Since he also repeats the lie about the Civil war, it seems history isn't his strong point.

Albanians have a special affection for the United States, which they credit with ending their country’s Cold War isolation and leading NATO’s 1999 bombing offensive that halted ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians by Serbian troops.

Short answer: yes. 100%.

Long answer:
Well, let's unpack this.

"the acts of a 17 yr old boy"
I did some dumb shit when I was a kid. Nothing major, but I certainly wasn't a choir boy. But this isn't some drunken hijinx. It isn't even some petty crime.

This is an accusation of violent sexual assault.

Now, even then, I'd be willing to grant that people can change. If he'd paid his due, apologised, and proved he had changed, I'd be willing to say that everyone deserves a shot at redemption.

But...
"no other history of repeat offense"
you mean apart from the other two women accusing him of sexual assault?

Finally...
"destroy a career"
Let's cut this bullshit right here. Your career is not "destroyed" if you don't get to sit on the supreme court. I'm a software developer. I'll never work for Google or Apple or Facebook or whatever, but career is doing fine, thanks.

It's the Supreme Court... it should literally be the elite of the elite in legal minds. If you've got two candidates who are identical in all respects except one got slightly better marks in high school, you take that one BECAUSE YOU CAN.

Kavanaugh is clearly not the best available. If nothing else, this process has shown that he is woefully unsuitable for this position. He has constantly lied, deflected and then become hysterical (and yes, I'm using that particular word very deliberately).

But what saddens about this whole thing (and it really shouldn't surprise me at this point) is the hypocrisy of the right. Because it's Trumps pick, they're all "it's just youthful exuberance" and "let bygones be bygones" where you know if the tables were turned and it was a democratic pick who had even a minor misdemeanour they would be screaming from the rooftops.

The funny thing is, I still think that Kavanaugh (whatever I may personally think of the slimy fuck-weasel) deserves the presumption of innocence. If he really was the guy he's made out to be by the right, he would have said "I'm innocent, but of course this should be investigated. I am terribly sorry for this woman. She has obviously been through a traumatic incident, but she has me confused for someone else." and then it would have been investigated, probably nothing would be found (due to the age of the claims and the difficulty of gathering evidence).

He could have handled this with humility, sympathy and dignity.

But he failed every possible test. He has shown himself utterly unfit to be on the supreme court, and quite frankly, he's shown himself to be a poor excuse for a human. Fuck him so very much.

you want the acts of a 17 yr old boy with no other history of repeat offense destroy a career?

If so we are all doomed.

Love your reply and POV. You got it pretty much 100% right IMO. I admit, as I Christian, I went in from a far more cynical perspective because this "wholly uninterested god" is way different from the God of the Bible. Not that God didn't bring some crazy disasters on humans in the OT, but damn, not this way or purpose as in the videos.

I don't mind people mocking God or Christians or overly religious zealots of any faith. Many are wholly deserved to be mocked. People (that includes me, God knows I'm a dumbass, lol) need to be held responsible for their own crap & offensiveness and be called out.

Still, I feel this series is not helping any discussion, just good for a laugh (maybe?) and some decent video editing & production. It's harmless if seen as a philosophical piece.

I'd love to see some intelligent, cool-headed no-trolling discussions on the pros & cons, history & evolution of religion and such. But it's really tough when religion is so politicized (especially in the USA) and often hijacked for self-serving purposes. (Godly man Roy Moore my ass!)

I live in Canada, and I would call myself a Christian in public here, but in the US? No freaking way... it's not out of fear of being mocked and anything... it's that I hardly see me as anything similar to those "evangelicals" from my own limited exposure to them in US media. It's like they're a different (offensive) beast.

This.

I get there is plenty of room to criticise Israeli actions and call them too aggressive. This is just not such an example, in any way, shape or form.

As vil said, this happened when Israel was actively at war. Nasser had blocked Israeli shipping and moved Egpytian forces onto the border. Israel then made a pre-emptive strike wiping out the Egyptian air-force, and then launching a ground offensive. The USS Liberty was running as an unmarked ship in the wrong place at the wrong time and Israel hit it too.

Israel knew it was a US military vessel or they didn't. If they didn't, it's highly possible they decided the unmarked military vessel was a threat and hit it. If they did, they decided it was a good idea to hit an American owned military vessel while starting/engaging a war with Egypt.

I can't reason out any situation where Israel thinks it's a good idea to deliberately kill and engage the US here, it's all bad for them. The most reasonable explanation is they attacked an unmarked military vessel in a war zone because they knew it wasn't their own.

It's an offensive against Jewish people around the world that anti-Zionist somehow came to equal anti-Semitic. You can be against a political policies of a nation without being against the citizens who people her.

As a side note, it never ceases to amaze me that a literal century later, we're still paying for the sins of World War 1.

(I mention WW1 specifically because of the Balfour Declaration, which laid the seeds for the founding of modern-day Israel. It was signed during the Great War in order to influence Jews to rally to the Allies against the Central Powers, and other geopolitical reasons around the Suez Canal.)

I appreciate your response to my question earlier, @bobknight33.

I don't mean to try to drag you back into the thread here if you're trying to disengage -- I dunno what you mean by #walkaway. Anyway, this doesn't require a response.

I largely agree with you on the specific subtopic of both parties being pretty dirty and frequently engaging in "government theater" just to draw attention to trivialities while promoting their own self interests. I also largely agree with Trump being a "true outsider" in the sense that he holds no particular allegiance to party machinations, etc.

However, even though I was willing to give him a chance after the election, at this point I have zero trust in Trump's intentions. Trumps friends -- the "best people" -- have this interesting trend of becoming his detractors and enemies. Trump wants us to accept the word of people that vouch for him, but days, weeks, or months later they fall out of favor and suddenly he says that they are scum and we shouldn't listen to a word they say.

That's a "cry wolf" or "fool me once" sort of problem. Sessions, the guy you mentioned as protecting Trump from the "witch hunt", has been pretty relentlessly bashed by Trump for the weighty offense of allowing investigators to investigate. Giuliani spouts nonsense, doublespeak and contradictions. Huckabee-Sanders refuses to answer very basic questions from the press (which is her job) not because they misquote her or take things out of context (which would be legitimate gripes) but because she's been bitten in the ass a few too many times by people pointing out blatant contradictions in Trump's statements. And that's just the current people.
There's a large list of short-term Trump appointments that end up out of favor.

What all that stuff says to me is ... "something is rotten in the state of Denmark". Is it possible that there's a vast conspiracy against him in the media, justice department, etc.? Um, well, maybe -- but Occam's Razor tells me that other possibilities are rather more likely. Like, for example, that Trump being a "true outsider" doesn't preclude him from holding the same self-serving motivations that are unfortunately common in slimy career politicians. That he acts shady and dirty because he is shady and dirty.

I dunno. It just seems like it takes a lot of work to keep up with Trump's revolving door of steadfast allies that become traitorous enemies.

I'm an atheist and will always be one of the first in line to suggest that religions should be subject to criticism and the rule of law just like any other organization.

That being said, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea that congregations are complicit in the misdeeds of the institution itself, whether or not they are aware of verified instances of misdeeds. ...Pretty slippery slope.

Expand that to, say, nations. In the history of the US, the government has committed some pretty indefensible atrocities. Genocide, mass relocation, and other offenses against Native Americans in the name of "manifest destiny". Enslavement of a race of people based on skin color, with disenfranchisement and continued abuse well after slavery was abolished, with elements that certainly persist to this day. Funding and supplying extremist organizations because they happen to have a short-term enemy that coincides with ours, which frequently comes back to bite us in the ass later. Using underhanded tricks including false-flag operations to justify wars and other offensive actions. Attempting to assassinate democratically elected leaders of foreign governments. And on and on.

Are all US citizens complicit in those misdeeds, merely by an accident of birth? But those things were in the past, you might argue. Given the depth of dirt you can find on our past with a little digging, I'd say it is reasonable to expect that there's things that the government is doing now that we may or may not be aware of that would be similarly difficult to defend.

Many/most Catholics can either remain intentionally blissfully ignorant about these problems, or will be able to go to great lengths to rationalize their way around them. Just like most US citizens don't lose much sleep over our government's past and present misdeeds. In either case, indoctrination puts the blinders on -- and can be incredibly difficult to escape.

For the religious, "love the sinner, hate the sin" is an oft-repeated phrase. As an atheist outraged by these scandals and the decades/centuries of intentional cover-ups by the Church itself, I might be tempted to turn that on its head. "Accept the religious, hate the religion." By all means, be outraged towards the institution itself. By all means, fight to end the protections that have allowed this kind of abuse to go unchecked. But perhaps try to keep some (Christian?) empathy for the average Catholic congregation members who have been brainwashedindoctrinated their whole lives and are likely in too deep to escape. Reserve that hatred for the clergy that abused their positions of power and control to commit these crimes, and the organizational system that systematically allowed it to happen while covering it up. They deserve every bit of hate you throw their way.

The short answer is "it depends on the circumstances".
(Edit: because you have a legal right to do it doesn't mean it's warranted in every instance.)
The longer answer is "Yes I might if I knew for certain it wasn't someone who should be in my house, and Yes I would for certain if it was multiple unannounced intruders or a single armed intruder."

To be technical, in Texas they taught us someone only had to be unannounced on your property, not in your house (explained as a holdover from when horse and cattle rustling was a problem and a capital offense), so in that sense I would not do what I was taught in Texas. I have no qualms whatsoever about killing a known intruder inside my house....with or without warning.

@jacobjohn can you give a few words and explain why this is on here? It seems like a blatant advertisement which is against the terms and a potential bannable offense ; https://videosift.com/faq#posting_guidelines

Former Washington Middle School teacher Kerstin Westcott resigned in front of the school board after detailing incidents of violence, abuse, and fear for the safety of students and staff.

Westcott goes on to detail the following incidents that happened during the 2016-2017 school year:

-"Student set 3 fires in the bathrooms-we were never evacuated"
-"[Redacted] was kicked in the face during a fight and his glasses were broken"
-"Drugs and cigarettes have been both sold and used in and around the school"
-"So many fights that students have started arming themselves with weapons (including brass knuckles, knives, a large stick, and a lock) with which to fight"
-"Student jumped and beaten to the ground and kicked in the head and stomach repeatedly while she was down"
-"Student approached a teacher personally and said he had a gun and was going to shoot that teacher"
-"Student told staff, 'I am going to kill the teacher. I am going to get a shotgun and find out where he lives. Watch me. I am not kidding.'"

During a fight, Westcott recalls an administrator telling a teacher, "We're numb to fights around here. Is it a real fight?"

The letter says 11 percent of Washington Middle School students were in the "red zone" for behavior, meaning they had committed at least six major offenses during the school year.

Most of Kimmel's viral videos (except the teary eye ones) are offensive like these. His Mean Tweets segments are the worse. These enable trolls to have a field day to say the most offensive things to celebrity.

I get that celebrities need to eat some humble pies, but not this way. Not cool.

Just plain don't like both Jimmies.

Your video, YouTube takes down History Documentary for being "Offensive", has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 282 Badge!

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.