It is a ludicrous resolution with pie in the sky hopes. It's the equivalent of passing a non-binding resolution to end all wars or to create a machine to pull water from the air without spending massive amounts of energy.

Not only does it suggest incredibly unrealistic goals on the environmental front, especially when one considers that China/Russia will cheat their fucking asses off to prevent meeting the goals due to the enormous economic hit, it also tries to tie in socialized medical care, high paying jobs for everyone, the death of large corporations, cheap housing, and (among other things) the economic security of ANYONE who is unable/unwilling to work.

While we are at it, we should start looking into breaking the concept into five year increments. I hear that did wonders for the USSR.

@JiggaJonson,

When you say:
...I'm against promoting the idea that torture works...

I can see where you are coming from on this. In the sense that it might then encourage people to accept using it, because it works.

My problem with that line of reasoning though is that torture actually is effective. The simplest proof being that we wouldn't have every single national intelligence agency using it(directly or indirectly by a less squeamish ally as we 'civilized' nations prefer to do it).

Your links to the ineffectiveness of torture only look at the narrowest possible goals from it. Somebody like Saddam Hussein usually didn't care about Jack Bauer style, minutes count specific intel. Getting the names of everyone you knew or 'conspired' with mattered, and torture IS effective at getting people to talk. The trouble your links note is that torture victims will say literally anything to get you to stop. When looking for information though, victims can't name real people unless they know them. Better still for guys like Saddam, if you get yourself 3 victims in the same movement, you can cross reference things and build a list of suspects. To more ethical nations like us that's unactionable intelligence, but if you don't care if you sweep up 5 innocents along with the 5 people that really were a threat to you, it still 'worked'.

Torture also is widely used simply as a tool to instill fear. When your citizens have seen the broken shells of people who's loyalty was deemed questionable, fear keeps them in step. It worked for Saddam until external forces stopped him, and it's helped keep 3 generations in power in North Korea.

Getting back closer to the video, things we don't like don't go away just because we refuse to talk about them. Rape, torture, and violence aren't like the boogeyman that will go away if we just stop talking and thinking about them so much. We need to accept that there are terrible things in our world that people do and benefit from doing them. These are things that people use to gain a feeling of power, or to truly gain real tangible power over other people.

Of course we have to discuss them responsibly, and the danger of shaming victims is an equally real thing to be aware of. At the same time though, humor is one of the ways of bridging the gap to people dealing with trauma, so jokes about things that cause trauma like rape, violence and torture have an honest place in making things better as well.

All actors are in a league of their own. Each with their own followers. Each with the same end goal. Robin Williams is still a powerhouse, even in death. But he didn't collect everyone. Not because he wasn't good, but because some people like apples more than oranges.

Yes people die from a lot, so the goal is to reduce it where ever possible instead doing the digestive equivalent of the bird box challenge.

And again, even if it was just 1%, that is millions of of people 50,000 people's mourning families would disagree that it's statistically insignificant.

I personally don't believe in governing by blackmail even when i support the goals.

I don't think this ad IS a big yawn for you. It looks to me like you have some pretty passionate feelings about it. That's a good thing. But I also think your passion would be better spent and be more effective in accomplishing your goal if it was harnessed and controlled.

A lot of the work has already been done for you. All you have to do is join the chorus. I think you'll come to find that you have some very powerful people on your side.

BTW, how do you do that strikethrough thing in your text?

Hhahah I demand that this weekend, an EPL goal keeper start peeking out from behind the left post.

$160,635 of $100.0M goal as of 1-8-19 @ 6:20 PM

https://www.gofundme.com/ladders-to-get-over-trump039s-wall

I noticed that after I commented. Didn't realize the center was the goal. Thought it was just a fail at that point. LOL.

At least I was right about Jack, right?

Remember one of the biggest moves in the conservative movement, one of the main reasons why evangelicals support the GOP, was because the government forced desegregation on Bob Jones University. Though evangelicals started down the GOP path before that, it was a huge turning point in getting evangelical church's directly involved with politics and having them tell their members to vote for the GOP and part of why they call Democrats, who are probably doing more along the lines Christ Himself would, Demoncrats. It's when you'll see the 700 Club, TBN and many others start pushing the GOP agenda rather openly.

Study up on Christian Reconstructionism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_reconstructionism), dominionism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology), and The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family:_The_Secret_Fundamentalism_at_the_Heart_of_American_Power). Remember to vet things along the way. You'll start to see how those at the top of the Christian right movement, are moving their masses like a cult to be what it is now... making their members think they are the ones who are most thoughtful and intelligent, while blinding them to any sort of truth. This why they accept "alternative facts" and "truth isn't truth" that truth in the eye of the beholder, and facts don't matter if they contradict what is being preached.

Sure the conservative movement is one of if not the main reason why people leave the faith and are turned off by the faith, but they don't care. Greed is now a good thing, and so long as they get in, they don't care what they make the faith look like to the world. They dig their heels in more and more and behave less and less Christ like, showing less of the love of Christ, and more bigotry and discrimination in concordance with the goals of the movement a the top levels.

I love that they are trying and have admirable goals.

I'm somewhat skeptical about the effectiveness. Presumably some of the data that they are going to collect will include retention rates -- if pieces of plastic of various sizes *enter* the C-shaped area, what percentage of them *stay* there until they can be intentionally removed? Also, how often will they become "full" to an extent requiring a tow to shore and offload operation?

The devices themselves seem like they'd actually be quite cheap to produce. Towing and offloading operations will be expensive, particularly in man-hours. Recycling the collected debris crap into plastic products for resale will be low-yield and unsustainable from a purely capitalistic pricing standpoint -- people will only buy that "merch" as a form of contributing to the project; not because the stuff they make will be competitively priced.

However, none of that makes their endeavor not worth doing/trying. Hopefully their retention rates are good enough (not much plastic or any particular size bracket escapes around / under the devices), and they can make enough through selling merch to fund the offload costs and deploy enough devices to meet their goals!

Manafort was just found guilty on 5 counts of tax fraud, 1 failure to disclose a foreign bank account, and 2 counts of bank fraud....so far. There are 10 more verdicts pending, but that's 8/8 so far!
To be clear, this was all about Manafort breaking multiple laws with the goal of hiding his multiple ties to, and the fact that he was working for Russia.

This the same day Cohen pleaded guilty to 8 criminal counts of tax evasion, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations.

D'oh!

No, that's not even vegetarian, certainly not even close to vegan. Educated doctors know the difference, and any who are the least bit confused should be completely ignored because they have less health knowledge than you get from 3rd grade health class, or they are liars.

So you agree, they're liars, pretending their focus is your health when it's clearly only about animal health.

Really? Eating just under 1 lb (350g) of red meat a week is Vegan to you!? Lol! I guess I'm vegan then, a leather wearing, red and white meat eating, insect and gopher killing vegan. There's no limit for chicken or fish either! Wow, veganism has sure changed in the last few weeks....or perhaps you're just talking out of your ass.

Sounds to me like most doctors include large amounts of meat and dairy in that plant based diet you're so fond of pushing as vegan.

If just under 1lb red meat a week = plant based diet=vegan, all these benefits you mention should be realized today for almost everyone, because most meat eating people eat less red meat than that.
Edit: had my numbers wrong, that's less than 1 lb red meat a week, not 3. Still not vegan by far though.

He used the PCRM's own words to show them as liars, not industry hit pieces. Pretty hard to say they're honest about their goals and intentions when their own tax filings prove they aren't.

Kingpin was a great villain, but I'm not sure I'd call him empathetic. You certainly see a human side to him, but he doesn't have any kind of goal the audience can get behind.

In fact, it's the disconnect between the urbane, kind man he is with his girlfriend and the ruthless, sadistic monster that makes him interesting.

I'm less familiar with American demographics, but I agree with the overall principal. Here in Canada we have IMO an even more severe segregation and unequal opportunity for Aboriginal peoples. It's severe enough up here though that not only are communities segregated by living on reserves with their own separate schools, but we have separate school divisions, and even their reporting and funding lines are different from all other schools.

That adds up to an enormous amount of differential treatment. Replacing that with equal opportunity though is much more desirable than 'waiting' till the school system has already failed kids and then 'lowering the bar' in one way or another to help them get into university.

In Canada I think our supreme court has done as at least 1 disservice greater than you guys though in making race a required consideration in sentencing. The appropriate section of sentencing:
"In sentencing an aboriginal offender, the judge must consider: (a) the unique systemic or background factors which may have played a part in bringing the particular aboriginal offender before the courts; and (b) the types of sentencing procedures and sanctions which may be appropriate in the circumstances for the offender because of his or her particular aboriginal heritage or connection."
The goal is to address the over-representation of aboriginal people in prisons. The effect however, is ultimately discriminatory as well. Before you dismiss the discrimination against whites as ok because it balances things out as is the 'goal', that's not the only affect. Another problem in Canada is the over-representation of Aboriginal peoples as the victims of crime, because most violent crime is between parties that are related. So on the whole crimes committed against Aboriginal people will on average be sentenced more leniently...

Failing to address the real underlying unequal opportunity can't corrected by more inequality later to balance the scales. In Canada, our attempt at it are too lesson the sentencing of people with unequal backgrounds, but the expense of victims that also faced those same unequal backgrounds...

And that 'corrective' inequality is also creating similar resentment amongst white people here too. People don't like their kids not getting into a school of choice potentially because of a race based distinction, but they like it even less to see a crime committed against them treated more leniently because of race.