Good question, BSR.

I wasn't a Christian until I'm in my 30's. But throughout my 20's, I occasionally get asked if I'm a Christian whenever I was just being nice/helping people. So after a dozen times getting asked that, I went to a church event from a Christian friend and got involved. I only wanted to get baptized after I read the whole Bible cover-to-cover.

I really don't get attached to the church much, although I do go every Sunday & have fellowship 3, 4 times a month. Not getting attached in the sense that knowing church is like any organization with lots of people - it's natural their hearts & minds tends to go to the daily running of the church (Getting more people into church, donations vs expenses, etc.) and communal/social side of things more than the spiritual-growth side.

I'm more of a "Jesus Follower" type of Christian I guess? not impressed with organized religion, but I just agree and put myself into practicing what Jesus preach to people, his simple commandments: Love God & my neighbors. Looking at Jesus as a humanitarian philosopher perspective, I can't believe He doesn't want us to make this Earth a better place. He's all about understanding, accepting and instill love & respect into everyone...

It's crazy to see people using and twisting religion to turn this world into - pardon my French - merde... how is this what Jesus wants? There are way too many people who just want the benefit (getting into heaven? bragging right? think Christianity is superior than others?) without the effort... these we call the "free-gift (read: cheap-fakes) gospel" that really have zero value and zero contribution to the betterment of the world.

You said it right. Jesus placed the world on his shoulder, if I call myself a Christian and I don't carry the cross as He does... I'm just lying to myself and to the world.

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Your video, How Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun Solved Pathfinding, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Corporal O’Neil of Troop 7 in Lewes, Del., reportedly did not request license or registration, never said why he was pulling him over until long after they were at the station, and repeatedly berated "you people" on the way to the station, telling Buckly "you're a piece of shit...go ahead and try the race card"
Buckley was not allowed to file an official complaint when he was released, in violation of more laws.

This is why police get shot in the face during traffic stops, and why some of them deserve it. There was zero reason to have him get out of the car, or to pull a deadly weapon.
I had the same treatment except the gun was to my head, and I was thrown to the concrete and jumped on, all while complying with commands, all because a dumb cop read my license plate wrong.

Fuck the police until criminal cops like this are all in a deep dark prison with no special protection.
*promote

The reason why we still have human pilots in fighters is because you can't jam or hijack a pilots brain. Any machine that is remotely controlled can be jammed at the very least. Leaving it unresponsive to commands. The exception here is that it could be pre programmed to perform a specific bunch of tasks, perhaps even something as advanced as air to air combat but, it loses a lot of flexibility. And it can be easily exploited.

E. G. you know a robot fighter jet is on it's way. Jam it so it cannot be called to cancel it's mission. Put some children into the target area.... That can happen and does with real pilots too, but they are able check and recheck as many times as they feel necessary either their JTACs or the amazing optics on modern jets giving a clear picture from over 10 miles away.

And that if course is with the ethical concerns of having an automatic killing machine fly around, which people like Stephen hawking warn us about. Perhaps in the immediate future the danger is quite low with only collateral incidents, but can you imagine say Trump with this kind of power. A trained soldier regardless of being broken in during training and even with all of the testosterone and adrenaline flowing through his body is still a compassionate and thinking human being. The likelihood of ordering a military wide atrocity is very low compared to an army of machineswhich will carry out any tasks no matter how gruesome. Can you imagine what Trump would do if people were no longer in the loop to share the responsibilities and burden of war? And by extention, that technology would likely be used to control the populace. You think the police in the US have there fair share of power tripping jackasses slipping into the service, well imagine if every officer was basically a silicon version of Trump. That's the worst ki d of robocop movie ever lol

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.

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No Bob, you don't need to keep crying "but I love him"....we know you'll gladly ignore any foibles he has while viciously attacking others for the same, or similar but lesser crimes he claimed they were guilty of.
We know you allow him to bold faced lie to you about anything.
We know you're ready and willing to repeat any stupidity or nonsense he feeds you.
We know you're 100% prepared to accept his word over your own eyes, ears, or memory.
We know you're prepared to claim financial and civil gains even though reality disagrees.

You really don't need to keep telling us you love your lying fraud of an abuser....we know.

Do I need to remind you about Carter again? A politician who was never two faced or untruthful. Please, please don't display your stupidity by attempting to attack his undeniably excessive levels of intelligence or morality. Dumb people don't design nuclear submarines, immoral people don't command them with honor....they get phantom bone spurs that miraculously disappear the minute the draft ends so they can screw the wives of their honorable associates while they go to war.

Good, if Trump is really done playing politician, that's great for all of us. I hadn't heard he had quit.
It's just asinine to claim the person holding the most powerful political position in the world isn't a politician. You might as well claim he's not a fraud, not a thief, not a philanderer, not a business failure, not a hypocrite, not immoral, not a misogynist, and not dishonest while you're denying reality.

As noted above, your video evidence and your claims have nothing in common.

I'm guessing there's a non-zero chance that the kind of black-ops missions under Obama(getting bin-laden, drone hits on taliban leaders in Pakistan). Aren't being brought to the commander in chief as regularly these days. I know there's plenty of actions they likely can't take without the President's sign off, but you ahve to imagine that anytime they aren't obligated to do otherwise they are trying to keep their ops off twitter.

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I have two boys, 9 and 14. If they treated people the way Trump, and most of the right, treats people, I'd be ashamed and reprimand them, especially if they did it publicly the way Trump has mocked a disabled reporter, Ford, the parents of fallen soldier... we could go on and on about how he mocks people on a regular basis. Every major religion has some variation of the Golden Rule, treat others as you'd have others treat you, especially Christianity, and yet the entire right ignores this rule, especially when it's somebody they oppose. Be it LGBTQIA+ people, political opponents, economic opponents, they ignore the Golden Rule. They in fact view it as a sign of strength to openly be hostile and rude to others, and yet, when one of theirs is mocked by late night TV, or when Sarah Sanders is kicked out of a restaurant (days after the fact that the entire right was celebrating the Supreme Court victory that they don't have to serve people they don't like), suddenly it is all "why can't people be civilized"? Plank in your own eye ass holes.

As Bob says politics is mean and ugly, but Republicans, Christians, made it that way and have been doubling down on it, ignoring the commandments to Love on another, the commandment to treat others as you'd have them treat you, not to judge least ye be judged and on and on. And somehow the right views that as a strength, as a good thing. They view McCain's efforts to reach across the isle and find a common center ground that everyone can agree on as a weakness. They don't want or will accept a 50/50 solution, they want a solution that is 80 or even better 90 percent on their side, and anything less than that is the other side being obstructionist.

Anyhow, if my kids acted the way Trump does, our President, whom we should hold to the highest standards, I'd make them apologize and be frank with them that I was appalled at their behavior, to mock a person with a disability or a woman or any other person the way Trump does on a regular basis. Yet the entire right is falling over themselves with pleasure at this rude behavior... I just don't get it. I don't get how that is acceptable behavior now from the President of the United States. It'd be one thing if he was still the piece of shit business man (who's business' constantly fail and need bankruptcy protection, even though he rarely pays contractors), 2nd rate reality TV show star, but this is the highest office in the land, where we should expect a person to act with dignity. I may have found Bush Jr to be an idiot and a horrible President, but at least he treated people with respect and the way one would expect of a President. Now we have a man-child and somehow this is a great thing. Fuck our lives when this is acceptable, when this is in fact praise worthy by far too many on the right (and I know, many Republicans said it was wrong of Trump to mock her the way he did, but they didn't really stand up to him, just a quick line to appease the few who might vote for them that would be appalled at that behavior).

EDIT TO ADD: What's upsetting about the Merrick Garland Supreme Court nomination is that they didn't even hold hearings. They had the votes to block him from confirmation, so hold hearings, say "no" and move on, but they wouldn't even do that. And he'd probably have been one of the most moderate justices in the modern era, which would have made explaining the "no" harder perhaps, but at least it would have been fair. But apparently fair is for the weak, one must play the ugly game now... and look at Bob's one reply, they got their eye on Ginsburg, they are hoping she dies so they can replace her with another theocrat like Kavanaugh, and because of that expectation and hope, you can guarantee that all the right will be out in force come November. We really need a miracle turnout to start to change things...

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

This is probably the greatest trick the GOP and the evengelical leadership managed to pull on the Christian masses, to make them believe that somehow the GOP is the most Christian, while the Demoncrats are just that, Demons.

Christ said, let those who haven't sinned toss the first stones, but Republican Christians are the ones who fight to deny equal rights under the law to LGBTQIA+ just for sinning differently.

Christ said to treat others as you'd have others treat you, but Republican Christians are the ones who fought all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to deny service against somebody, again for sinning differently, then while they are still cheering they can hate gays more openly, get upset and call for civility when the queen of lies under the king of lies gets kicked out of a restaurant. I guess, judging by the way Republican Christians treat LGBTQIA+, immigrants and the like, want to be treated like they are pieces of absolute shit.

To those they typically say they don't hate gays, they "love the sinner, hate the sin", lacking any sort of empathy on how it would be to be told "I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU, but I love you... in a distant way as one should love any human". They somehow think all the bigotry and hatred they do in the name of Christ is showing the love of Christ... despite the fact Christ said Love was the greatest commandment.

They also then try to put the blame of hatred of LGBTQIA+ people on Sodom. And while it is true that Sodom's sexual immorality didn't help, as it is specifically mentioned, it wasn't Sodom's sin. Also mentioned as a thing Sodom was guilty of was being hostile to foreigners, but they don't focus on that, just the sexual immorality. And they never focus and the actual sin of Sodom, which the Bible specifies as "This is the sin of your sister Sodom, she was a land of plenty and did little to help the needy and poor in her border." They ignore that, they ignore the hostility to foreigners, ignore that Sodom was vain and arrogant, and everything else listed after it says Sodom sinned greatly, ignore everything except the sexual immorality.

They love the rich, though Christ said that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. To which they'll typically try to say Christ was talking just about that one guy, but he said "a" not "that", as that guy had left the scene. Now the instruction to sell your things and follow after me, was directed right at that guy.

Christ said to help the needy and the poor, and they are the ones who most want to stop programs to help the needy and poor, so they can save tax money on themselves, or make said needy and poor dependent on the church.

Christ said blessed are the peacemakers, but they are the biggest warmongers of them all.

Christ said heal the sick, and they are the ones most opposed to medicaid for all, and other programs that would guarantee everyone access to AFFORDABLE health care. Somehow they don't care about affordability, and focus only on "the ER isn't going to turn you away just because you can't afford to pay then"... no but you'll be in massive debt for the rest of your life, meanwhile every other Christian nation in the world has medicaid for all at the very minimum.

Christ said Love is the greatest commandment, but they are the most hate filled and bigoted people I know. The most loving and Christ like of people I personally know, Pagans, followed closely by Unitarian Unversalists, followed a way back by Atheist, then liberal Christians, Muslims and way at the back is evangelical Christians... they are one of the biggest reasons why Christianity is loosing numbers, because they don't show the love of Christ, and they don't really care, they just have to do what they feel is right.

Abortions are at the lowest rate ever, because Obamacare gave women access to affordable health care, which was the key all along, but they want to get rid of those protections, because they don't actually want to stop women from having abortions by any means other than making it illegal and punishing women, you can't have them having any birth control or anything like that.

But Republican Christians somehow think they are the only real Christians, that no real Christian could vote Democrat... which you'd think would be their first clue that they are in a cult, when they start judging other Christians as not being Christian enough.