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Quote from Blinking Spirit »

Quote from Elvish Crack Piper »

This is some scary stuff man Reagan would be spinning in his grave if he knew that the Republican Party just sold out to Russia to win an election. Or even worse, if they got legit played.

Yeah, it's like we entered the Twilight Zone or something. True, Dubya talked a bit chummy about Putin at the outset, but that was a combination of his general good-naturedness and Putin's initial pro-Western overtures. For a xenophobic isolationist Republican in 2016 to act like the Russian strongman is friendly to America is just... upside-down. That's supposed to be the sort of naïve bleating coming out of the Jill Steins of the world.

At least Pence and Romney still talk tough about Russia.

And McCain, for that matter, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1IS38JIFY4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-trump-administration-thaw-with-russia-is-unacceptable-mccain-says/2016/11/15/a3b5c4da-ab5a-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html

This is baffling to me, too, dude. We're so afraid of so many countries for some many things, but the ex-KGB officer who has been either officially or de facto in charge for... 17 years? That's the guy we can trust.

I mean, at least Putin isn't Hillary Clinton, I hear she kills her political opponents and even journalists sometimes!

Quote from Hackworth »

Even if it doesn't turn out to be pushed by Russia, the fact that we're living in a society where people can make a living coming up with and selling completely fake news to the entire world is kind of worrying.

Not the entire world as NPR interviewed one of the guys who trafficks in fake news said "We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out"

The evidence here comes at the tail end of other evidence I've read during this campaign. The DHS/DNI letter was my big big wake up call, and this whole "fake news" thing that people started talking about after the election, and then to find out multiple research teams have been tracking how it was lead by the Russian government with the goal to get a more pliant leader for my country? Makes that time he asked Russia to keep hacking us seem a lot worse (and it wasn't exactly roses at the time)

This is some scary stuff man Reagan would be spinning in his grave if he knew that the Republican Party just sold out to Russia to win an election. Or even worse, if they got legit played.

As someone who has helped to put on multiple years of Gender Neutral Bathroom Week at my university (Washington State University - Vancouver) there are some things that need to get put out there that have been understandably missed so far (and FD4, you know you can always PM questions about what us libruls are doing

1. Trans people need more protection in the bathroom, not less.

For all the talk in North Carolina about protecting women by introducing superfluous legislation, they aren't the ones at risk when it comes to bathroom violence relating to a trans individual. The person in risk is the transgender one. The odds of someone getting attacks for not looking like they belong is significantly higher than the odds than a trans person is just trying to creep and as has been said, people creep anyway and we already have laws against creeping.

2. Even without direct violence, trans people suffer when it comes to using the restroom.

One of the first things after a particular incident happened at WSUV, we publicly showed the documentary Toilet Training. TL;DR is that there are a ton of problems trans people face in the bathroom because of social issues. The problem in question that happened on WSUV was that a F2M person was trying to go into the mens room and was rebuked. They were told to use their own restroom, the womens one. This individual, dejected, walked the few feet across the hall to the womens restroom and was rebuked.

Like many Trans people, this person just held it. Fun fact, being trans increases your risk of bladder cancer. Turns out holding it in until you get home is bad for your health, and yet, because of discrimination in restrooms those people have a shortened lifespan.

3. In 5 years of GNBW, the university had no complaints

Other than people complaining because, unlike FD4, they were still worked up over it. We had a shock jock in Portland freak out, for some reason. People said we were going to have tons of problems and... nothing happened. People peed next to someone with different genitals and... the world carried on. I washed my hands next to a lady. I was fine.

Oh, I think our bathrooms got a little cleaner because people didn't like looking like a slob next to people they were attracted to so... +1 for unisex restrooms!

It's being locked for the evening and you kinda enumerated multiple reasons why people should take a break

#relax

Oh, and if this is the most shameful thing you've ever seen a moderator do you've clearly never been to websites with a strong, partisan slant to them.

Is that case "You won't need to worry about finding other shows to watch for awhile because with over 900 episodes out it'll take roughly 2 weeks of Clockwork Orange style viewing to catch up?

It's a good movie.

Go watch it.

If you come out of it without enjoying yourself I'll cover the cost of the movie.

I say that, mostly, because if your someone who enjoys action movies you're going to like this. It's well directed, well paced, has a seemingly never-ending number of positively insane action set pieces following a clear narrative structure.

The mra's just got their panties in a twist because Max, while the viewpoint character, doesn't have the strongest narrative arc and that Furiosa stole the movie.

The feminist themes in the movie, while present, mostly exist as rejecting action movie stereotypes about women. These are ladies, all across the age range, who are equal to men. This is a movie, without giving too much away, had more than one little old lady doing her own stunts in an action film. It was kickass.

As a dude, if I wasn't broke after travelling crosscountry, I would go see this again. It was great, really.

want more Wesley.

Wesley year zero

I understand what is being discussed. If you think I'm missing something, elaborate. Hell, maybe re-read the posts of mine from page 1 and see how you're making an argument out of nothing,

Anyway

It's because Blinking Spirits counterpoint regarding Jeremiah Wright is a bad argument regardless. There are clear reasons why he ditched the pastor that have nothing to do with his personal metaphysics. It literally played out in the national media why he dropped Wright. Whether or not Obama is Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Atheist, Jew, Pastafarian, irrelevant to the point I Was making which can be restated as "Politicials generally try to avoid pissing off large constituencies regardless of what they personally believe" with a dash of "University professors, particularly at Harvard, are more than free to share much more than any president can"


Heck, http://www.intothyword.org/apps/articles/?articleid=36562

Quote from source »

Of the one thousand fifty (1,050 or 100%) pastors we surveyed, every one of them had a close associate or seminary buddy who had left the ministry because of burnout, conflict in their church, or from a moral failure.

People leave a church for all kinds of reasons. I highly doubt that all these burnt out ministers are atheists now. People leave a church for all kinds of reasons irrelevant to their metaphysics. The counterpoint in post 26 is flawed because it builds a narrow narrative (a narrowtive?) that ignores the legit non-metaphysical reasons why someone would leave a church as well as some sort of conflation between leaving a church and a large point toward religion.

In other news, Trump has now come out to say that he's going to make Congress pay for the wall, and then Mexico will pay us back.

Mexico will pay us back for building a border wall.

Yeah, this is a good time to note something that's been said already, but I feel bears repeating: Donald Trump is a CON MAN. And what threads like this one are basically doing is looking at how many people bought what the con man was selling, and then proclaimed, "Wow, everyone bought what the con man was selling! Looks like the other people who are selling X are out of business!" Except, the problem with that is you're only going by who bought it, and not who actually got what they ordered and was satisfied afterward. You're not looking into the people who never actually got anything despite ordering it, or the people who got something very different from what was advertised.

Another metaphor would be tipping your waiter before the food arrives, or in this thread's case, giving the restaurant three Michelin stars and declaring that it will drive all other restaurants out of business before the food arrives.

In other words, yes, a lot of people may have bought into what the con man was saying. A lot of people may have ponied up good money for what he was selling. But the Republicans' success, at least for the next election, is dependent upon a con man following through on what he promised.

Remember the part where he's a con man? Yeah. It's not likely.

Quote from Tiax »

Quote from Ljoss »

Did he actually say anything racist during the campaign trail, though? I could see chauvinist being a pretty appropriate word for him what with the way he treats women and all.

Let me try to put this in my own words and you tell me if this is what you mean. Do you mean that: he has been suspicious of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Muslims and, while Mexicans and Muslims aren't a race (so that you can't be racist against Mexicans or Muslims), they still have associations with "brownness" and that kind of talk triggered all the people that have a latent (or not latent, actually) hatred of brown people?

My mistake, I should have included "quibble over what is and is not a race" in the list of behaviors used to excuse racism.

To reinforce the point: Correcting the label from "racist" to "bigot" doesn't improve things any.

Quote from Ljoss »

Did he actually say anything racist during the campaign trail, though? I could see chauvinist being a pretty appropriate word for him what with the way he treats women and all.

Let me try to put this in my own words and you tell me if this is what you mean. Do you mean that: he has been suspicious of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Muslims and, while Mexicans and Muslims aren't a race (so that you can't be racist against Mexicans or Muslims), they still have associations with "brownness" and that kind of talk triggered all the people that have a latent (or not latent, actually) hatred of brown people?

My mistake, I should have included "quibble over what is and is not a race" in the list of behaviors used to excuse racism.

I am certainly afraid of fake news. I try to stick to good sites like NPR to avoid it.
Another way to fix this is education in healthy critical thinking/skepticism

Quote from combo player »

This strikes me as liberal birtherism. They can't accept that Trump will be president so they grasp for anything that delegitimises him instead of forming any kind of ideological opposition.

I'm sorry, but "I don't want you to be president, prove to me you're allowed to be president" is a world away from "I don't want you to be president, and here's evidence that a foreign power helped you get the presidency".

@Jusstice: you missed #6: racism as a description of structural issues in society

I'm shocked that you aren't getting this. It isn't that any conflicting views are met with this defensive stance it is that such a strong conflicting view is met with defense. Racist isn't just a 'your wrong' it is 'your wrong and a horrible person'. Such a strong conflict will put people on defense while slower approaches can actually yield results. I even stated how to go about this but you ignored this and instead doubled down on my first point. When debating you need to get the other person to see your side and then except it as fact, as long as you put off using the word racist until they actually see the side of the argument that makes the original thing racist then it can be used as a powerful finisher, but starting with racist is too strong of a shift and will make them reject your view without considering your side.

But yes if your opinion of a person is challenged it is more likely to put you on defense then if your opinion on a subject is challenged because people like to think they are good judges of character. Partially because it encompasses many facets while a single subject is exactly that, a single subject.

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