RFlagg, do you realize nearly 1/3 of the worlds population identifies as Christian? I’m not sure why you think the Republican party is the standard bearer for Christ in the world, but the majority of Christians don’t live in Western democracies. About a quarter billion of them face daily persecution from hostile governments. You are grossly mischaracterizing the faith by conflating it with the worst elements of the American church, which actually in many Christian circles is commonly referred to as the church of Laodicia. Have you ever read Christs letter to the church of Laodicia? Its in Revelation chapter 3.

So you may be shocked to find out that a lot of Christians will agree with you that the American church is backslidden. I also agree with you that too many Christians are too political and have said and done things which are morally repugnant.

I support this president, I also supported the president before him. Christians are commanded in Romans 13 to support and pray for our leaders. It doesn’t mean that we have to agree with them. I certainly didn’t agree with how the church as a whole overlooked quite a bit about Trump because of their desire to win a political victory. That doesn’t mean that any Christian who voted for or supports Trump is anything like what you described, so filled with hate. Many of us hate what is happening to the country, but we don’t hate the people who are doing it.

Your testimony about finding Christ revolves around attending church services and watching TBN and Fox News. Your reason for falling away stemmed from your disillusionment and disgust with the republican party. All of that is really the epitome of cultural Christianity. You may have had an experience, or felt some emotions, but you weren’t changed. There are millions of people sitting in pews all across America who are in the same situation; completely lost and thinking they are okay. This is the unfortunate side-effect of post-Christian culture; everyone has heard of Jesus and no one knows how to be saved or even what that means. They just know that if they add Jesus to their life, they will somehow make it to Heaven. So they just slap a Jesus sticker on everything they’re doing. They are still the same old rotten people, but now Jesus is with them and justifies all of their bad behavior. That’s cultural Christianity. Christianity is spiritual, not cultural.

John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God

You need to be born again, RFlagg, and that didn’t happen to you. It can happen to you if you surrender your life to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Attending church services won’t make that happen for you. Attending church doesn’t make you a Christian. Watching Christian programming on TV, conservative news shows, and agreeing with creation science doesn’t make you a Christian. You become a Christian when you repent of your sin and fully surrender your life to Jesus Christ. It is at that moment that He will make you into a new person. It’s so simple a child could understand it but man has overcomplicated it to the point of totally distorting the message of the gospel.

I think this statement illustrates your issue “If being in Heaven means being around the people who say they will go, Trump supporters, then Hell is a billion times better.”

You’re looking to man instead of God. It’s God that you have to contend with, not man. As a person who has rejected Christ, you are under Gods judgment and that is why you need Christ. It’s easy to say I’d rather be in hell, but I can guarantee you that no one in hell currently feels that way. Rather they are in eternal misery because they forfeited their eternal life with God. What did they forfeit it for? Sin, plain and simple. Your issue is sin and not the many reasons you have come up with to reject the Lord.

"The fact that God doesn't care enough to tell his followers that they are following the literal antichrist system, is telling. "

The Lord has detailed everything to do with that in the scriptures. Jesus railed on the Pharisees for exactly the same thing:

Luke 12:54-56

Then He also said to the multitudes, “Whenever you see a cloud rising out of the west, immediately you say, ‘A shower is coming’; and so it is. And when you see the south wind blow, you say, ‘There will be hot weather’; and there is. Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time?

The Lord outlined how the end times will proceed in the scriptures. There isn't much excuse for not understanding the times that we are living in. There will be a one world government run by the Antichrist, and the whole world will worship him.

"I do appreciate the higher degree of kindness you tend to show than certain others, and my family... almost all Trump supporters I personally know..."

Thank you, and I appreciate that you are willing to engage and talk about spiritual matters with me without trying to belittle me. That's not typical and I appreciate your civility friend.

Overall I am saying this to you because I care about you, not because I am judging you. I need Christ as much as you do RFlagg. It’s because of that, that I know how much you need Him that I am writing this to you. God bless.

The full effect of those tax "cuts" are yet to be realized. This year is going to be the biggest tax return I get, followed by 4 years of returning to previous levels.

Then every year after that for the next 5 years most Americans will have a tax increase. Maybe after that, you can accurately judge the numbers. Not to mention the trade war and government shut down hurdling us towards a recession.


Spare me and the rest of us the "fend for myself" bullshit unless you plan on living off of the land up in the woods somewhere.

Did you attend a public school?
Do you pave the street you live on?
Do you call the police or the fire department during emergencies?
Do you follow food safety recalls issued by the FDA?
Do you chemically test any Western medicine you take for chemical purity?
Orrrr
Or do you rely on the government to do that stuff for you?

I can give you the locations of some abandoned mining towns if you'd like to go actually fend for yourself. The property there is cheap. I doubt anyone's done soil tests for pollution but that's okay, I know you can take care of yourself so you'll know what to do.

Stay tuned for James Cameron's (Terminator/Titanic/Avatar) documentary titled "The Game Changers" coming out it in Feb 2019 :-)

Indeed I have to agree with you, even with some animal products, the health outcomes for people in western nations would be immensely better if they ate fewer animal foods over all.

It’s very important to note that drawing direct parallels between countries when it comes to crime is very murky, as these difference could be due to differences in laws, the way the criminal justice system is set up, how policing is done, how crimes are reported, and much more.

Quoting this: Harold Pollack, co-director of the University of Chicago's Crime Lab, called Zimring and Hawkins's book "an excellent source." In a 2015 phone interview, he pointed to a number of more recent studies that fit the pattern it identified.

"There's no question the United States faces a number of distinctive social policy challenges, some of which affect the crime rate. But many other OECD countries face their own distinctive problems that affect their crime rate," he told me. Western Europe, for example, has a major problem with drug use. Canadian cities have "very high" rates of property crime like car theft. And yet, the US still stands out on murders.

"I think that Americans have this view of Western Europe, or Toronto for that matter, which is very stereotypical and doesn't take into account the challenges that many of peer industrial democracy problems face," he points out. "There's a lot of drug sale, a lot of ethnic stratification and conflict, there's a lot of just general crime."

Crime rates in Canada aren't that much lower than the USA, there are just fewer violent crimes, like homicides.

In addition to this, a major factor might be considered in regards to Canada. Population and population density. Canada is lower than the USA across the board, 36.71 million to 325.7 million and density of 3.9 people per km to almost 90 people per mile (last census data).

I don't support the NRA, btw. I think they are idiots. I do support logical gun laws. I don't care for fake news.

I also think I was civil in my response to your original comment. I have tried to remain that way even though one could classify your response to mine as hostile and provocatory.

i just re read my comment, and please omit the chinese from my criticism which is directed entirely at capitalism and multinational corporations, the chinese IMO are not to blame for greedy western multinationals selling themselves out so they could buy everyone and keep themselves on top, they were the ones with power and control who set these conditions

"How can you not call CNN fake news when the majority of their programming is all about Trump in a negative light?"

This is because in reality, Trump is a piece of shit. Accurate reporting does not have to make something seem balanced when in reality it is not. This is why the majority of news media, not just CNN, report Trump in a negative light. There is nothing good to report about cancer.

This is why most international news media in the western world, who are not affected by domestic US partisan bias, report Trump in a negative light. Read the BBC if you want. Trump is just as shitty in Britain as he is in America.

There are two possibilities: one is that there is some sudden massive coordinated conspiracy by the once respectable and honest media to lie about Trump. Or two, the media is just exposing a life long immoral compulsive liar in the Oval office for the piece of shit that he is.

Just because you don't like hearing negative things about Trump doesn't mean that those things are fake. Don't be gullible and let Trump's lies fool you into believing that anything negative against him is a part of some agenda. That is the first step any communist or fascist dictator uses to blind their people to the truth.

The simple point is that as soon as we realized the capability of the Zero we easily and quickly designed a plane(s) capable of combating it.

The Yak-3 didn't enter the war until 1944, at which point the war had massively turned in Western Theatre. For the bulk of the conflict, they were using the Yak-1.

The Mig 25 and Mig 31 are both interceptors, they are designed to fire from distance and evade. The Su 35 is designed for Air Superiority. We have held the edge in our capabilities for years compared to them.

Every expert I know of is skeptical of China's claimed Railgun weapon. As to why they would bother mounting it and making claims, why not? It is brinkmanship, making us think they have more capabilities than they do.

The laser rifle is a crowd deterrent weapon. It would serve almost no purpose in infantry combat because it cannot kill. Yes, it can burn things and cause pain, but that is all. Again, this was claimed to be far more effective than experts think during our diplomatic arguments over China's use of blinding lasers on aircraft. We have no hard evidence of it's capability.

Yes, Russia could sell such a missile to our enemies versus using it directly against us. The problem is that as soon as they do so, the genie is out of the bottle. It will be reverse engineered quickly and could be USED AGAINST THEM. No country gives or sells away it's absolute top level weaponry except to it's most trusted allies. Allies which, for all intents and purposes, know that using such a weapon against another nation state risks full out retaliation against not only them but the country that sold it to them.

Our carriers are excellent mobile platforms, but they are not our only way of mounting air strikes. If we were somehow in a conventional war situation, we could easily fly over and base our aircraft in allied countries for combat. Most of our nuclear capable aircraft are not carrier launched anyway. Even if somehow all of our carriers were taken out and somehow our SAC bombers were destroyed as well, we would still have more than enough land launched and submarine launched nuclear warheads to easily blanket our enemies.

My points remain:

1. It is in the greatest interest of our enemies to boast about weapon capabilities even if they are not effective yet.

2. Most well regarded experts consider many of these weapons to either be still in the research stage, early production stage (IE not available for years), or they are wildly over hyped.

3. There is no logical reason for our enemies to use these weapons or proliferate them to their closest allies unless the weapons can prevent a nuclear response. Merely mentioning a weapon that would have such a capability creates a situation that could lead to nuclear war, like SDI did. I don't know if you recall, but I do clearly, how massively freaked out the Soviets got over our SDI claims. For two years they started threatening nuclear war as being inevitable if we continued on the path we were, all the while aggressively trying to destabilize our relations with our allies. 1983 to 1985 was pretty fucking tense, not Cuban missile crisis level maybe, but damn scary. Putin has acted similarly over our attempts to set up a missile barrier in former satellite states of Russia, although we still haven't got to the SHTF level of the early 80's.

He may never have reached Asia as planned, but one cannot discount the sheer will required to make his journey. At the age of 41, he defied naysayers across Europe and led four voyages across an uncharted ocean in wooden sailing ships that were not designed to take on the punishing waters of the Atlantic.

In what has become known as the Columbian Exchange, Columbus’ voyages enabled the exchange of plants, animals, cultures, ideas (and, yes, disease) between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. Once the Europeans were able to reach nearly all parts of the globe, a new modern age would begin, transforming the world forever.

Some historians have taken the position that while brutal, Columbus was simply a product of his times and being a figure of the 15th century should not be judged by the morality of the 20th-century.

ALL you can drink?

This reminds me of those "all drinks are on us" cruises you see advertised on TV.

I mean, a thousand frat boys with an unlimited bar tab stuck on a boat with nothing else to do? Didn't anyone involved in this promotion see the videos of the Nickel Beer Night Riot in Cleveland? If they haven't, they really should, because the Nickel Beer Night Riot was the greatest thing to happen in the history of Western Civilization Assholery. I'm serious! If I had a time machine, screw going back to meet Jesus or killing baby Hitler: I'd grab me a ride to June 4, 1974, drop a dollar at the beer concession stand, then get hoot-chimp drunk and huck D-cells at the Texas Rangers until it was Penis Puppetry time at third base.

All-you-can-drink beer in Japan? That'd be like the Nickel Beer Night Riot, only with samurai and ninjas -- how fucking awesome would that be?! I'm half-way to the airport already!

God bless you, Japan!

In Western Countries, it's the Pop manufacturers like Coke and Pepsi that keep beer out of our fast food restaurants.

Did you know Pizza Hut, KFC and Tacco Bell are all owned by Pepsi, and whose sole purpose is to be vehicles to sell their beverages?

Likewise Coca cola has contracts with most of their users, such as McDonalds to keep out any competitors, and only sell their their products exclusively.

They lobby against selling beer in "Family-oriented" establishments so they can monopolize the drink industry.

So true. In the western world we don't see the extremism because we are so used to it, financialization, corporatism, warmongering and demonisation of the poor. They all bring benefits but understanding that they are extreme is the only way we can bring balance to our society.

As far as I know, tattoos are still very much taboo in Japan. They are very much associated with the yakuza. There's a growing trend for what's called "fashion tattoos", but nothing like this.

If you're a westerner and you go to Japan with a tattoo, you need to cover it up to use a public bath.

It's a shame because the yakuza style tattoos are really beautiful, even if they have an ugly history.

What's especially disturbing is that the top 15 western diseases are largely optional.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rNY7xKyGCQ


There's a reason why the President of the American College of Cardiology is vegan...... yep America's leading disease that kills someone every 7 seconds need not exist....

This is Playa Montesinos in downtown Santo Domingo. On Google Earth there is a cruise ship docked less than a kilometer from this beach. Apparently this happens after heavy rains which ties in with studies that show that 90-95% of all the plastic in the oceans comes from 10 rivers, 2 in Africa and 8 in Asia with China being the worst offender. It seems that as third world economies improve, their taste for western throwaway culture increases without a corresponding increase in disposal and recycling infrastructure. I've read somewhere that even where they have landfills they're often located near rivers where rains and floods flush the landfill and allow it to accept more trash.

And people wonder why Westerners are "chubby"