US politics: Georgia on my mind

[Free Northman Reborn]

23 minutes ago, mormont said:

OK. But to ground this belief in the fact that his personal wealth has not increased is a flawed, fallacious, even specious bit of reasoning. You rely totally on the post hoc (estimated) valuation of his business interests and utterly ignore direct evidence of him funneling cash to his businesses and engaging in corruption. 

 

But they're not claiming to know his net wealth, and their argument doesn't depend in any way on knowing it. It's based on direct proof of him acting to personally profit from his office. 

You have no counter to that, it seems. So let's agree that it is true, and that Donald Trump is corrupt and seeks to personally profit from his office. 

This is tiring.

I’m not saying that out of personal moral principles  he WON’t use his office to benefit himself, or that he HASN’t done so already wherever the opportunity presented itself. He is an opportunist.

What I am saying is that he didn’t become President for that purpose, and his policies are not motivated by some overarching self enrichment goal. He would be far more popular if he pursued less controversial policies, providing more room to push a self enrichment agenda, if that was his motivation.

Do I think he will refrain from using his influence to push government officials to use his hotel or whatever other peripheral schemes he might come up with, due to some internal ethical compass? Hell no.

But at best those sleezy side acts only slow down the net wealth loss and brand damage that his broader Presidential policies are causing.

[David Selig]

A few significant "favours" to the Saudis, other foreign governments and his billionaire buddies which will be paid back in the future more than make up for any damage to the Trump brand in financial terms.

I don't think that's his primary motivation (it's clearly an ego thing for him), but let's not kid ourselves, it's very easy to make an awful lot of money when you are the president of the USA, have no ethical scruples, have an army of lawyers and accountants experienced at tax evasion and money laundering and have a cult like following which will forgive you anything. The superrich class won't forget he got them a big tax cut and implemented plenty of other policies in their favour. Sheldon Adelson and the other  pro-Israeli billionaires won't forget the embassy move to Jerusalem.

Quote

What I am saying is that he didn’t become President for that purpose, and his policies are not motivated by some overarching self enrichment goal. He would be far more popular if he pursued less controversial policies, providing more room to push a self enrichment agenda, if that was his motivation.

But Trump thinks his controversial policies are what keeps him popular, and is probably correct. He is a moron who can barely says two coherent sentences in a row and lies blatantly almost every time he opens his mouth yet still remain decently popular and is idolised by the Republican base. he can't be an ordinary president who pursues less controversial policies because he doesn't have the brains and the personality for that and the members of his cult following didn't vote for him to be such a president. They would abandon him if he becomes a mainstream Republican and stop the circus.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

19 hours ago, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

Besides that, God abhors a multicultural society.  He struck down the Tower of Babel and divided the people of the world by language and nation because He knows that multiculturalism breeds moral relativity, and moral relativity kills faith.

It seems that you missed the point of the Babel narrative. First, it's purpose is primarily aetological: It seeks to answer, "Why do humans have different cultures and languages?" Two, this aetological purpose is also important in how it sets up the departure of Terah and Abram (Abraham!). Three, and most imporantly, you got the message backwards. The Babel story presents God disdaining the transgressive efforts of a monocultural society. A multiculturalism does not even exist until God confounds their language and divides them. Fourth, any attitude regarding views towards "multiculturalism" gleaned from this passage must be regarded as idiomatic in so far as we recognize that it is one text, one voice among many. Five, we have a different cognitive sense for "multiculturalism" as a concept than this fairly diverse span of history.

19 hours ago, mormont said:

The last resort of the cornered right-winger finding his beliefs don't fit Christian teachings - cite the Old Testament!

Which hardly says what he think that it says.

12 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

But maybe Christians should be looking for their social and spiritual guidance from Jesus' words and the New Testament, rather than harking back to a document written at least 1000 years before Jesus was born. Of course that's a bit problematic because Jesus was a bit of a pinko socialist what with his feeding of loaves and fishes to the masses, the butt-kicking of the capitalists and FX-dealers looking to make money off worshipers at the temple, and all that social justice-y stuff.

(1) This hostility towards the Hebrew Bible is misplaced. (I know from experience that many Reformed Jews do just fine with these texts.) It's also recommending that Christians adopt something akin to the Marcionite heresy and its anti-Judaism sentiment.

(2) 1000 years before the birth of Jesus does not match with how most scholars would date the text. Admittedly, Genesis is a complicated bag of worms. It is redacted across centuries. Also, I increasingly find redaction criticism to be mind-numbingly dull to read through, as it has factionalized along some fairly transparent religious lines. We do have other texts and manuscripts (e.g., Book of Jubilees, Qumran, etc.) that we can use for determining a possible terminus dating of Genesis. That said, we are probably looking at a range between 200-500 years B.C.E. for these materials. In the grand scheme of things, when one examines the dating of the various Hebrew Bible books, the New Testament books, non-biblical sacred texts, Early Church Fathers, and Ecumenical Councils, etc., that's a relative drop in the bucket, especially for a 2000-year-old religion with conceptual historical roots in an older religious tradition.

(3) As this SJW often tells my own students, the Social Justic Warrior reading of Jesus is anchronistic, much in the same way as reading him a Capitalist-loving American advocating the right to bear arms would be.

And my irrelevant thoughts are done.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

It seems that you missed the point of the Babel narrative. First, it's purpose is primarily aetological: It seeks to answer, "Why do humans have different cultures and languages?" Two, this aetological purpose is also important in how it sets up the departure of Terah and Abram (Abraham!). Three, and most imporantly, you got the message backwards. The Babel story presents God disdaining the transgressive efforts of a monocultural society. A multiculturalism does not even exist until God confounds their language and divides them. Fourth, any attitude regarding views towards "multiculturalism" gleaned from this passage must be regarded as idiomatic in so far as we recognize that it is one text, one voice among many. Five, we have a different cognitive sense for "multiculturalism" as a concept than this fairly diverse span of history.

 

I interpret it more as a story told to simple minded folk, the most erudite of which knew less of God's creation than today's average 5-year old, about the evolution of human society. From its origins somewhere in Africa a few hundred thousand year's ago as a handful of tribes with a common simple language and basic culture, through the various great migrations that saw humans reach every continent bar one and develop many successful cultures and languages by the time the story of the tower of Babel was first told. All of that being necessary for human social, cultural and intellectual evolution far beyond a step above our primate ancestory, which surely would never have happened if all of humanity had stayed within the confines of its place of origin.

(1) I don't know where you get the idea that I'm hostile towards the Old Testament. I never said the book wasn't legit, or appropriate to the exigencies of the time.

(2) Ok, but the point stands whether it's 200 years or 1000 years. It's not the message the Jesus brought to reform the religion of his birth. Which as an evolution on the Old testament should be the principle source of Christian guidance.

(3) It's my lapsed priest turned trade unionist grandfather who said Jesus was the perfect socialist. I'm happy to go with his interpretations as a much greater scholar of the Bible than me.

 

[Mexal]

Bombs sent to Soros, Clinton and Obama in the last 7 days. Civility police are out in full force. I bet this gets very little play in conservative media.

[Paladin of Ice]

I know the topic has probably more than moved on, but I read some of this yesterday when I was at work and couldn't respond, and I just wanted to get in one more rebut to it along with what others have said.

22 hours ago, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

As for the Good Samaritan, well, it it the Church of Christ, not the Church of the Good Samaritan.  You are falling into the error that Pope Leo XIII warned against over a hundred years ago of distilling Christianity down to a socialist economic message and remove spirituality from the equation.

Besides that, God abhors a multicultural society.  He struck down the Tower of Babel and divided the people of the world by language and nation because He knows that multiculturalism breeds moral relativity, and moral relativity kills faith.

It's a little more than just the Good Samaritan. Remember dividing the Sheep and the Goats?

Quote

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Note that it specifically includes welcoming a stranger, without a caveat that they must be a fellow believer or from the same nation, (because God would care so much about manmade lines on a map) or the same ethnicity. 

So whatever Bible you bought and have been reading, you should really try to get your money back. You got a bad copy.

Oh, and as was pointed out by others regarding Babel, it was a unified culture all speaking the same language and cooperating as one that God destroyed. It takes a special kind of willful misreading to get "multiculturalism is bad" out of that. Of course, two seconds worth of thinking should tell us that Babel is a bullshit fable, unless you think that the tower built 4,000 years ago or whatever it was is bigger and taller than anything that has been built since with much more advanced construction methods, which is pretty goddamn doubtful. Strange how we haven't seen any buildings from either the ancient world (pyramids, the sphinx, etc.) or the modern, (Empire State Building, towers in Dubai, etc.) suddenly struck down by God and the countrymen suddenly speaking dozens or hundreds of different languages. Including in the days of vengeful Old Testament God.

Peculiar, that.

As far don't go to the cities of Samaritans, gee, could the supposed son of an all-loving and all-wise God who created all people be saying "Those people aren't like us, fuck them forever", or could he be saying "It's not worth the danger of trying to march into a city of  thousands of polytheistic people who are our enemies and preach that their gods are bullshit demons leading them astray and only our god is real. That'll get you killed without the message you're trying to spread ever getting out. Lets start spreading the word elsewhere, we'll take it to them later."

Cause really, which one sounds closer to being all-wise and all-knowing? Or do you just believe that Jesus and God are as big an asshole as the biggest asshole you can find while walking down the street? If so, it kinda raises the question of why you would worship them.

[DanteGabriel]

1 minute ago, Mexal said:

Bombs sent to Soros, Clinton and Obama in the last 7 days. Civility police are out in full force. I bet this gets very little play in conservative media.

Obviously a leftist false flag operation masterminded by Vince Foster and his secret son Seth Rich, who both faked their deaths to run Democrats' dirty ops from the basement of a pizzeria in Cuba. Also, the Ku Klux Klan were Democrats.

[Week]

11 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Obviously a leftist false flag operation masterminded by Vince Foster and his secret son Seth Rich, who both faked their deaths to run Democrats' dirty ops from the basement of a pizzeria in Cuba. Also, the Ku Klux Klan were Democrats.

You forgot that they are all pedophiles too.

[aceluby]

7 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

But I don’t think his anti-immigration, anti-globalisation, pro-America policies are pursued for personal enrichment. I think they are positions he genuinely identifies with. It is simply not worth the bother otherwise.

His anti-immigration stance is based on his personal racism.  His anti-globalization stance only goes as far as areas where it doesn't impact his personal enrichment.  Places where there are no Trump (or Kushner) properties or deals that could be on the table are light on this hard line stance his supporters like to perpetuate.  As for these 'pro-America' policies, his tariffs are causing companies to move overseas to avoid them, again they don't really impact him now, companies are currently eating the costs of these tariffs hoping there will be a resolution; but with none in sight prices here will rise on almost every piece of clothing and grocery, and lastly this tax cut (which I assume you'd consider a pro-America policy) will absolutely enrich him more at the cost of a trillion dollar deficit.

So yeah, I 100% disagree with your statement that his policies have nothing to do with his enrichment.  Nothing he is doing is hurting his personal enrichment, besides being a general ass and being an overall bad businessman who has been an overall bad businessman his entire career.

[Ice Queen]

Time Warner in NY was evacuated because of a suspicious package. 

So, we have three assassination attempts plus a potential bomb at the headquarters of CNN. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

I have to admit, early voting numbers have me a little spooked. But this is more an emotional response, since rationally I know that early voting numbers dont do very well predicting final outcomes (as an example, apparently Clinton was leading North Carolina over Trump comfortably in early voting but he got an in person voting advantage of 16 points)

The other caveat is mail in -> in person early voting -> in person Nov 6 is the order of how voting goes, and this is presumably R->D-> ???? At any rate, its squeaky bum time.

[Ice Queen]

And now Debbie Wasserman Schultz office has been targeted. AND John Brennan. 

 

[Martell Spy]

A Political Scientist Explains Why Democrats Must Pack the Courts to Restore Democracy

The founder of 1.20.21 explains how the courts can become a winning issue for progressives in 2020.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/why-the-democrats-need-to-pack-the-courts.html

Quote

Aaron Belkin: I think you’re asking about two related but partially distinct phenomena, both of which I’ll address below. In terms of public interest, I don’t think the issue is whether discontent about the Kavanaugh hearings can be sustained. Rather, I think the issue is that the progressive base understands that (1) Republicans stole the Supreme Court; (2) judicial theft is embedded in a range of anti-democratic practices such as voter suppression, extreme gerrymandering, dark money in politics, and lying; (3) the cumulative effect of relentless cheating is that the GOP has rigged the system; (4) one result of relentless cheating is that government is unable to solve pressing problems like health care; and (5) democracy is seriously at risk.

 

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Mexal said:

Bombs sent to Soros, Clinton and Obama in the last 7 days. Civility police are out in full force. I bet this gets very little play in conservative media.

Also multiple bomb-like devices to CNN - Time Warner.  Area shut down.

Also to a Florida office of Debbie Schulz Wasserman (D).

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, aceluby said:

His anti-immigration stance is based on his personal racism.  His anti-globalization stance only goes as far as areas where it doesn't impact his personal enrichment.  Places where there are no Trump (or Kushner) properties or deals that could be on the table are light on this hard line stance his supporters like to perpetuate.  As for these 'pro-America' policies, his tariffs are causing companies to move overseas to avoid them, again they don't really impact him now, companies are currently eating the costs of these tariffs hoping there will be a resolution; but with none in sight prices here will rise on almost every piece of clothing and grocery, and lastly this tax cut (which I assume you'd consider a pro-America policy) will absolutely enrich him more at the cost of a trillion dollar deficit.

So yeah, I 100% disagree with your statement that his policies have nothing to do with his enrichment.  Nothing he is doing is hurting his personal enrichment, besides being a general ass and being an overall bad businessman who has been an overall bad businessman his entire career.

He considers campaign funds "HIS OWN MONEY."  When it is suggested these funds be used to support r-candidates he howls he's not allowing anyone to STEAL MY MONEY.

Recall his crowing about the great investments Korea provided for golf courses, etc.  There are so many ways his time in office enriches and will enrich him, he thinks, and that's how he determines his 'policies.'  

[.H.]

On 10/23/2018 at 10:17 AM, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

Besides that, God abhors a multicultural society.  He struck down the Tower of Babel and divided the people of the world by language and nation because He knows that multiculturalism breeds moral relativity, and moral relativity kills faith.

I don't really ever bother to post in this thread, but this has to be the least insightful, least intelligent analysis of any Bibical thing I have ever had the displeasure of reading.  Not only that, but then you go on:

On 10/23/2018 at 10:26 AM, Bold Barry Whitebeard said:

Yeah God has done a lot of dick moves, like when he hardened the pharoah's heart only to unleash plagues against him.

So, not only do you presume to understand God's motives (a violence against God) you then go and outright judge God (another violence against God).  Who exactly are you to sit in judgement of God?  Who are you to judge that God makes "dick moves?"  No, this is actually the further violence of you projecting your own abhorrence onto God.

Here is the actual verse:

Quote

Genesis 11:1-9 King James Version (KJV)

11 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

² And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

³ And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.

⁴ And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

⁵ And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

⁶ And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

⁷ Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

⁸ So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

⁹ Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

What in here speaks of multiculturalism?  The builders of the tower are clearly of the same culture, being of one language.

And what speaks of moral relativism?  God's stated reason for the tower's destruction is "this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do."  What is "this" that they begin to do?  Have one language?  That makes no sense in any reading I can fathom, they already had that and God wasn't displeased.  Living together?  They were already doing that, again, and God was not displeased.  "This" is the building of the tower and the issue isn't just that they built a tower, but rather that they sought to build a tower "whose top may reach unto heaven."  The issue isn't moral relativism, that is no where in the text, nor implied.  Rather, God's stated intention is to destroy the tower because it's builders imagined they could build a tower to heaven and if they imagined that, then they are bound to think that all their other bad ideas were good ones too. 

It's an injunction against the hubris to imagine that heaven is a physical place to be achieved by corporeal means.  Or at least that is a vastly more plausible reading than what you offered.  I mean, FFS, how do you read anything about a divine judgement of multiculturalism and moral relativism in there?

[James Arryn]

All the these assassination attempts against Dems and the media are very confusing to me. The right supports Trump almost religiously, and yet somehow they are ignoring his calm, statesmanlike level-headed guidance and instead are acting like he’s explicitly and on many occasions declared war on the Dems/media and advocated violence and ‘any means necessary’ to win said wars.  

[Mexal]

8 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

All the these assassination attempts against Dems and the media are very confusing to me. The right supports Trump almost religiously, and yet somehow they are ignoring his calm, statesmanlike level-headed guidance and instead are acting like he’s explicitly and on many occasions declared war on the Dems/media and advocated violence and ‘any means necessary’ to win said wars.  

This is totally normal.

 

[Mexal]

 

[Zorral]

10 minutes ago, Mexal said:

 

Evidently the Saudis torturing and beheading a journalist, an event that the orange nazi just couldn't make himself condemn the murderers and those responsible for it, got his own ilks so hot and bothered they too just had to ejaculate hate and murder.  Don't wanna be left out doncha no.