THE test? Hardly. That's not even the only test for your small sect.
If you've been saved, "born again" then sin again, or question dogma or your own belief, you have to do it all over again....according to your particular group's belief...right? It's not a one and done thing, it's a constant subjugation and supplication, incessant adoration by the congregation, suffering degradation without protestation.

What happens when one side has been saved and doesn't change but the other side no longer believes after surgery?

Oh no sir, he was a convicted, admitted con man before the election. People like the Bobskis don't care (likely because degrading America is their job).

Only if you ignore the acidification, heating, and other degradation of the oceans (which contain 99% of the living space and as much as 80% of all life on the planet)...and history. The massive habitat losses there are almost completely unrelated to farming feed crops and dwarf the recent losses on land.


Today creating space for farming is the major single cause for the intentional destruction of terrestrial habitats, but not historically.


Wiki-
Habitat destruction caused by humans includes land conversion from forests, etc. to arable land, urban sprawl, infrastructure development, and other anthropogenic changes to the characteristics of land. Habitat degradation, fragmentation, and pollution are aspects of habitat destruction caused by humans that do not necessarily involve over destruction of habitat, yet result in habitat collapse. Desertification, deforestation, and coral reef degradation are specific types of habitat destruction for those areas (deserts, forests, coral reefs).

...but what do you care? GET YOUWA AZZ TO VEGA!

Where's Trump saying "I can do anything I want to women, just walk up and grab them by the pussy." then continuing with 90 seconds of him publicly degrading women (and men)? They could have made the exact same commercial using just him...is this the best a man can be?....because that's what's expected from a president, exemplar in chief, not cautionary tale and horrid example of a human.

So, after months of issues including plastics both leaving the capture area through the entrance and just going directly under the "curtain", the device has broken catastrophically and was returned to port for repairs today, barely 3 months after deployment. Disappointing.

I'm glad they're trying something, but in reality even working perfectly this device could only clean the ocean surface like a single parking lot vacuum truck could clean and decontaminate the entire mid West. We would need hundreds of thousands of these working 24/7 to make a significant difference, and that would undoubtedly cause new insurmountable problems.

Besides, enormous amounts of plastics have degraded enough that they no longer float at the surface. These devices could never harvest that plastic, and that's the plastic entering the food web at the base, contaminating everything from phytoplankton up.

Well, I guess we can flip it around then and see if it's still funny.

Imagine the same situation with a skinny young adult woman sitting there with her legs spread open. Nervously laughing and obviously doesn't want to be violated by the screwlike device. But she stays there because this is her job and allows the activity to complete until it is too painful and she jumps up and runs away while everyone is laughing.

Hmm.. not funny, even if they are being paid for it. Financial coercion to do these types of degrading acts isn't right but it's probably legal. So I guess you can legally laugh.

It's far more honest and honorable that outright stealing a nomination, neglecting their constitutional obligations for pure partisan gains, degrading and abusing our system of government. Wanting a full vetting of a lifetime appointment to the highest court is the norm, making these appointments pure political spectacle and obstructing procedure is 100% the methodology of Republicans....you're just pissed the Democrats are finally learning to play the game republicans have been playing for decades. I can only hope they continue that MO when the Democrats seize congress next month.

Republicans are now insisting on an FBI investigation or they'll vote no. We will have a new justice, but it may not be Kavanaugh....it might not be a right winger.

I believe there's a question about who to believe. I believe that question disqualifies the nominee. Justices should be above reproach and their morality unquestionable, he fails on both counts. If you have just a reasonable doubt about his innocence, and no reasonable person wouldn't at this point, that's enough to disqualify any nominee.

I assumed it was Make Europe Great Again (by degrading our own international standing to well below the EU)

Although considering the source, Trump, it could be Make Everyone Get Assraped, since that is his MO in a nutshell....or possibly Make Education Go Away, because that's how he gets voters.

Personally, I find the question itself offensive.

Now I'm not the type of person who gets offended, but the question is set up in a way that just plain sounds degrading to any friend you may know. It's setting the friend up to be there purely because they are black - the token black friend.

I just think there is a much better way to have phrased the question.

Yep, exactly the same crimes.....

Victims testimony....after describing the impacts of the brutal racially motivated gang rape by 4 men that Batey pled guilty to, which they filmed and posted online to haunt her for life....
“Mr. Batey continued to abuse and degrade me, urinating on my face while uttering horrific racial hate speech that suggested I deserved what he was doing to me because of the color of my skin. He didn’t even know who I was.”
Batey was then sentenced to the MINIMUM sentence possible for just one of his many convictions.
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2016/07/14/cory-batey-faces-least-15-years-friday-sentencing/86953944/?from=new-cookie

Turner was convicted of fingering a drunk maybe unconscious girl, felony sexual assault not gang rape as a hate crime, disgusting to be sure but hardly a brutal, violent, racially motivated degrading gang rape and violent attack filmed so as to continue the attack for life, and Turner was sentenced based on the probation departments recommendations which were actually longer than the minimum, and also include registration for life as a sex offender.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner

Stop being a race baiter crying wolf, I'll call you on it every time.
Downvote

Odd that the part where it's a pure product of the RNC is so easily and completely forgotten because it ended up in someone else's hands late in the game.

You mean like when anti Clinton agents actually leaked their biased "evidence" against Clinton repeatedly (like the emails that weren't new or evidence of a thing that those anti Clinton agents presented as evidence of wrongdoing days before the election) with text/email trails degrading her in a similar way, but who weren't removed from that investigation in stark contrast to this investigation....that bias? You relished it then and defended it vehemently.

Um...that label was directed at Mr Jordan who was feigning outrage throughout this video and is undeniably a useless partisan dumbass, but if the shoe fits.....

Edit: lol, fusion GPS, an investigative company hired by the RNC in an effort to save itself from Trump.....Faux News' newest red herring, following a long line of red herrings.....Vince Foster, Benghazi, email scandal, birther movement, secret Muslim, death panels, pizzagate, uranium one.....how many alleged scandals have to fall apart before you realize they're incapable of truth?

Interesting piece in the LA Review of Books: The Supermanagerial Reich

It's a tad long, so I suggest the last two paragraphs to get a taste, see if it's to your liking.

Small bit:

If there is going to be a politics that overcomes the new fascist threat, it must address the fact that the crisis is not now, the crisis has already been for some time. By focusing only on the threat of our homegrown Hitler caricature we have failed to notice the facts right in front of our faces: the uniquely parallel structures, the same winners, the similar losers, the crimes, the human degradation. We are already living in our very own, cruel 21st-century Supermanagerial Reich.

@Diogenes

Thank you for your detailed answer. I do agree with you that context matters and that words are neither inherently good or bad by themselves. However, I think you’re looking at the situation from a more microscopic point of view as a simple joke between two people. I prefer to take a more macroscopic view of the situation. Allow me to explain.

Going back to my hypothetical example, it’s true that I didn't mean any harm when I used the term "retard" towards my brother. I think all people like to think of themselves as "good" people. For example, I would never in my life point at person with Down Syndrome and scream "Retard!" at the top of my lungs or attempt to belittle someone with an actual mental disability. The problem, however, is that by using the word in the way I did in the example I am tacitly--and quite publicly (remember this is happening in a parking lot)--endorsing the equating of people with mental disabilities to stupidity. I may be making a joke towards my brother but it isn’t just my brother that winds up being the butt of the joke.

Now maybe from your perspective, it’s just one person saying a joke. Look at the context, you might say. It’s a distasteful joke but no big deal, right? And I could agree with that if it was just some off-color joke limited to a single individual. Unfortunately, and I think we can both agree on this, the use of “retard” to mean “stupid” is a relatively common occurrence in American vernacular. You couple that with the stigma against mental illness and mental disability and I think it becomes fairly plain to see that on the macroscopic level (i.e. society) we have a problem: a group that is socially disadvantaged and historically discriminated against is even further marginalized by the language people use in their everyday lives. Now, if you don’t agree this is a problem, I’m afraid the conversation has to end here since the logical conclusion of such a stance is that people should be free to say whatever they want and be immune to criticism, damn the consequences.

But if you do agree it is a problem, how are we going to solve it? My take on the situation is that doing absolutely nothing when witnessing a situation like the one I've described is unlikely to improve society in any way. The status quo will be maintained if people are not confronted about their language use.

That being said, people often say things without fully comprehending the implications of what they are saying. They often talk the way they were raised and never once questioned whether what they were saying was actually harmful or not. I don’t think people should be pilloried for that, but in the event that they are unaware of how they are contributing to the discrimination and oppression of others they certainly need to be educated.

This necessarily entails confrontation, although that confrontation might be very low key. Continuing the example above, I think a good way for the woman in the example to “enlighten” me about my misguided use of the word “retard” would be something along the lines of this:

“Excuse me. I really wish you wouldn’t equate having a mental handicap with stupidity. My nephew has Down Syndrome and even though, yes, he can’t do everything that a person without an intellectual handicap can do he is most certainly not stupid.”

Now, all of that said, I see nothing wrong with publicly shaming those who clearly understand the implications of what they are saying and out of either stubbornness, a need for attention, or actual spite willfully continue to use language that is degrading or oppressive. A white person frequently using the N-word in public to describe black people, for instance, is a situation where I’d be completely fine with them getting verbally eviscerated. We don't always have to be polite, even when being politically correct.

As a final note, I want to make it clear that I believe in free speech in the sense that everyone should be free to say whatever they wish. However, as a caveat to that I also believe that free speech comes with the responsibility that people must own everything they say. If someone wishes to use offensive, degrading, or oppressive language that is their choice. Free speech in no way gives them a free pass from criticism of that choice, however.

The sick feeling in my stomach about sexual jokes about moms will go away when dads get demeaned by sexual jokes.

I know, I know, I am a snowflake feminist that wilts at the least mention of sexual degradation of women.

A woman can hope though.....