this right here is what drives me absolutely bonkers.

you proceed from a false premise:
that "wealth" translates to being less corruptible.

blindly ignoring what wealth actual not only IS,but what it represents to the elite class in America.

power.

so could we please STOP with how much trump is actually worth,as if it has any inherent meaning in terms of power?


i do not understand wasting time with an ideologue,or dissecting his obviously conflicting comments as somehow expressing a clear and definable philosophy.these people play in the realm of cult of personality,spectacle and magical thinking.

their adoration for a particular public figure is cultish,and has very little to do with reality but more how their idol represents an ideal that they feel very strongly about.

so are we really surprised that bob will give Alexandria ocasio cortez a nod for exposing how easy it is to corrupt the system,but then conveniently excuse his idol and give him a pass based on the flimsiest of reasons:wealth.

when it was Alexandria ocasio cortez's lightning round that exposed how it is actually EASIER for the executive branch and the president to sell their influence for money.

but to bob,and how he sees things,the very idea that trump would ever engage in a breach of morality,and break his promise to the American people...is preposterous,...because trump already has money,why would he sell his integrity?

because BOB has integrity.
because BOB would never break a promise.
this is basic projection of ones morality onto a figure they admire.
we can apply the exact same metric to those who voted for Obama.same thing.same results.

you will never get bob to admonish his hero,because that hero represents the IDEA of what bob is projecting,not the actual reality.

fundamentalists engage in the exact same magical thinking.

so how can i get mad for bob,and the other trumpsters of the world?
i pity them.
because delusional dreams always crash on the shores of the real eventually.

and that is going to be a sad day for bob.

me too, deserved a post, pity so few find it as hilarious as I do, but probably not PC to laugh at them...?

So this boils down to a discrimination of minorities.

So glad of you to be their champion. That you need to look down and these class of citizen that you must intervene.

I think higher of minorities. They are my equal. I don't look down in pity as you do. I believe minorities can find a way to obtain an ID. Its not that hard or expensive.

I'll ignore your un-intentional racism and chalk it up to you being miss informed by main stream media. No hard feelings, newt. Your are not alone.

Republicans want ID laws so only AMERICANS vote. Democrats do not want ID laws. Hence to allow ILLEGALS to vote. Democrats don't care about minorities, just votes.

The Zero's Chinese performance was ignored by the U.S. command prior to pearl harbor, dismissed as exaggeration. That's actually the crux of my point.

Exceptional moments do not change the rule.
Yes on occasion a wildcat would get swiss cheesed and not go down, but 99% of the time when swiss cheesed they went down.
Yes, there were wildcat aces that did fairly well (and Zero aces that did even better), but 99% of wildcat pilots were just trying to not get mauled.

Hellcat didn't enter combat till mid 1943, and it is the correction to the mistake. The F6F should have been the front line fighter at the start of the war... and could have been made sooner had Japanese tech not been ignored/dismissed as exaggeration.


Russian quantity as quality? At the start they were shot down at a higher ratio than the manufacturing counter ratio (by a lot). It was a white wash in favor of the Germans.
It took improvements in Russian tech to turn the tide in the air. Lend-lease only constituted about 10% of their air force at the peak. Russia had to improve their own forces, so they did. By the end, planes like the yak3 were par with the best.


The Mig31 is a slower Mig25 with a digital radar. Their version of the F14, not really ahead of the times, par maybe.

F15 is faster than either mig29 or Su27 (roughly Mig31 speed).
F16/F18, at altitude, are moderately slower, but a wash at sea level.

Why would they shoot and run?
We have awacs, we would know they are coming, so the only chance to shoot would be at max range. Max range shots are throw-away shots, they basically won't hit unless the target is unaware, which it won't be unaware because of the RWR. Just a slight turn and the missile can't follow after tens of miles of coasting and losing energy.


Chinese railgun is in sea trials, right now. Not some lab test. It wouldn't be on a ship without first having the gun proven, the mount proven, the fire control proven, stationary testing completed, etc.
2025 is the estimate for fleet wide usage.
Try finding a picture of a U.S. railgun aboard a U.S. ship.


Why would a laser rifle not work, when you can buy crap like this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7baI2Nyi5rI
There's ones made in China, too : https://www.sanwulasers.com/customurl.aspx?type=Product&key=7wblue&shop=
That will light paper on fire ~instantly, and it's just a pitiful hand held laser pointer.
An actual weapon would be orders of magnitude stronger than a handheld toy.
It's an excellent covert operations weapon, silently blinding and starting fires form kilometers away.


Russia does not need to sink a U.S. carrier for no reason.
And the U.S. has no interest in giving Russia proper a need to defend from a U.S. carrier. For the very reasons you mentioned.


What Russia can do is proliferate such a missile, and effectively deprecate the U.S. carrier group as a military unit.

We need carriers to get our air force to wherever we need it to be.
If everyone had these missiles, we would have no way to deliver our air force by naval means.

Russia has land access to Europe, Asia, Africa. They can send planes to anywhere they need to go, from land bases. Russia doesn't /need/ a navy.

Most of the planet does not have a navy worth sinking. It's just us. This is the kind of weapon that disproportionately affects us.

-scheherazade

Pity. It's a good talk. *ban.

After the recent production numbers of the Model 3 and the reports of horrible working conditions at the Fremont plant, Tesla lost a lot of its shine for me.

Elon Musk seems to be convinced that being a Silicon Valley bigshot of his calibre is enough to run this operation, or that industrialism of the sort that, say, Toyota is engaged in is outdated. Those pitiful production numbers and the issues with the workforce indicate to me that management at Tesla (read: Musk) is not capable of industrial manufacture of cars at scale. Not at this time, at least.

Makes me think of the guy who videotaped the woman at the Chick-Fil-A drive thru, figuring he would be lauded as a hero for challenging someone who worked for that company. And it backfired and he became unemployed because of his "principles", which was pretty much what he expected of that woman. And then he played the victim. But he brought it on himself, the woman who tweeted about AIDS in Africa is a whole other story.

Now that everyone has the power to self-publish and broadcast just about anything to the entire world I'm seeing the power that it unleashes in others. I posted a comment on an unsolicited news posting in my FB feed, regarding the Pulitzer Prize picture of the black woman holding out her hands to be handcuffed by the police in riot gear. And everyone in the comment section is going predictably teary-eyed and goose pimply over it, with the usual cliches of iconic, defining, inspiring, uplifting, etc.

And I wrote "don't be so easily manipulated, it's stagey and predictable and Kardashians use this shit to sell sugar water." or something like that. My point being that we have gone from prize-winning pictures of the Viet Nam war (e.g.) to the whole process being co-opted by pop culture, like everything and anything else. Of course I got bombarded with claims of racism and people who pitied my soul. And some were musing on whether to try to track down my employer. I deleted my comment, this world has gotten too fucking weird for me.

@Fairbs
i agree with everything you just said,but i didn't see him make that argument.

how i hear him is that while empathy and compassion have their place,you shouldn't engage in radical empathy where it blocks out any sense of rational reason.

to a normal person who watches a hawk swoop down and brutalize a baby rabbit,we may respond with revulsion and even pity for the baby rabbit but we certainly do not view the hawk as "evil".

a person with radical empathy views all dynamics in a power structure where everyone on the bottom is the victim and everyone on top is the victimizer.

and there is danger in that because most dynamics are far more complicated and nuanced.

So

I don't know how it is in the states, but in this country if you want to go through gender reassignment you will get it for free on the NHS. Its a long road, it isn't easy, they make it hard etc, but like anything else that poses a risk to somebodies health it is paid for by the state. I feel like a lot of people consider reassignment a sort of frivolous sex thing but being unable to escape the body in which you are born is, you know, desperately depressing. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that surgery and hormone treatment are potentially lifesaving, and certainly greatly improve the quality of life in most cases.

Couple of things I don't understand - Is this the military saying they will no longer pay for treatments associated with gender reassignment, or is this a blanket ban on transgender men and women from serving in the military? One wonders why the military can't spend even a fraction of the amount is spends on toys on its servicemen/women...

Anyhoo. It's a distraction. Not trying to suggest that it is a minor thing for those affected, but I really think this is to divert the left and win back support from the right. It sucks dreadfully that a minority group is again used as target for political maneuvering and it is worthy of resistance but I can't help but feel we are playing into their hand by doing so.

@bobknight33 I pity you.

Your video, Puddles Pity Party, Performs All By Myself .. AGT, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I don't know, sounds like he might get some pity sex.

Ian Welsh reminds us of a quote by Mark Twain:

There were two ‘Reigns of Terror’, if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror – that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

You know, I went on a roller coaster of emotions watching this.

First, I felt mildly amused by the lady who claims to be able to see angels.

Then I felt pity for everyone up there that seems to believe her.

After that I felt a bit of anger, because I remembered that this guy Bakker is an ex-con who swindled his congregation and possibly raped one of his secretaries and yet somehow here he is on TV again preying on people desperate to find meaning and hope in their lives.

Then I felt disgust as I remembered the news from the other day about the teen denied birth control from her Walgreens pharmacist because he claimed a religious objection to filling the prescription and that in many places in the U.S. it is perfectly legal for pharmacists to do so.

The only thing that eased my mind after this is that young people in the U.S. are non-religious in record numbers and that these numbers have steadily increased and will likely continue to increase going into the future. The quicker organized religion dies out, the better off we'll all be.

Incoherent to you maybe. Rambling no (my comments should roughly match up line for line as replies to your text - I didn't use quotes). Struck a nerve? No. But it looks like you've got a lot to say for someone who doesn't care for religion.

Almost nobody can remember all they read. This is not a unique claim. I'm guessing you aren't familiar with more than one major denomination - so don't speak on behalf of the others. You're pretty hung up on me needing to have remembered this thing in particular? Sorry but I didn't know this - that's why I asked (ffs). In this regard you're weak at being compassionate. I'm sorry, what is it you think I'm defending? My words? They don't need defence mate. They stand on their own.

I'd have to have some bullshit to quit it. I didn't try to shut down @newtboy (pointing out a truth of his own admission is not shutting him down - got that Mr. Reason?) and I certainly haven't been shut down myself (surprise motherfucker - I'm right here). That you can't understand the fairly straight forward last post shows a lot about you.

"To answer in all seriousness your subsequent questions:"

You missed several questions. Four in fact. I expected as much.

"The back bone of my religion" You're at it again. The retard is strong in you.

I'm not explaining away God's omnipotence. I'm making a fairly straight argument that he's not omnipotent (as in all powerful). I've used the straight forward translation of the word (the simplest argument is that omnipotent also means greatly (not all)) powerful and the refutation of your defence that he is in fact all powerful. This isn't some apologist thing, or defence of some fucked up part of the bible. I'm taking what you believe is a fundamental part of Christianity and attempting to take it down a notch. Hey, why do you think that is? (come on, say the opposite of the obvious, do it, show me how retarded you can be)

It's only a house of cards if you're not willing to give it even the slightest credence (which with your rabid atheism is unfortunately self-admittedly true). That's a great pity. Thousands of years of human culture dismissed in an instant because you're too headstrong (or butt-hurt) to give it a second thought. So much for reason.

Maybe you're not familiar with the 20th century and the clusterfuck of death that surrounded governmental experimentation (of which rejection of religion was a fundamental tenet). Look, I'm happy for you to attempt a no government society where your reason and compassion will lead everyone into quiet nirvana. But you'll be one of the first to be taken advantage of by some cold ruthless cunt who doesn't possess those abilities.

No, I seriously doubt you wish me the best. Your tirade against me demonstrates that. Hopefully you'll realise soon that you're not an Übermensch. And almost everything you now know is wrong (I sincerely hope you know that - it's a fundamental scientific tenet that we are always getting closer to the truth - wiping away the untruths we know - and yes there is research on this).

I do thank you for at least attempting to overcome your own obvious cognitive dissonance in sincerely wishing me peace at the end. It reminds me so much of people who claim to have a religion of peace after their brothers blow some people up. Lol.

Next up. SDGundamX with what he's sure will this time be the final blow as all bow before him with his unassailable reason and compassion that nobody else can possibly challenge.

Bye for a while. I've literally got work now and won't be back for about 28 days. I will be back though. Talk then.

Puddles Pity Party - America's Got Talent - Chandelier has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579 on that post.