Octopus Overlords

El Guapo wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 2:36 pm Trump supporters are mistakenly attacking LeVar Burton.

El Guapo wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 2:36 pm Trump supporters are mistakenly attacking LeVar Burton.

El Guapo wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 12:13 pm
Honestly, I have a fair amount of sympathy for Alabama Republicans who are considering still voting for Moore. First, obviously Alabama is overwhelmingly pro-life. If you believe (as most Alabamians (Alabamans? do), that abortion is essentially the intentional murder of a human life, then a vote for Jones is a vote for someone who will generally vote to approve policies strengthening widespread state-sanctioned murder. Even if you 100% believe the allegations against Roy Moore, what's more important - his personal predations, or the lives of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of developing human lives?

Second, if the situation were reversed and this was a Democrat running for Senate in Massachusetts, I would probably be similarly torn. Electing a Republican senator (in my view) would make it more likely that tens of millions of people lose health insurance (with all the human suffering that that would entail), that a horrible tax plan with awful long-term impacts pass, and that a million other horrible policy outcomes happen. It's at least defensible to view the policy outcomes as more important than even really terrible personal crimes.

GreenGoo wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 2:56 pm

El Guapo wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 12:13 pm
Honestly, I have a fair amount of sympathy for Alabama Republicans who are considering still voting for Moore. First, obviously Alabama is overwhelmingly pro-life. If you believe (as most Alabamians (Alabamans? do), that abortion is essentially the intentional murder of a human life, then a vote for Jones is a vote for someone who will generally vote to approve policies strengthening widespread state-sanctioned murder. Even if you 100% believe the allegations against Roy Moore, what's more important - his personal predations, or the lives of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of developing human lives?

Second, if the situation were reversed and this was a Democrat running for Senate in Massachusetts, I would probably be similarly torn. Electing a Republican senator (in my view) would make it more likely that tens of millions of people lose health insurance (with all the human suffering that that would entail), that a horrible tax plan with awful long-term impacts pass, and that a million other horrible policy outcomes happen. It's at least defensible to view the policy outcomes as more important than even really terrible personal crimes.

Oh, there's no question they would have a dilemma, but that's also part of the problem. I get that abortion can be a sticky issue even with non-religious people, but it's mostly settled law in western culture. We are already fairly restrictive in terms of the age of the fetus. We are not going back to banning it, for various legitimate and important reasons. It's just not going to happen. And if it were to happen despite my thoughts, it would only last maybe 1/2 a generation before the problems associated with unwanted pregnancies and back alley abortions would flourish enough that they would need to be dealt with on a societal level. Again.

The problems with abortion is that people don't like it and think it's morally wrong. It's an abstract problem. The problems with banning abortions are very real, very concrete, very negative society level problems.

So, sure, Alabama has a dilemma. But that's part of why Alabama is a problem. That they're willing to put a child molester in a position of power in order to not face the cultural realities of abortion is not a valid response to that dilemma.

GreenGoo wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 3:12 pm True. If you believed that God says it's ok for a godly man to rape or attempt to rape teenagers, you'd also be wrong.

I guess my point is that I have little sympathy for the "difficult" decision Alabamans are facing. Elect a child molester because "reasons"? Choke on it.

Kraken wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 4:40 pm Politics is about power first, and policy positions second. Personal integrity comes somewhere behind that.

MA voters kept Ted Kennedy in the Senate for 47 years despite his womanizing and probably being guilty of negligent homicide. He was far from being a saint; he was also a highly effective senator, a social justice crusader, and an accomplished orator.

I'm not equating Moore with Kennedy, but I can understand how voters will forgive, or at least overlook, a candidate's personal failings.

El Guapo wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 4:43 pm

Kraken wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 4:40 pm Politics is about power first, and policy positions second. Personal integrity comes somewhere behind that.

MA voters kept Ted Kennedy in the Senate for 47 years despite his womanizing and probably being guilty of negligent homicide. He was far from being a saint; he was also a highly effective senator, a social justice crusader, and an accomplished orator.

I'm not equating Moore with Kennedy, but I can understand how voters will forgive, or at least overlook, a candidate's personal failings.

That's also about evolving social norms, however. I don't think Kennedy, Lion of the Senate that he was to the people of Massachusetts, would have survived the 2017 reckoning on this type of conduct.

During a May 10 meeting in the Oval Office, the president betrayed his intelligence community by leaking the content of a classified, and highly sensitive, Israeli intelligence operation to two high-ranking Russian envoys, Sergey Kislyak and Sergey Lavrov. This is what he told them—and the ramifications.

On a dark night at the tail end of last winter, just a month after the inauguration of the new American president, an evening when only a sickle moon hung in the Levantine sky, two Israeli Sikorsky CH-53 helicopters flew low across Jordan and then, staying under the radar, veered north toward the twisting ribbon of shadows that was the Euphrates River. On board, waiting with a professional stillness as they headed into the hostile heart of Syria, were Sayeret Matkal commandos, the Jewish state’s elite counterterrorism force, along with members of the technological unit of the Mossad, its foreign-espionage agency. Their target: an ISIS cell that was racing to get a deadly new weapon thought to have been devised by Ibrahim al-Asiri, the Saudi national who was al-Qaeda’s master bombmaker in Yemen.

It was a covert mission whose details were reconstructed for Vanity Fair by two experts on Israeli intelligence operations. It would lead to the unnerving discovery that ISIS terrorists were working on transforming laptop computers into bombs that could pass undetected through airport security. U.S. Homeland Security officials—quickly followed by British authorities—banned passengers traveling from an accusatory list of Muslim-majority countries from carrying laptops and other portable electronic devices larger than a cell phone on arriving planes. It would not be until four tense months later, as foreign airports began to comply with new, stringent American security directives, that the ban would be lifted on an airport-by-airport basis.

In the secretive corridors of the American espionage community, the Israeli mission was praised by knowledgeable officials as a casebook example of a valued ally’s hard-won field intelligence being put to good, arguably even lifesaving, use.

Yet this triumph would be overshadowed by an astonishing conversation in the Oval Office in May, when an intemperate President Trump revealed details about the classified mission to Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, and Sergey I. Kislyak, then Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Along with the tempest of far-reaching geopolitical consequences that raged as a result of the president’s disclosure, fresh blood was spilled in his long-running combative relationship with the nation’s clandestine services. Israel—as well as America’s other allies—would rethink its willingness to share raw intelligence, and pretty much the entire Free World was left shaking its collective head in bewilderment as it wondered, not for the first time, what was going on with Trump and Russia. (In fact, Trump’s disturbing choice to hand over highly sensitive intelligence to the Russians is now a focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s relationship with Russia, both before and after the election.) In the hand-wringing aftermath, the entire event became, as is so often the case with spy stories, a tale about trust and betrayal.

• But her emails! or
• Well, when the President does it, that means it is not illegal.

Holman wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 11:23 pm First thing this morning, the WH press corps was informed that POTUS had scheduled a full day of meetings and important phone calls.

Less than an hour later, it was confirmed that that he had left for 18 holes of golf.

GreenGoo wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2017 2:56 pm The problems with abortion is that people don't like it and think it's morally wrong. It's an abstract problem. The problems with banning abortions are very real, very concrete, very negative society level problems.

Grifman wrote: Thu Nov 23, 2017 11:31 am If you believe abortion is wrong, it's not abstract - it's just as real as anything else.

Commander-in-Chief wrote:"The Navy, I can tell you, we're ordering ships, with the Air Force I can tell you we're ordering a lot of planes, in particular the F-35 fighter jet, which is like almost like an invisible fighter. I was asking the Air Force guys, I said, how good is this plane?

They said, well, sir, you can't see it. I said but in a fight. You know, in a fight, like I watch on the movies. The fight, they're fighting. How good is this? They say, well, it wins every time because the enemy cannot see it. Even if it's right next to them, it can't see it. I said that helps. That's a good thing."

Thanksgiving is a time for families and friends to gather together and express gratitude for all that we have been given, the freedoms we enjoy, and the loved ones who enrich our lives. We recognize that all of these blessings, and life itself, come not from the hand of man but from Almighty God.

ObamaCare premiums are going up, up, up, just as I have been predicting for two years. ObamaCare is OWNED by the Democrats, and it is a disaster. But do not worry. Even though the Dems want to Obstruct, we will Repeal & Replace right after Tax Cuts!

GreenGoo wrote: Thu Nov 23, 2017 2:09 pm

Grifman wrote: Thu Nov 23, 2017 11:31 am If you believe abortion is wrong, it's not abstract - it's just as real as anything else.

What concrete problems does someone else's abortion cause you, Grif?

Think of it this way. If everyone who was against abortion suddenly changed their minds, what problems with abortion would still exist? I'm honestly asking here, because I can't think of any.

If everyone who was supportive of legalized abortion suddenly changed their minds, what problems with a lack of abortion would still exist? Crime, increased usage of social services, back alley abortions, increase in poverty. These are all well documented and increase the burden on society as a whole.

That's what I mean about abstraction versus concrete.

I'm not trying to undermine your position as irrational or even incorrect. I'm saying your position results in unwanted children. Often poor, often neglected, often criminal. They don't magically become wanted because it's illegal to not give birth to them.

malchior wrote: Thu Nov 23, 2017 7:35 pm Now he is tweeting about ACA premiums skyrocketing. I have to imagine the Flynn flip is what set him off. What a day he has had.

Chaz wrote: Thu Nov 23, 2017 4:45 pm For as much as that plane is costing, the only way it could justify the cost is if it actually was invisible.

Smoove_B wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 1:28 pm Never mind all that - it's Trump's 3rd day in a row playing golf (today with Tiger Woods) and his 101st day at a Trump owned property. For reference, that's about 1/3 of his time in office.

malchior wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 1:41 pm

Smoove_B wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 1:28 pm Never mind all that - it's Trump's 3rd day in a row playing golf (today with Tiger Woods) and his 101st day at a Trump owned property. For reference, that's about 1/3 of his time in office.

If I were king of news dashboards - I'd have a visualization of this number, the number of days that Obama had golfed in the same period into his Presidency, and Trump's golf/vacation tweets about Obama up at least once a day just to punch home what a hypocritical, racist piece of shit he is.

Jeff Mateer has called transgender children part of “Satan’s plan,” dismissed same-sex marriage as “debauchery,” and asserted that the constitutional separation of church and state is a myth. He may soon receive a lifetime appointment to the federal judiciary. In September, President Donald Trump nominated Mateer to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas with the strong backing of Sen. Ted Cruz.

Mateer’s retrograde views are dangerous on their own. What’s more dangerous is that, if confirmed, he would be in a position to adjudicate claims brought by his former employer, First Liberty Institute. Located in Plano, Texas, the law firm routinely attacks laws protecting reproductive health and LGBTQ people. Plano is within the Eastern District, and Mateer would not be required to recuse himself from suits brought by First Liberty. Quite the opposite: He would be in an excellent position to work with First Liberty to enact his alarming agenda.

Smoove_B wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 8:02 pm Sorry if this puts you over the edge - someone on Twitter points out Trump's racist behavioral patterns. Trump's reply to that Tweet?

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

malchior wrote:

Smoove_B wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 8:02 pm Sorry if this puts you over the edge - someone on Twitter points out Trump's racist behavioral patterns. Trump's reply to that Tweet?

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

A lot of theories on that one - one that he meant to post a new thread and accidentally replied. Aka some people think he wasn't intending to reply though I'm not sure how that makes it better. Whatever the case the WH refused to answer repeated questions about what the tweet meant.

malchior wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 7:58 pm Much President. Very humble.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 93441?s=17

Time magazine Tweets: The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6.

Scoop20906 wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 11:10 pm Donny is the world’s biggest troll. Once more are discussing something so meaningless. Even if it were true I could care either way why he lies so brazenly we are all talking about him. This must be his entire goal. Troll the f-ing world.