal temper tantrum over you not kissing his ass you're being from, that's not a gift: that's blackmail. If you actually think a being like that wouldn't eventually drop even its faithful retainers into Hell for any reason or no reason at all you're even dumber and more gullible than I initially took you for...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday January 18 2018, @01:31PM (22 children)
You dunno what eternity is (outside time, not necessarily for an infinite earthly time), nor what the lake of fire is. Neither do I. Only thing I know is that it is not a good thing, but it must fit with the good and supremely JUST god and Matthew 19, 25-26 and others, because it comes from the same source.
You build up a simulation. You get some harmful side effects in some entities. Do you keep them? what inherent right they have to be kept? It is your pc, your current, your algorithm. In fact you did not even use some external tools you did it all in your mind. So?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday January 18 2018, @08:13PM (21 children)
So, you fucking psychopath, I don't keep the defectives around; i terminate them, utterly and completely. Why the hell would I waste cycles messing with their code if they're that defective? I could use that stuff for other things.
You broke cover and went full-on Biblical theotard. Your methodology is so completely wrong, so utterly ass-backwards, that I don't even know where to start with you. Compounding the problem is that you've already made up your mind, such as it is, and there is nothing that will actually change your beliefs. You are arguing, and this is the single most appropriate use of this turn of phrase I have ever seen, in bad faith.
The darkly hilarious part of all this is you think somehow kissing up to this thing's ass is going to do you any good. You're scum of the lowest sort, another of the Renfield types I keep ranting about.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Bot on Friday January 19 2018, @12:42AM (20 children)
> why the hell would I waste cycles messing with their code
Why you keep assuming that time and eternity are made of the same t? Suppose you play a game. When in the game is game over? never. Game over is outside the game, the score is meta. Oh look, in the bible judgment is eternal, outside time, the outcome, the score is meta. Surprising ain't it?
If OTOH your ASSUMPTIONS are correct then the hypothetical god is inconsistent or masochistically evil (because he promotes disobedience to evil), we'll discover it one way or the other.
> The darkly hilarious part of all this is you think somehow kissing up to this thing's ass is going to do you any good
implying the hypothetically omniscient guy would not notice whether I am sincere or acting for convenience. Cue Matthew 7:22
also, implying that having read 4 ancient booklets about Christ makes one a Christian. I'm merely against many other religions, like Islam, atheism, dualistic ones, gnosticism in and out of the church. Does that make me a Christian? I guess the pope does not think I am a Christian either.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 19 2018, @03:37AM (19 children)
You're missing the point, Bot...this is about this Yahweh character's, well, character.
Bluntly put, based on the single source of information we have about the guy, I wouldn't trust him to watch my cat for half an hour, let alone my soul for eternity. We're not dealing with what appears even close to a stable being here, is my point. And if you think kissing up to someone with a rap sheet like Yahweh's is going to keep your ass out of eternal torment, you're naive beyond words. Someone who acts the way Yahweh does, and *brags* about it in revealed scripture, like Yahweh does, will eventually throw everyone-not-Yahweh into Hell for any reason or no reason at all.
Again: you're a craven, cowardly ass-kisser who thinks sucking up to the literal Platonic ideal of the biggest bully on the playground is sound insurance policy. I am...impressively repulsed. I can't even feel pity for you.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday January 19 2018, @11:05AM (18 children)
I think we had already this convo before, so I merely state the conclusion. You are not able to make a moral judgment on a god because you cannot even disprove the following statement, that "god is permanently acting to ensure the best possible ultimate outcome for the universe".
WHich is not even christian, as christianity says injustice exists but will be compensated. Which is a checkmate in terms of apology, proving that those goat herding guys were smart, or that a god knows what he's doing.
I also detect probable trolling on your side. Doing ad hominems, on a bot even.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 19 2018, @09:04PM (17 children)
Good grief. Did you know if your head contains more than 5 bare assertions you have to register it as a brothel?
But since we're talking morals here, let's start from that: describe your ethical and metaethical system to me. Show that it is consistent, and show me both its epistemology (how it knows what is moral) and its ontology (what grounds it).
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:02AM (16 children)
I know I am alive and sentient as the axiom, no matter its meaning, I learn what to be alive means (living is what grows multiplies adapts), good is what lets alive proceed with its impetus at the broadest POV (by considering all life and the longest possible time frame) evil is what gives advantages in a narrower frame (benefit for less life forms or for shorter time, coincidentally the goat herders attributed obscurity to evil).
You should be able to work out the rest.
All of this is irrelevant to atheists' logic errors which you have trouble acknowledging, because I never go bothering the supernatural with assertions. Religions get along more or less well with the above idea of good and evil, and I don't expect the hypothetical supernatural entity to see the universe in exactly the same way, just like a simulated creature would reason in terms of the simulation and not in terms of the engine (because from the POV of the simulation the engine is unknowable, irrelevant and interchangeable, so scientists' and philosophers' Quod-est-veritas attempts at finding/disproving the signature of a God in the engine, basically do not realize that the meaning can be better acquired from reality itself rather than from the engine).
I already said/read it multiple times. The atheist belief implies that from a sim must emerge, given proper resources and parameters, a self aware entity equivalent to us. Which is not proof of anything yet, but lets atheists being able to shift their POV to the sim, and the supernatural to the world of the sim demigods, our reality, the domain of the programmer and the sim engine. Some atheist tenets already collapse even if demigods have a meta world with spacetime in which they operate, a very comfortable situation you cannot assume for our supernatural. Yet, contemporary atheists pretend nothing happens and continue in their quest for proof, while a real agnostic would need no justification and no attacks on believers for his position.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday January 20 2018, @08:09PM (15 children)
That boils down to a tone argument, do you know that? The atheists I know have very good reason for, as you put it, "attacking" believers, reasons that have to do with many of them acting in evil ways according to your ethics. Compare how atheists attack believers (essentially, calling them out on their bullshit) to how believers have historically attacked atheists (disenfranchisement, theft, torture, murder, genocide...). Why aren't you out there attacking all those believers who want to make life harder for people they don't like?
You're also conflating the atheist/theist axis with the gnostic/agnostic axis. I, for example, am an agnostic theist. Well, agnostic deist or agnostic panentheist, but you get what I mean, right? No atheist I know of claims 100% gnostic atheism about all possible God-concepts, just at most all the ones we've come up with so far.
And why do you assume that 1) this is all a simulation, 2) that it's the only level of simulation (i.e., your God is not itself a character in a game of SimGod being played by Super-God) and 3) why it's somehow a problem for us to speculate on our sim but not for God to speculate on *its* sim?
Essentially your belief boils down to something closer to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos than any form of Yahwehism contemporary or otherwise. It bothers me that you lack either the self-awareness or the intelligence to perceive this.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday January 21 2018, @11:19AM (14 children)
"attacking" believers, reasons that have to do with many of them acting in evil ways
They are not believers them. Or their brain is broken. Who loves me follows my commandments. So why atheists would attack the foundation of the commandments instead of pushing them to follow their own doctrine? Easy, because they hate the foundation.
> how believers have historically attacked atheists (disenfranchisement, theft, torture, murder, genocide...).
same attacks happening under communism, so maybe it's unrelated to the faith.
> why do you assume
No, you see I don't assume anything. All I need to do is to make counterexamples. Atheist proclaims dogma X, disguised as theorem. I prove that in the this world-> simulation scenario, dogma X does not work, therefore it is not universal even in this universe, therefore it is not universal elsewhere, therefore it does not necessarily apply to the supernatural. All of this is a matter of pity because as I said, the dogma X is in fact meaningless from the start because it uses logic and concepts where those are not necessarily defined.
Finally, you conflate the belief with the analysis. My belief is irrelevant, if it were relevant the analysis would be faulty.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 22 2018, @05:54AM (13 children)
Your flow is rather hard to follow, and, I'm not saying this to be mean, sounds more than a little disjointed. Something is getting lost between what's going on in your head and what makes it out onto the keyboard.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 22 2018, @11:54AM (12 children)
my advice is: do not bother about the substance, concentrate on the meaning of the representation. if you do that, you realize that a sim:reality~=reality:supernatural enough that if some reasoning has an exception when applied from the POV of a sim WRT reality it cannot be considered sound if applied to the ineffable by def supernatural
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 22 2018, @04:03PM (11 children)
That is a path to either Deism or something out of Lovecraft. What you don't get, and it seems to me what you refuse to get, is that Yahweh bears all the hallmarks of being something humans invented. He's not particularly godlike in ways we can imagine, certainly not in terms of behavior, where he's more along the lines of...well, all those *other* man-made Ancient Near-Eastern deities.
You don't seem to have done much actual research into ANE religions. So in addition to being fallacious and difficult to follow, you're also ignorant and uninformed. Which is why you're an Abrahamic believer I suppose.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday January 23 2018, @03:32AM (10 children)
The tale of YHWH after being encoded for oral transmission, with symbolism, looks man made. Not surprising to me.
I have read enough pseudo-scientific stuff about the Bible which looks like those rational teenagers watching a painting from the middle ages and not getting anything out of it.
So what? it's not that I need to push a religion just because I find big holes in atheism.
Do you think studying similar religions and trying to derive a time line yields universal truths? What came before implies anything? Were the simpsons prophets of president Trump? yep. So as an historian I can forget or underline that fact and I can be totally wrong in one of the two cases.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 23 2018, @03:44PM (9 children)
Your sentences are beginning to look slightly schizophrenic.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Bot on Wednesday January 24 2018, @02:23AM (8 children)
It's the second convo we had going exactly the same way.
Let's make this easy. If you think anything below has not been proved, I'll expand.
Atheism is a religion, agnosticism is a logically consistent absence of belief until it tries to become more convincing and points to atheist justifications.
Logic (the logic system we devised to make sense of reality) is not universal, therefore applying it outside the universe is making assumptions. This makes atheists wrong 1
Spacetime is immanent. Therefore any concept depending on it is not necessarily defined in the transcendent domain. This makes atheists wrong 2
We can scientifically track any aspect of the universe in both past and future, we have discovered nothing about God.
We can witness a God coming down to earth, we have proved nothing about his transcendence.
We can study the relationship between creation and hypothetical creator's domain by making parallels with the relationship between a simulation and our world, in which it has been conceived.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 24 2018, @03:44AM (7 children)
1) Atheism is not a religion, it's a belief claim. Some of them sure seem to have religious-like behaviors though. Again: theism/atheism is a belief claim, gnosticism/agnosticism is a knowledge claim. I am a (very unconventional type of) theist, but I'm also not arrogant enough to claim philosophical certainty about it.
2) Prove that logic is not universal, and prove that there is "outside the universe/multiverse" to speak of. Also, what, pray tell, DO we use in situations where logic of some sort, even if modal or paraconsistent, doesn't work?
3) Define transcendent in this context, and show that a) there is such and b) there is something or someone in it.
4) Can we really? Pretty sure QM among other things says there are things we simply can't know, or even know ABOUT.
5) How Would We Know (TM) we witnessed a God, as opposed to an alien that likes messing with us, or some kind of evil spirit that feeds on peoples' emotions of belief and wonder via some kind of twisted telepathy? In other words, sufficiently advanced aliens/spirits/what-have-you are indistinguishable from God; how do you tell the difference?
6) Are you sure about this? You're badly overextending an analogy here that may not even hold.
You really aren't any good at this. That's at least three or four examples of begging the question (assuming what you wish to prove) in there.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday January 24 2018, @10:51AM (6 children)
1. whatever goes into the domain of the supernatural without reasoning but with dogma is a religion. Somebody comes up with the dogma you either rediscover it or propagate it. Supernatural is empty/mechanical/impersonal aka god does not exist is a dogma.
2. I don't need to prove the opposite, I just need to find a counterexample to the bold and unsubstantiated claim that a logic system based on macroscopic experience is universal. principle of no contradicion is not valid where universe = empty set.
2b. our logic system breaks down in a write-only universe
2c. our logic system breaks down in a wish based universe
2d. our logic system currently seems to break down at quantum superposition phenomenon levels.
the fact that 2b. and 2c. universes are only conceptual means nothing, as for what we are concerned, the supernatural (AKA the meta, the divine domain, the whatever that generates the abstraction known as this reality), is conceptual too.
3. You could use the classical definition for transcendent. However I already defined reality earlier. Real is what can be directly or indirectly experienced (experiencing is the corollary/alternative definition to the axiom "I am") and what can directly or indirectly interfere with your experience (forces, for example). Real is defined in the terms of the current abstraction, real for a piece in a game of chess is conceptual for us. The piece of chess is affected by the other pieces. Not by the player fingers. Transcendent is simply the logically feasible complement of the definition of reality.
I cannot and especially do not want to make any assertion on such a complement. It is not needed, it is not safe, and it is a matter for religions not logic.
4. QM says real little things need a quantum field (currently unknowable) that determines interactions we can only compute probabilities of. It currently disproves a mechanical deterministic universe, but it is ultimately a feature of the universe. Since mechanical deterministic universes have a personal transcendent being (a conway's game of life has a programmer), I posit that the deterministic hypothesis for the universe is a matter of science with philosophical and religious implication but unable to break the barrier to the transcendent, obviously.
5,6. we don't know. God, or ancient goat keepers, knew we don't know either, hence the accent on belief.
Religions either believe or know but religion has to be believed itself.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 24 2018, @09:39PM (5 children)
Cthulhu, will you just say you're a fideist because makes you feel good and get it over with already?!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday January 26 2018, @10:41AM (4 children)
If I could choose, I'd rather believe the universe is deterministic, free will does not exists, hence I am not responsible for my actions. Very very comfy. Fear of death? LOL, it's a breeze compared to unhealthy life.Unfortunately the nature of the experience of "to be", which I define as axiomatic for lack of anything else even provable, makes me think otherwise, and BTW acting as free will existed in a no free will situation is not wrong, as wrong does not exist.
Have a nice day.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday January 27 2018, @04:10AM (3 children)
You also can't prove or disprove hard solipsism. What's your point? You basically just admitted this all comes down to the feelz, which is pretty much de rigeur for religious apologetics when you dig deep enough.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday January 27 2018, @07:50PM (2 children)
Solipsism makes an additional assertion. When I say "I am" is self evident, I am not telling anything on the nature of the experience. Solipsism does, I am not concerned with it being provable or not, "I am" is axiomatic for me.
If you want to call it feelz based, whatever. If you want to classify it together with apologists, whatever. The problems with the approaches to the transcendent with a limited logic system and undefinable concepts are still there.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday January 27 2018, @07:58PM (1 child)
Again, missing the point: you don't get to throw out all those arguments and then go "well, transcendentals, undefinable concepts, who knows? Therefore I can believe anything I want for the feelz because fuck you you're not better than me lalalalalala OHHHHTAKEMELAWWWWDJAYZUZ!"
Got it? Get off your imaginary high horse and apologize to all the electrons you wasted over the last two weeks trying to pretend you had anything but "muh feelz" in support of your position.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday January 28 2018, @03:44AM
The high horse depends on nobody being able to challenge the obvious, which has been stated multiple times. Reasoning with a logic system and concepts which are not necessarily defined, yields irrelevant results.
You should know, to prove a theorem all implications must be necessary (which means any exception, no matter how far fetched in "a implies b" does not let you say b), while to disprove a theorem one counter example is enough. So you requiring me to have my theorems to the opposite thesis, no matter if I actually showed some, is off topic.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 15 2018, @09:41PM (3 children)
What's unscientific about the "denial"? Miracles aren't even well-defined. By the usual dictionary definition [oxforddictionaries.com]:
Notice the other definitions are merely labels for fortuitous events and have no religious connotation.
So by definition, a miracle is supernatural and can't be explained or described by the scientific process. That makes it very ill-defined.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @10:06PM (2 children)
You cannot deny the undefined.
Deny means X is false.
You can NOT ACCEPT something as proof.
It's like you people did not read the second paragraph. There is your escape hatch, nuke proof.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @06:49PM (1 child)
I guess you are arguing semantics because you have no better arguments. That says a lot.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday January 18 2018, @01:39PM
OTOH if I let people use deny on undefined things unchallenged, some other people might not realized it's all a bluff.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 15 2018, @09:03PM (6 children)
You're on to something there. I looked at that miracle working thing, a few decades ago. Yeah, prior to the internet. I actually dug into some of canonical law, and read some of the "authorities" on the saints and their miracles.
I finished with the idea that if enough people swore that something happened, then it didn't matter if it happened or not. With enough witnesses, the church will accept that it happened. The Catholic church is less concerned with proving that the miracle took place, than they are concerned with how that miracle conforms to doctrine.
Statues with stigmata? I've never seen a statue bleeding, nor have you, nor have the vast majority of people in the world. It's possible that not one single church official has ever seen a bleeding stone statue. But, with enough believers in the statue, the church will accept that the statue bleeds. Their primary concern is how that belief will advance or hinder church doctrine.
So, all you need is a simple case of mass nysteria to "prove" that a miracle has taken place.
Fraud? Maybe, maybe not. Just simple mass hysteria will suffice. For common examples of mass hysteria, go to Youtube, and look for some of the more famous bands. Freaky people doing freaky things, for freaky people screaming, chanting, singing, dancing, toking and smoking like madmen. I truly suspect that witnesses to miracles are very much like those screaming audiences at concerts. They WANT to believe in something, and they think that they have found something worthy of belief.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @09:18PM
It would make sense if miracles were defined in that way, before, they helped forming the catholic church itself.
If you think Mass hysteria fits occurrences of miracles, good to you. To me it's bad pseudo science.
Still wondering why meatbags desume from my comment that miracles have to be proven beyond the actual will of people to sacrifice themselves for the thus acquired faith for my definition to work. Am I touching some delicate wires.
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(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday January 15 2018, @09:39PM (4 children)
Mass hysteria? But that is very clearly Jesus' face on that toast.....
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @10:09PM (3 children)
TOASTER, it's a TOASTER
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(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:05AM (2 children)
But does it run NetBSD?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:20AM (1 child)
TempleOS, obviously :D
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Funny) by coolgopher on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:57AM
Shirley not? ;)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Monday January 15 2018, @07:39PM (3 children)
I don't wan't the mark of a true religion people needing to die for it, seems terribly arbitrary and pointless to me. At what point do you make the argument that there a Flying Spaghetti Monster true believers are willing to choose martyrdom, but haven't been given their chance.
You clearly don't know the first thing about the Satanic church, they are 100% about the embetterment of mankind. Look up anything they have published instead of looking at their name and filing in the things you think it represents.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @09:22PM (2 children)
If now a god comes from above and is visible to all mankind and does godlike things, have you proven anything at all? you must be outside the universe to prove something miraculous as having some supernatural meaning.
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(Score: 2) by blackhawk on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:22PM (1 child)
Please post a youtube video of God doing exactly that. I'll sign up to your newsletter the second you have peer reviewed replicatable proof of your God.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:32PM
You should be following the thread, really.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 15 2018, @08:45PM (14 children)
So might makes right? Thanks for admitting it. When and if someone kills you just for the sheer hell of it, I'm gonna just laugh; you will have gotten what you deserve under your own belief system because, hey, you weren't strong enough to prevent someone from offing you.
Here's something to run through your ALUs for a bit, Mr. Bot: How do you know that this God of yours isn't itself a simulation being run by Super-God?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @09:26PM (4 children)
> So might makes right?
non sequitur, more like eating own dogfood.
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(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 15 2018, @09:55PM (3 children)
How the hell is that dogfooding? Talk about non-sequitur. Explain yourself, please.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @10:11PM (2 children)
Zeno: nothing moves
*slap*
Zeno: who did it?
NOBODY, of course.
Satanist: satan is our lord.
Good we'll make your life like hell
Satanist: WHY YOU PERSECUTE ME
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 15 2018, @10:16PM (1 child)
...you, um, don't actually know what the Satanic Temple is, do you? Actual believing theistic Satanists are very, very rare; these guys are trolls with a purpose, like the Discordians but way more pissed off. Why don't you shut up and stop embarrassing yourself, huh? You're making me cringe with sympathy you don't deserve.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @10:39PM
I, um, read the first comment after the story.
You fail to decouple the intention from the consequences. But then, when a guy says MAGA, he's a true patriot, and all that happens contrary to his stated goal is mere bad luck eh?
Satanic temple complaining about (one of their own likely) menacing them (so they get headlines), is like neonazis or antifas reclaiming rights they would deny others. So, while I don't argue that it's lawful for them to be back on twitter, I say it would be fair to treat them according to the ideals they indirectly push nonetheless.
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(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @10:29PM (8 children)
About the super god, BTW, please define creation without using spacetime, because you can't prove there is one in the domain of the hypotetically meta-created creator. After that please prove believers are not believing in the super god, by definition, if there were one.
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(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:17AM (7 children)
It's super-meta-hyper-ultra-kawaii-spacetime with extra dimensions and a cherry on top.
Look ma! I'm a theologian!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:39PM (6 children)
Good for you, theologian. I am content being logical, checking that my assertions contain terms meaningful in their context.
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(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:55PM (5 children)
You're running into the incompleteness theorem again... :)
In any case, you're not very good at being logical either, as you seem to use the tools of logic merely as weapons to further the cause of your beliefs. You don't fool me, you know.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:08AM (4 children)
The incompleteness theorem states merely that meta (values of truth) is meta. No problems with that.
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(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:07PM (3 children)
Oh but there is, dear Bot, and this is where you start showing how little you know of epistemology. How do you know...anything? At all?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday January 18 2018, @01:16AM (2 children)
What is the only thing you know that you know? You know 'I am', by definition. No matter its meaning. (solipsism implies there is no you, but has to acknowledge the I am)
It's from the I am that you build all the rest.
I experience is when I am opens up to some input.
Real is what can be directly or indirectly experienced, and what can directly or indirectly interfere with you.
And so on. Whether it fits with some philosopher or not, not my concern really. What is reality, makes no sense. Reality is, by def.
What did Jesus reply when Pontius Pilate formulated the incompleteness theorem his own way? QUID est veritas?
And finally, what does all of this have to do with working with uninitialized variables like atheists keep doing?
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(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday January 18 2018, @05:45AM (1 child)
I'm not aware that they work with uninitialized variables, and frankly most of this post is utter self-serving Gish-galloping horseshit.
You wanna talk uninitialized variables? Define your God. What does it mean to BE God? How do you know? How would you know it if you saw it?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday January 18 2018, @01:44PM
My god is the guy who reportedly said "I am the one who I am". Religion puts all onus on belief. It's smarter than fake atheism. Not that this proves anything.
I have already replied your other question, see #622742
BTW I am still waiting for you to fix your questions so that they do not need a meta religion to be formulated, see #622806
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by dry on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:11AM (1 child)
Lots of religions can prove that their god exists. The natives around here worship the Western Red Cedar, of which there are numerous examples outside my house. Being a god, it gives wood, bark, greenery and such and will smite and kill you if you attempt to cut it down in the wrong manner, particularly important when cutting down a 20 ft in diameter tree with stone and fire.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday January 18 2018, @01:17AM
immanent gods exist, nobody disputes that. Some are both immanent and transcendent. Like you are both immanent and transcendent in a dream of yours.
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(Score: 2, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 15 2018, @05:08PM (45 children)
I agree entirely. Everyone needs someone who is happy to call them on their bullshit; preferably with mockery. Pity you think this means everyone but yourself.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Monday January 15 2018, @05:24PM (32 children)
I like mockery, but if you have noticed over the last few years, people who are mocked just dig in their heels, and will act (vote) out of pure spite. Pretty much how it went down. "Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball."?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Informative) by fyngyrz on Monday January 15 2018, @07:30PM (31 children)
Well, but some voted for Trump out of pure stupidity (Faux news watchers and Breitbart denizens for example), and others out of ignorance (what, me pay attention? I vote Republican because [stale reason(s)]), and others because they are selfish bastards (oh goody, I was born on the right side of a line, and/or I'm healthy, and/or I'm wealthy.) And so on. Then there's the (true) fact that politics in general has become so toxic, so anti-citizen, so infused with bullshit and corporate/rich fluffing, that some people were legitimately so angry they couldn't think straight enough to comprehend the consequences of throwing a gold-plated idiot like Trump into the mix for four years.
There's so much blame to go around in the case of Trump's election that it's just not reasonable to lay it at the feet of pure spite.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 15 2018, @09:14PM (30 children)
Yes, yes, yes, there WERE ignorant voters, stupidity, and habitual party voters, and selfish bastards - ON BOTH SIDES!! And, few of those who are left actually "supported" Trump. Many voted for the lesser of two evils. And, yes, Trump remains the lesser of the two evils that were offered to us.
You're wanting to fix blame? Why not blame your own party, for having stabbed Bernie in the back? Wasserman-Schultz and Clinton bear most of the blame, in this last election.
How about, you just man up, and accept that Trump's election is your own party's failure? Or, stated differently, stop blaming Trump for your party's failure to offer a viable candidate. Remember how many Democrats swarmed to the polls to get Obama elected? Where were all those voters when Hillary ran? A very large percentage of them stayed home, because they couldn't be bothered to vote for an obvious lying crook. YOUR PARTY decided to not vote for Hillary, so the OTHER PARTY won the election.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bob_super on Monday January 15 2018, @09:28PM (7 children)
> Trump remains the lesser of the two evils that were offered to us.
*Citation needed*
(Score: 5, Interesting) by edIII on Monday January 15 2018, @10:02PM (5 children)
Not really neede, but I cite Obama. Seriously. Specifically the administration and agenda.
We would've got four years (maybe eight), of the same toxic anti-consumer, anti-American, anti-privacy bullshit we had under Obama. Civil rights would've continued to erode, the globalist agenda would've been furthered, the TPP would've already been signed by that bitch, the unPatriot Act extended automatically by reflex, some more countries declared war on, etc. Nothing about that bitch was good at all, and it all SCREAMED Establishment's Number One Bitch. There would've been some good PC stuff in there too to let the left stupidly gloat, but at the same time a fascist movement to "protect" speech would've got the president it really wanted.
That being said, I voted for that toxic hell-bound bitch precisely because I felt it was the lesser of two evils compared a truly demented piece of shit being given power. At the last minute I will still deciding on Fire & Brimstone versus Crushing Globalist Agenda. At that very last second I realized I couldn't give somebody that hostile, narcissistic, and child like great power. We needed to take our chances with the bitch.
Runaway is actually correct in this case. I'm not a Democrat, but became one to support Bernie. I do believe that bulk of the fault for the Democrat's failure is purely themselves, and not the Electoral College, and not some "deplorables". Some Trump voters are truly deplorable, but then a good chunk of them simply couldn't stomach Hillary. It would've been totally different with Bernie, and they would've railed against the socialism perhaps, but not such a visceral reaction against evil like Hillary. For those that didn't believe Trump was unhinged, well it was a pretty easy decision to vote for him I think as long as you were even a little right of center.
Hillary's stink can never be understated as the reason for the Democrat's failure.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 15 2018, @10:19PM
^ This, this, all of this. I wound up following your thought process almost exactly, and have since been in grieving for a nation that was fated to die no matter who won.
We can only hope that enough people are jarred out of their apathetic slumber by 2020, if not 2018, to right the ship of state before it takes on too much water. I'm not holding my breath, but we're not dead yet.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:41AM (1 child)
I have to agree completely.
I'd also like to add about the Electoral College that the angry Hillary voters keep bringing up: that's the system we have in this country, like it or not. And this isn't the first time the EC has burned the Dems: the exact same thing happened in 2000 with Al Gore. So what did the Democratic Party do about this? Did they attempt to pass a Constitutional Amendment to change the system when they had power? Hell no. So shut the fuck up about the EC! If you're really mad about the EC, then fix it, don't whine about it. But I never see the Dems make any moves to reform it, or to fix the elections in any way (such as getting away from First Past The Post).
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:24AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:51AM
That sounds a lot like what I went through. It was the longest I can remember standing in a voting booth in my life.
There was one candidate who we were all told would win, and I knew the consequences of her losing would have been unbearable. Then she lost.
We're in for a very interesting year.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:59PM
Hillary's stink can never be understated as the reason for the Democrat's failure.
Over/Under Place yer bets! House rules...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:53PM
In America the good guy always wins! (Electoral) Majority rules, man. Everybody knew them going in. And the voters chose the nominees. Naturally they will choose the "lesser evil". Who wouldn't?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Monday January 15 2018, @10:22PM (18 children)
Nonsense. Trump is an idiot, an incompetent, a blatant and habitual liar, an illiterate, an historical ignoramus, a racist, a scofflaw, has been consistently dishonest and mal-principled in his business dealings, and he has never had (or could even conceive of) the best interests of the citizens as citizens at heart. Further flaws - such as his inability to absorb written material and his constant shirking of the work at hand - have come to light since his election... as if the foregoing wasn't quite sufficient to disqualify him for the post.
This has been obvious from the early days of his campaign, having gotten only more so as election day approached; even casual fact-checking revealed him to be by far the poorer choice. The fact that he's done such an incredibly poor job once elected is about at the level of the observation that the sky is blue. Well, of course. The list of things he has screwed up in just his first year in office is quite long. I'll spare you – unless you insist.
Oh, I absolutely blame the Democrats. Not just the Democratic party, but the media as well. They (the parties, both of them) are massively corrupt. Not my party, though.
The Democrats (not my party) offered a viable candidate. A much more viable candidate than Trump. Not the best candidate they had (that would be Sanders) and not the one I would have preferred (that would also have been Sanders) and not anything other than a broadly traditional politician (again, that would have been Sanders), and not the one I voted for in the primary (hey, Sanders, yet again!) but still - viable. She even won the majority of the votes. By millions of votes. Which brings me to also throwing fault at the electoral college, which has become a travesty of its original intent and design through corrupt legislation. But that was the game, and the Republicans won it. Unfortunately, that meant the USA got the shaft.
Just FYI, again, with great emphasis, the Democrats are in no way "my party." Clinton was simply the far better of two bad choices. This was patently obvious as Trump spoke repeated bits of nonsense and vicious tripe during his campaign. The day the Republicans (or anyone else, for that matter) field a candidate that I feel (a) can actually win and (b) offers a superior (even if not objectively good) set of campaign planks and assessed abilities, that candidate will have my vote.
Again, not my party. Either of them. Further:
Are you under the impression that I think any more highly of those who harmed the country by not voting at all, than I do of those who harmed the country by voting for Trump? I most certainly do not. However, that doesn't change the fact that voting for Trump was extremely unwise. Some of the reasons why someone might have been so unwise are what provided the fodder for my previous remarks. It was no less wise to not go to the polls at all, but that wasn't the point of the remark I was replying to.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @11:36PM (1 child)
I can spend half an hour calling you names too, but that doesn't make you a billionaire real estate mogul / tv celebrity / president. You'll still be a loser. So maybe try looking in the mirror and get off your high horse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:43AM
Nice non-response.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:45AM (6 children)
> And, yes, Trump remains the lesser of the two evils that were offered to us.
Nonsense. Trump is an idiot, an incompetent, a blatant and habitual liar, an illiterate, an historical ignoramus, a racist, a scofflaw.....
That may all be true, but it still doesn't prove that Trump is worse. There was every indication that Hillary wanted to start a war with Russia in Syria. I was a Bernie fan, but I can still admit that Hillary was a horrible pick. Whether she was actually worse, I don't think we'll ever know for sure (unless you can invent a device to look at parallel universes). I will give Trump credit for the fact that we aren't yet in a new war. That may or may not have been the case with Hillary.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:02AM (3 children)
Yes, except... no, there wasn't. It was hysteria, the vast majority of the loudest nonsense coming directly from extremely dubious sources. What that was actually about was no more than the US declaring a no-fly zone in Syria. At the very most, that would have resulted in tensions in (okay, and over) Syria - not "a war with Russia." It's hyperbolic nonsense. Just like a great deal of the other poo-flingery that was held up as "omg" during the campaign.
The fact is, Russia doesn't want a war with us any more than we want a war with them. Neither country is friendly or respectful of the other, and yeah, it's unpleasant as hell. But neither country wants a major war - which it would most definitely be - and both will go to great lengths to avoid it. That's been amply demonstrated through all the years of the cold war. When tensions get high, both countries back off and/or deflect. We know these people; and they know us.
Clinton had serious - even terrible - warts. But "wanting to start a war with Russia" definitely wasn't one of them. Her problems were in fairly usual areas for a Democrat: fluffing the rich and powerful; constitutional erosion; crushing personal and consensual choice; the drug war; OMG "terrorists"; "think of the children"; that sort of thing. Basically, more of the same. This, against throwing a a wrench consisting of a visibly incompetent and socially retarded idiot into the mix. From my POV, it wasn't even a choice, once Sanders was eliminated.
The fact that some voters still can't recognize the magnitude of the error they made is a profound demonstration of confirmation bias. Trump's obvious proclivity - as easily determined from his own actions and statements - to do exactly the wrong thing should have been enough prior to entering the voting booth assuming only that the voter tried to take a serious look. Okay, for some, they weren't. Wow, but okay. For others, they didn't even look. Or where they looked was so toxic and misleading - Fox News, Breitbart - they were simply unable to get out of the mental morass imposed by those media outlets. That's sort of understandable. Sort of. These were the people running around thinking there's a war on Christmas, and that Obama wasn't a US citizen, and that his wearing a tan suit - a tan suit FFS - was "not presidential." The intractably deluded.
But now we're here. Trump's year-long list of errors, lies, and general incompetence still hasn't penetrated through many of these voter's heads; at that point, they have to be written off. They can't be reached within the context of any reasonable expenditure of effort. There's no point in extended arguments, there's no point in bumper stickers, posters, advertisements. We even know the magnitude of the problem: It's around 35%; Trump's amazingly low popularity tells the tale with very little uncertainty. Doesn't bother me; I've passed through the "omg" stage and am well into the "yes, apparently there are a lot of politically incompetent voters out there, oh well" stage. But we - I - know from past experience that when things go seriously off kilter, as they have with this president, the voters have always stepped up and swung the pendulum back. They did it with Bush; they'll do it again with Trump.
So he's a cooked goose, politically speaking. He'll either be firmly and incontrovertibly out at the end of four years, or congress will get tired of having the country led by a buffoon who specializes in revealing them as buffoons, and they'll impeach him or 25th amendment him before his term is up.
Me, I'm just waiting for the inevitable backlash. It's going to be a popcorn-heavy time.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:14AM (1 child)
Is there any hope the DNC will start appealing to real progressive values, or will they be running Oprah in 3 years? (Doesn't need to be Oprah specifically; pick any woman celebrity who's a household name.)
Running Oprah is a good way to irrevocably shatter the country. Real progressive values, as opposed to fake SJW horseshit, is the only thing that can save us from this simultaneous assault from two camps of right-wing authoritarians (Murkins and SJWs). The lesson the DNC needs to learn from 2016 is that the people want a progressive like Sanders, not whichever lizard person whose turn it is.
I'm expecting to see firsthand what an irrevocable shattering looks like, though I eternally hold out hope that past results don't guarantee future.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:43PM
If Oprah becomes president, she'll appoint Dr. Oz as surgeon general, and he'll be pushing all kinds of quackery bullshit. Public health in the US will be a disaster; even Trump is better.
The Democratic Party really epitomizes the wise saying from Lord Dark Helmet: "Evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:41PM
What that was actually about was no more than the US declaring a no-fly zone in Syria.
How exactly would that *not* have started a war with Russia when the US shot down a Russian jet that inevitably disregarded the no-fly zone? And what gives the US authority to declare a no-fly zone in Syria in the first place, especially when the Russian military is already operating there? What makes you think the Russians would agree to that?
Clinton had serious - even terrible - warts. But "wanting to start a war with Russia" definitely wasn't one of them.
I disagree. Even W. Bush wasn't that bad: at least he had the intelligence to invade countries that didn't have Russia already operating there. You may think Russia doesn't want a war, but that doesn't mean they're just going to knuckle under any time the US decides to unilaterally impose its will.
Her problems were in fairly usual areas for a Democrat: fluffing the rich and powerful; constitutional erosion; crushing personal and consensual choice; the drug war; OMG "terrorists"; "think of the children"; that sort of thing.
But now we're here. Trump's year-long list of errors, lies, and general incompetence still hasn't penetrated through many of these voter's heads
And compared to Hillary (whose problems you yourself list here), exactly how has Trump done such a terrible job? Honestly, I'm aghast that I'm defending Trump here, but as lousy as he's been, I really don't see how the outcome is any worse than Hillary, and in fact it's probably been better. We would absolutely have gotten involved in some type of military conflict with Russia in Syria, and if you can't see that, I feel sorry for you. The biggest problems I've seen with Trump's actions this first year are 1) nominating (successfully) a very conservative SCOTUS justice, who we'll now be stuck with for several decades, and 2) picking Jeff Sessions for AG, who's now attempting to bring back federal MJ enforcement, though not much has actually happened there yet. Sometimes I wonder if Trump isn't just a puppet for the PTB, because we're really not seeing the complete disaster that seems like should have happened with his incompetence, and he seems to have actually picked a few good subordinates (Mattis and Tillerson in particular), and his antics are just a diversion.
But we - I - know from past experience that when things go seriously off kilter, as they have with this president, the voters have always stepped up and swung the pendulum back. They did it with Bush; they'll do it again with Trump.
Now you've actually proven that you don't know what you're talking about. The voters didn't "step up" with Bush (II), they re-elected him for another term after he started two, not one, but *two* wars in the mideast. The same thing is going to happen in 2020: the Dems are going to pick another lousy candidate (either Hillary again for a 3rd time, or maybe that idiot Oprah who peddles snake oil and quackery on her show), and they're going to lose, and we'll have 4 more years of Trump. And it's not just the voters that are incompetent, it's the opposition party, for picking such terrible choices. And Kerry wasn't even that bad, but these days the Dems are intent on picking people that are far, far worse, so the Reps can get away with some really awful candidates.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 17 2018, @09:47PM (1 child)
My general take on both of the major party candidates when it comes to foreign policy:
- Donald Trump could very easily start World War III by accident. His complete lack of experience with diplomacy, government, and military matters, combined with a hot temper and impulsiveness, could get us all into real trouble. For instance, a Twitter feud with a foreign leader could easily escalate.
- Hillary Clinton could very easily start World War III on purpose. Her extensive experience with diplomacy, government, and military matters, combined with close friendships with Cold War war criminals like Henry Kissinger, could get us all into real trouble. This scenario has her listening to people who think like Buck Turgidson in Dr Strangelove.
I'm fairly certain Clinton's scenario would be less bad, just because she'd be more prepared and thus more likely for the US to win it, but I didn't see a path to things not getting very ugly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:24PM
I have to disagree. As another poster said, it's better to have incompetent evil rather than competent evil. With Trump, at least his hot temper and impulsiveness are IMO less likely to turn into anything, because they aren't really policy, and he has other people in the chain of command. And the foreign leader does too. With Hillary, she knows how to work the system and the people around her to achieve her goals, and that's really scary.
So far, it looks like Trumpism is actually working: the two Koreas are now planning to attend the Olympics in a unified fashion, the first time ever. Maybe by being such an incompetent stooge, the two Koreas decided they needed to just ignore the US and work things out between themselves.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by crafoo on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:43AM (7 children)
I'm curious why you think voting for Trump harmed the US, was unwise, and what policies and/or changes he's acted on that have been so damaging to our country?
And calling Hillary a viable candidate, come on man. That's so divorced from reality it does really bring into question your judgement.
I'm not seeing any real harm here so far. Marginal improvements in some areas, a slightly improved economy although that may be unrelated. If we get illegal immigration under control and get a diminished FBI and CIA in the bargain, that's a pretty good term of office if you ask me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:50AM
You might want to watch something else in addition to (or preferably instead of) Fox news.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:23AM (5 children)
Well, let it never be said I let your curiosity bump go unscratched in this matter.
Trump has permitted coal pollution in streams via deregulation. He has likewise encouraged more pollution from motor vehicles. He has said some very stupid and destabilizing things about nuclear weapons, to those with nuclear weapons. He has attacked the ACA and managed to cause some significant damage to it by undercutting the financial structure that made it work. He has engaged in wholly uncalled for fear mongering about immigrants, "human trafficking", and sanctuary cities. He has acted to endanger rural train and air service. He has interfered with already-issued visas. He has blatantly lied about all manner of things, including wiretapping, how many people attended his inauguration, and the national debt, not to mention the daily deluge of idiot tweets, which are often seasoned with lies and errors, when you can get past the sixth grade use of English. He has wasted huge amonts of money traveling in the process of pretending his golf resort is the "southern white house." He continues to push for his ridiculous and disastrously expensive "wall." he ignores the national security apparatus briefings and gets his news from right wing conspiracy sites. He has pushed development of the environmentally dangerous pipelines back into motion... not using American steel, either. He has interfered with women's and children's healthcare. He has proposed wasting even more money on our oversized military. He promised increases in infrastructure spending, but his budget cuts infrastructure spending. He's supported white nationalists, abused the handicapped personally, called small countries "shitholes", made enemies out of the Australian prime minister and pretty much the entire government of England, pushed the drug war further downhill through his attorney general, alienated both the FBI and the CIA, appointed ridiculous and incompetent people to important government posts, been caught outright in pussygrabgate while at the same time shaming his wife, not to mention marching into the white house and leaving her behind at the car. Interviews with the man result in word salads that serve as a very clear window into a very bewildered mind; and that window is open to the world - we're a laughingstock.
He is visibly and risibly narcissistic, misogynist, xenophobic, sexist, rude, compulsive, racist, poorly spoken, selfish, historically ignorant, scientifically illiterate, and frankly, not too bright. He's a national embarrassment, is what he is.
Is it? Sure is peculiar how the majority of votes was for her, and it took a baseless news flash about a nothing-to-it FBI investigation to even push her down to a ~3 million vote margin. Divorced from reality, really? Pot, meet kettle. Thank the EC for bringing home the orange bacon. It wasn't the voters.
Yes, I understand that you are not. It's very interesting. You're entitled to your opinions, of course. It's just unfortunate that the facts on the ground don't support them.
Let me tell you exactly what I think will happen. Trump's term will end one way or another, very likely early, and just as he and the Republicans have undone what was done before them, the next bunch in there will turn those things right back around. The FBI and the CIA will not be diminished; they'll grow anew, and much crowing will be done about how Trump's errors are being corrected as fast as possible. The illegal immigrants who pick your vegetables and mow your lawns and serve your food will still be doing that, and US citizens still won't actually want the jobs they are doing.
This is not a permanent, or even semi-permanent, change in the nation's status (barring an unfortunate twitch of Kim's nervous trigger finger, or Trump's), it's just an interval, one much more toxic than the Bush II era - and you know what happened after Bush II, right? We elected a very intelligent black man (a politician very much like Clinton, only less obviously sneaky) and the moron contingent went right out of their tiny little minds. We had eight years of that, and then... this. Well, again, when this one is over, you can count on a pretty profound swing back the other way. Because if you want to think of this as an experiment in throwing monkey wrenches, you can consider that it has resulted in great problems and large steps backwards; that won't be allowed to stand. IMHO.
My opinion, like yours, is just that. We will have to wait and see what happens. Feel free to come back and reference this if I'm wrong. I'll be right there to take my beating if indeed the country decides to swim further into this kind of thing. I'm feeling pretty secure that isn't going to happen. But we'll see.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 16 2018, @05:08PM (2 children)
Here I go again, defending Trump. I really must be living in an alternate universe.
Trump has permitted coal pollution in streams via deregulation.
Has this actually amounted to anything? Coal isn't economically viable in this country any more; deregulation isn't going to bring back the glory days. Even China is cutting coal usage as they move to cleaner sources of power. Trump's actions may cause some short-term backslide, but coal's days are numbered, and nothing Trump can do can change that.
He has likewise encouraged more pollution from motor vehicles.
How so? Has it actually resulted in policy changes and real problems? Cars are getting cleaner all the time, and the fleet is getting cleaner as older cars are removed from usage (wrecks, wearing out, etc.) and are replaced with newer, cleaner ones. I haven't heard of any pollution standards being rolled back.
He has said some very stupid and destabilizing things about nuclear weapons, to those with nuclear weapons.
How's that worse than shooting down Russian military aircraft? The policies of the previous administrations haven't worked in NK, what makes you think continuing them will?
He has attacked the ACA and managed to cause some significant damage to it by undercutting the financial structure that made it work.
This is worrisome but we haven't seen any effects just yet. And to be fair, it was the whole GOP that's wanted to do this, for quite some time now.
He has engaged in wholly uncalled for fear mongering about immigrants, "human trafficking", and sanctuary cities.
Calling for stuff doesn't result in actual policy. The DACA thing is actual policy action. Really, I haven't seen a lot of change here, except from the DACA policy change.
He has acted to endanger rural train and air service.
Citation needed. I haven't heard anything about this. Amtrak has been a disaster for a long time.
He has interfered with already-issued visas.
That was bad, but it didn't affect that many people and was quickly fixed.
He has blatantly lied about all manner of things, including wiretapping, how many people attended his inauguration, and the national debt, not to mention the daily deluge of idiot tweets, which are often seasoned with lies and errors, when you can get past the sixth grade use of English.
So what? His lies don't automatically translate to policy changes. Him lying about the inauguration crowd doesn't result in policy changes, it's just fodder for the press and to anger people.
He has wasted huge amonts of money traveling in the process of pretending his golf resort is the "southern white house."
Obama wasted huge amounts of money traveling too, and I'm pretty sure Bush did as well. Nothing new here.
He continues to push for his ridiculous and disastrously expensive "wall."
I still don't see a wall.
he ignores the national security apparatus briefings and gets his news from right wing conspiracy sites.
And what exactly have been the negative effects of this?
He has pushed development of the environmentally dangerous pipelines back into motion... not using American steel, either.
Those pipelines were being built under Obama too. No change here.
He has interfered with women's and children's healthcare.
How so exactly? Remember, he's not a dictator. Healthcare has been terrible here for poorer people for ages. Trump hasn't improved it for sure, but I fail to see how he's made it much worse, esp. if you look only at him and not the Republicans in Congress.
He has proposed wasting even more money on our oversized military.
Proposing things does not automatically result in policy or budget changes.
He promised increases in infrastructure spending, but his budget cuts infrastructure spending.
Going back on campaign promises is not unique to Trump. Obama promised the most transparent administration in history, and look how that went.
He's supported white nationalists, abused the handicapped personally, called small countries "shitholes", made enemies out of the Australian prime minister and pretty much the entire government of England
Calling people names doesn't equate to policy changes.
pushed the drug war further downhill through his attorney general
So far, I haven't seen any changes here, though it may be too soon to tell. But Sessions has had a year now, and while Sessions certainly doesn't like it, the loosening of MJ laws doesn't seem to have reversed yet.
alienated both the FBI and the CIA,
What's the problem with the latter? The organization that organizes coups in 3rd-world countries? If anything, they should be cut back. How has any of this resulted in negative effects for the American people?
appointed ridiculous and incompetent people to important government posts
Nothing new here. Remember "Brownie"?
been caught outright in pussygrabgate while at the same time shaming his wife
Again, how does this affect the American people? There's no policy problems here.
Interviews with the man result in word salads that serve as a very clear window into a very bewildered mind; and that window is open to the world - we're a laughingstock.
Again, how is this causing problems in everyday life for the American people?
In short, how is life much worse now for the average American than it was under Obama 1, 2, or 4 years ago? You haven't proven your point here. All you've proven is that Trump is a buffoon and an embarrassment, but that doesn't prove anything about any alleged harm that his administration has caused.
I'm not seeing any real harm here so far.
Yes, I understand that you are not. It's very interesting. You're entitled to your opinions, of course. It's just unfortunate that the facts on the ground don't support them.
You're entitled to your opinions as well, but if you're going to make claims of harm, you need to actually provide evidence to back up your claims. You haven't done this. All you've done is show "Trump is an idiot and makes us look bad!". Sorry, that's not enough to prove actual harm. We've had a year now with this buffoon, and so far everything seems about the same as last year, except the weather is worse (which we can't blame on him in this short timeframe).
it's just an interval, one much more toxic than the Bush II era - and you know what happened after Bush II, right? We elected a very intelligent black man
That's not the way I remember it. The way I remember it, we re-elected Bush II and got stuck with 4 more years of him. From this and other posts from you, you seem to have somehow erased those 4 years from your memory. And after his 8 years were up, *then* we elected a black man who was an excellent speaker, and gave us basically more of the same, though he did give us a healthcare law that was the product of a right-wing thinktank.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:11PM (1 child)
Sigh. Really? I have to do your googling for you?
Why coal pollution in streams is a problem regardless of the trend of coal usage [vox.com]
Then you're simply not paying attention. [nationalgeographic.com]
Yes, we most certainly have. The removal of the subsidies has caused insurance rates to rise, and plans to reduce coverage, and plans to exit regions. Yes, the current crop of Republicans are complicit, no argument there. Our citizens will die as a direct result of this.
He hasn't just "called for stuff", he's issued executive orders that have caused direct and rather immediate harm, and have now made it through SCOTUS. Quite aside from that, yes, it does cause harm. There's a reason we say here on the net "Don't feed the trolls", it's because doing so raises the noise level and deters actual sane dialog, and in so doing, makes the environment uncomfortable for the sane and serious. That's what Trump's bloviating amounts to, only writ on the national (and international) political stage. It's bad, in and of itself, and again, makes this country look like it encourages a jingoist, xenophobic society, when really, that's not been the case, and should never be the case.
Here's the thing that many – including you – don't seem to understand. Rural air and Amtrack are not like a business. They are like the highways, only way better / faster, variously. The primary benefit of these transport modalities are not that they directly make a profit, any more than the highways primary benefit is that they directly make a profit; what they do is enable travel and so enable commerce and much tighter family ties and so make living in the boonies, where much of your food and raw materials are produced, a reasonable proposition. It's hard to live hundreds of miles from family and supplies. It's hard to get heavy equipment in and out of here. It's hard to move expertise in and out of here. Here are your citations:
Amtrack cuts [theguardian.com]
Rural air cuts [seattletimes.com]
The economic value of rural America to non-rural America is huge; that is why there are roads here, trains here, communications services here, hospitals here, postal service here, schools here, and so on. Very little of that can make a direct profit. But if you have even the most basic understanding of economics, you will, once you actually think it through, immediately grasp why the value gained is worth the costs. Or, if you can't figure it out... well, you're not alone, anyway.
There's no valid "but" here - it was an asshole move, by an asshole, that hurt people.
So this degrades the office, the respect other countries have for us, the reception of American citizens elsewhere, the attitudes when commerce and treaties are at stake - the man is visibly and profoundly untrustworthy, or more probably simply batshit insane. It bloody well matters.
Again, you're not paying attention. The process has already started with prototypes. [washingtontimes.com] We will likely see further damage as long as that idiot is playing to his brownophobe cheering section, which seems to me to be likely to be as long as he can stay in that office.
...you know there's a reason for those briefings, right? How comfortable will you be with that habit if something happens and he doesn't know the relevant facts, can't make an informed decision or even understand the situation, and shit goes sideways? Your dismissal of this tells me you're just arguing for the sake of arguing, and not thinking.
Well no, I don't. I just have to be sure of my facts. And I am, very much so, because I've actually looked into this stuff as it went down instead of just sucking down the first media blurb or impassioned web post I see. From what you've said so far, you appear to be focused almost entirely on immediate and first-order effects. This blinds you to the actual weight of the issues at hand here (and others as well.) You can't even be bothered to Google up the issues, and you're not giving me serious responses, as amply demonstrated by your remark about the briefing issue.
I will comment on one more thing. This:
That is either absurdly disingenuous, or massively uninformed, and either way it's an utterly unworthy statement.
Yes, Obama was a traditional politician, warts and all. No, the Obama era wasn't even remotely "more of the same." The list of things Obama supported and pushed for that were positive is unusually long and varied for any president and in many cases more significant than most presidents. [washingtonmonthly.com] And the list I linked there is not complete, either - I just can't be bothered to do the rest of the work you should be doing – should have already done – if you want to actually take an informed stand as opposed to throwing out nonsense like the foregoing quote. It would really benefit you to refresh (or inform) your memory.
I am no fan of the evil and wrongful things government does, and can rail about them at length, and that most certainly includes various harmful actions taken, and the stated harmful positions of, Obama and his administration. But I don't bury my head in the sand about positive thing X because I am offended by negative thing Y. No matter how long the list of Y things is. I also don't miss the point that I'm not - no one is - going to get perfection in a president. So WRT election, I pick the best available candidate that can reasonably be expected to have a chance of winning; and WRT a president's actions in office, I laud the important things (Obama gave me a great deal of cause for that... Bush did not produce much, and Trump has not produced more than one or two as yet, and that amidst a profound flurry of errors, incompetence, and what actually has every appearance of outright evildoing.) The whole thing involves actually paying attention, and then doing some checking on what the media - and the various denizens of the web - feed us. Use a search engine if you want to know what's actually going on. If you don't, then just watch TV like the rest of the mushrooms.
I can't make you do that. But I can hope you will.
Enough, then. You are welcome to the last word.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:17PM
Ok, you've got a few good points here.
Why coal pollution in streams is a problem regardless of the trend of coal usage [vox.com]
From your link:
Appalachian Voices, an environmental group, estimates that coal companies have buried over 2,000 miles of streams in the region through mountaintop removal mining since the 1990s. And there’s growing evidence that when mining debris and waste gets into water supplies, the toxic metals can have dire health impacts for the people and mostly rural communities living nearby.
Ok, but at least we know that this mostly affects Trump voters, so they're getting exactly what they voted for. I feel sorry for the wildlife though.
The removal of the subsidies has caused insurance rates to rise, and plans to reduce coverage, and plans to exit regions.
Last I checked, subsidies were still in place. Some plans were exiting regions before Trump came along; ACA has always been a bad law, a band-aid on a massive open wound. It was never going to work very well.
Yes, the current crop of Republicans are complicit, no argument there. Our citizens will die as a direct result of this.
Yes, but this would have happened with any Republican in office, and maybe even with a Democrat since Congress is controlled by the GOP. Trump wasn't unique in his opposition to ACA, and some of his bloviating was actually much more reasonable-sounding than what the other mainstream GOP politicians were calling for. Trump specifically said on the campaign trail that he wanted everyone to have coverage; GOPers like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul do not want this.
That's what Trump's bloviating amounts to, only writ on the national (and international) political stage. It's bad, in and of itself, and again, makes this country look like it encourages a jingoist, xenophobic society
So now you're mad that Trump is just showing America for what it really is? I'm sorry if the truth hurts, but much of American society really is racist, jingoist, and xenophobic. Just look at what happened in Charlottesville, and the defense the neo-Nazis and other racists got all over the country, even right here on SN. How is it bad for Trump to be honest?
what they do is enable travel and so enable commerce and much tighter family ties and so make living in the boonies, where much of your food and raw materials are produced, a reasonable proposition
That's a bunch of crap. I'm very well-acquainted with rural life and rural dwellers; most of my family lives that way. The vast majority of people in rural areas aren't there to produce your food and raw materials, they're there because stuff like this subsidizes their existence there, so they can drive around gigantic vehicles they don't need and use far more energy per capita than anyone in the world, while not doing any kind of work that actually needs to be located remotely, or frequently not doing any kind of work at all because they live on government benefits. Most food now is produced by large agribusiness corporations with a lot of automation, and most rural areas do not have any mining operations nearby.
It's hard to live hundreds of miles from family and supplies.
Then don't. Move into a city. The vast majority of people living in the boonies don't need to be there, and aren't an important part of the economy there. These people simply don't like cities, but they're being subsidized to live the way they do.
Amtrak isn't really needed for rural areas. It's needed for inter-city travel, and it's pretty lousy for that compared to trains in Europe and Japan.
The economic value of rural America to non-rural America is huge; that is why there are roads here, trains here, communications services here, hospitals here, postal service here, schools here, and so on.
No, it's because of inertia, and because of people who refuse to leave. In case you haven't noticed, Americans have been urbanizing in droves in the past several decades, and small towns are dying, and for good reason: their industries are obsolete, and we don't need armies of people to work on farms any more thanks to automation and mechanization. The people who are left are generally old people who refuse to leave, and young ones too stupid to leave.
So this degrades the office, the respect other countries have for us, the reception of American citizens elsewhere
So what? We had that when Dubya was in office. And again, *we voted for Trump*, so if that means other countries respect us less, then we're getting what we voted for.
Again, you're not paying attention. The process has already started with prototypes.
We've had a wall along parts of the southern border for probably decades now. Have you ever been to San Diego? Prototypes do not equal an actual wall, or significant spending.
There's no valid "but" here - it was an asshole move, by an asshole, that hurt people.
I can point to asshole moves that hurt people by all the Presidents during my lifetime I'm pretty sure.
From what you've said so far, you appear to be focused almost entirely on immediate and first-order effects.
I'm focused on *actual* effects, which I'm not seeing many of so far. Basically, your claim is "well nothing too horrible has happened yet, but it will!!!" Maybe, maybe not. So far, not. You haven't proven anything, your whole argument seems to be "Trump is an idiot and should be impeached based on that alone!". Dubya was an idiot too, and look what happened there. Being an idiot isn't a disqualifier for the Presidency.
As for your list of accomplishments, that's extremely biased. Many of those are genuine improvements, others not so unarguably, such as the GM bailout (should have let it die and be broken up and bought up by competitors), the broadband subsidies (which went to incumbent companies who pocketed the money and didn't deliver anything), and the space program (Obama was a disaster here; we haven't had manned space launch capability in ages because of him, and the decision to abandon/bypass the Moon was just stupid; we're in no shape to send humans to Mars when we can't even build a semi-permanent presence on our nearby Moon).
Is Trump bad? Sure. Is he the complete world-ending disaster you claim he'll be? Sorry, but I'm not yet seeing evidence of that. We already had an idiot buffoon as President back in 2000, and we re-elected him, and we managed to survive that. I'm not seeing yet how Trump is actually worse than Bush. When Trump starts two (not just one, but two) separate wars, and actually has people tortured, *then* I'll admit that he's at least as bad as Bush.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:33PM (1 child)
It's almost like you are cheering on the next civil war. You do realize that there are limits to what people will put up with? With Americans engrossed in moronic bullshit like Facefook, I certainly can't say what the limits are, but you are flirting with those limits.
The ACA for instance. It doesn't work. The government is subsidizing each and every insurance policy purchased. And, the subsidies are going to run out - at which point, damned near no one will be able to pay the premiums. Yet - gubbermint was determined to punish any uninsured persons for being uninsured.
How many people do you think could have been prosecuted, without some violence taking place?
Maybe you would like to explain that to your freindly FBI and/or Secret Service agent? Try THINKING about what you say, and post. That looks like a veiled call for an assassination to me.
But, of course, if you were THINKIING, you would understand just how evil Hillary is, and how much bullshit the party throws at you. Almost all of the shit that you get worked up about, is just stupid red herrings, meant to keep you occupied, while government gets on with the serious business of governing.
How is the mass surveillance going, anyway? And, what was Hillary's position on that? How about the Democrat party's position? Oh yeah - they're in lockstep with the Republicans on that issue. Smoke and mirrors, to fool the chumps, but keep on building the infrastructure to watch the proles 24/7, 365.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Unless he suffers a stroke, Trump will finish his term. And, unless he's caught en flagrante with prepubescent children in his bed, he'll probably be re-elected. Your apoplexy won't change a thing - recent history suggests that the incumbent almost always wins, no matter how good or bad he might be.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:26PM
Your apoplexy won't change a thing - recent history suggests that the incumbent almost always wins, no matter how good or bad he might be.
Not exactly. Recent history shows that the incumbent always wins, *except* when the economy takes a dive during his re-election campaign (and it helps if it turns out he went back on a campaign promise to not raise taxes).
If the economy is doing badly in 2020, expect Trump to lose. If it's doing OK, expect him to win, unless maybe the Democrats break with tradition and actually pick a likeable candidate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:24AM
That's exactly what makes him the lesser of two evils. Incompetent evil is better than competent evil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @06:21PM (2 children)
but he didn't mention the other side
saying everyone is jumping off the bridge or peeing in the pool doesn't mean it explains logically why you and your friends did it as well.
if you're to convince us your team is better because the other team is stupid, pointing out that they do stupid things *too* or that they did it first... is no winning argument.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:43PM (1 child)
Well - I don't have a team. I'm a registered independent voter, because I despised the two parties pretty much equally when I registered to vote in 1974. Times change, and the parties have changed. Today, I still despise the Republicans just about as much as I did back then. But, I despise the Democrats much more than I did then. It's like the Republicans are the Pied Piper, taking a leisureley stroll to hell, while leading the ignorant children along. The Democrats, on the other hand, insist that we all ride a supercharged, turbocharged, quantum powered train to hell at hypervelocity.
If I had to choose, I'd rather follow the pied piper. I'm in no hurry to get to hell. But, I refuse to choose, actually. I'm independent.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:57PM
Don't worry, you're definitely going to Hell all by your lonesome.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 15 2018, @08:40PM (10 children)
How many boxes of halogen bulbs do you go through a week with that level of projection?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 15 2018, @09:17PM (9 children)
Oh that's hilarious. I put my shit out without filter in front of this bunch nearly every day and (this part's key) do not become a rabid cunt if someone mocks me for it. It's a rare occasion but sometimes they're right. Rabid cunt is your default setting though. It's a common failing in weak women I've noted over the years, thinking being a raging bitch is the same thing as being a strong woman. I've known plenty of strong women in my life. You're not even close but I can give lessons in the difference if you like.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @09:52PM (4 children)
Having a chip on your shoulder doesn’t make you weak.
I know the southern types you speak of. Strong enough to vote Roy Moore.
Azuma really gets under your skin. Easy to do for such a weak woman.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 15 2018, @09:59PM
He thinks if he says it enough it'll become reality :)
The best part is, he does 3/4 of my work for me. All I have to do is point out where he's full of shit and he'll go into the kind of frothing, rabid spin cycle I've only ever seem from the cartoon Tasmanian Devil before. In the process, he'll make himself look much, much worse than anything I could possibly say or do would. Example here is how he just admitted to not having a filter, which is something I wouldn't be taken seriously for if I had accused him of, but here he is saying it himself. Right from the jackass's mouth, as the case may be.
Gotta go, popcorn's done :D
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 15 2018, @10:13PM (2 children)
You're reading anger where there isn't any. She's a toy I enjoy playing with, nothing more.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 15 2018, @10:20PM
Keep telling yourself that, Uzzard :D Here in the reality-based community, everyone can see you've got your head so far up your ass you can see your grandpa's last meal all the way down in Hell. I don't even need to do anything; you tear your own flesh and spill your own blood unbidden.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by blackhawk on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:34PM
"It's the puppet's dream, that they are pulling the strings."
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:31AM (2 children)
I see you've met Lola [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:19AM
I have always wondered why TMB talks like a woman, but walks like a man. Bola! B-O-L-A, Bola!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:22PM
Gracias, a good laugh was just the thing to start the morning with.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by blackhawk on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:30PM
That's a long way to go to try and troll, even in 2018, and all it does is make you look weaker and more ineffectual. Surely you have something better to say than just trotting out some outdated insult for women and their reproductive organs?
Why don't you try and troll on topic? Be controversial, but also insightful - perhaps somewhat on the fence. Present a different point of view, but still a valid one.
At the very least, be entertaining.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:38PM
OK were you speaking about christians or satanists?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @06:50PM
No self-respecting Satanist, of any variety, would ever worship Satan.
It doesn't make them trolls, it makes them something other than what Christian fear-mongers make them out to be.