Wow, did @bobknight33 finally make a friend?

You're as disingenuous as he is, but you have yet to master the cool, collected trolling that's his trademark, @NaMeCaF . If you get too emotionally engaged then you're just trolling yourself.

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.

this assumes a few things.
1.this is a game.
it is not.
2.that the person being engaged is a rational,reasonable human being.
they are not.
they are ideologues.
and ideologues only come from ONE,singlular perspective:
their own righteous certitude.

and any engagement with this ideologue only serves as a vehicle for them to prove how wrong you are,not to actually engage and come to a reasonable and mutual understanding.


you have the equation all wrong my friend.


the force is strong in me.

"i shall now engage in a campaign to verbally rape each and every trump supporter who is willfully ignoring that mans blatant abuses and crimes."

-----------------------

The game is to win your opponent to your side.

Your opponent just won. You are now one of them.

You've learned nothing about how to use the Force.

The Master still holds the pebbles in his hand.

I hear "yes that sounds like an excellent idea" at all speeds, but I can also hear "that's a fuckin excellent idea" if I engage my immaturity switch.

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.

*kill To much anxiety as i wanted to and thought about replying to the last comment for over 90 min. Maybe someone else can post it. Killing it will make it so i stop thinking about it. Sorry

This (anxiety) is why i can't have nice things or engage in interesting conversation

Yes, and imo any reasonable person would have done exactly that instead of intentionally causing an incident he could film and maybe profit from, or at least get some world star views.

She's married to a black dude, so I'll go out on a limb and say she isn't afraid of black men more than other men.

Of course, there's the possibility that she's actually a captive of her husband, forced against her will to marry and live with someone she feared and didn't respect because of their skin color just to torture her because she's really a racist bitch, but I seriously doubt it.

If the answer is yes, she's done this before to white guys they just didn't film it to publicly shame her and instead just used their fob again like a reasonable neighbor, would you change your position?

No, he has no obligation beyond the building's written rules to engage her at all, but that's exactly why she was suspicious, he violated building rules and stupidly refused to be reasonable....whatever his reason might have been, likely a mistaken assumption she was racially motivated and not just a good neighbor looking out for the safety of her building as the management had repeatedly requested everyone living there do.

What do you think he would do if a few 6'6" skinheads barged in when he opened the door, shoved past him, and rudely refused to prove they belonged there while filming him, snidely commenting about the dumb black boy who thinks he's security? Would you then excuse the hundreds of death threats he started getting from random racists for daring to confront white men? I hope not.

A big part of the Zero's reputation came from racking up kills in China against a lot of second-rate planes with poorly-trained pilots. After all, there was a reason that the Republic of China hired the American Volunteer Group to help out during the Second Sino-Japanese War – Chinese pilots had a hard time cutting it.

The Wildcat was deficient in many ways versus the Zero, but it still had superior firepower via ammo loadout. The Zero carried very few 20mm rounds, most of it's ammo was 7.7mm. There are records of Japanese pilots unloading all their 7.7mm ammo on a Wildcat and it was still flyable. On the flip side, the Wildcat had an ample supply of .50 cal.

Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa was able to score seven kills against Japanese planes in one day with a Wildcat.

Yes, the discovery of the Akutan Zero helped the United States beat this plane. But MilitaryFactory.com notes that the Hellcat's first flight was on June 26, 1942 – three weeks after the raid on Dutch Harbor that lead to the fateful crash-landing of the Mitsubishi A6M flown by Tadayoshi Koga.

Marine Captain Kenneth Walsh described how he knew to roll to the right at high speed to lose a Zero on his tail. Walsh would end World War II with 17 kills. The Zero also had trouble in dives, thanks to a bad carburetor.

We were behind in technology for many reasons, but once the Hellcat started replacing the Wildcat, the Japanese Air Superiority was over. Even if they had maintained a lead in technology, as Russia showed in WW2, quantity has a quality all of it's own. We were always going to be able to field more pilots and planes than Japan would be able to.

As far as Soviet rockets, once we were stunned by the launch of Sputnik, we kicked into high gear. You can say what you will of reliability, consistency, and dependability, but exactly how many manned Soviet missions landed on the moon and returned? Other than Buran, which was almost a copy of our Space Shuttle, how many shuttles did the USSR field?

The Soviets did build some things that were very sophisticated and were, for a while, better than what we could field. The Mig-31 is a great example. We briefly lagged behind but have a much superior air capability now. The only advantages the Mig and Sukhoi have is speed, they can fire all their missiles and flee. If they are engaged however, they will lose if pilots are equally skilled.

As @newtboy has said, I am sure that Russia and China are working on military advancements, but the technology simply doesn't exist to make a Hypersonic missile possible at this point.

China is fielding a man portable rifle that can inflict pain, not kill, and there is no hard evidence that it works.

There is no proof that the Chinese have figured out the technology for an operational rail gun on land, let alone the sea. We also have created successful railguns, the problem is POWERING them repeatedly, especially onboard a ship. If they figured out a power source that will pull it off, then it is possible, but there is no concrete proof other than a photo of a weapon attached to a ship. Our experts are guessing they might have it functional by 2025, might...

China has shown that long range QEEC is possible. It has been around but they created the first one capable of doing it from space. The problem is, they had to jury rig it. Photons, or light, can only go through about 100 kilometers of optic fiber before getting too dim to reliably carry data. As a result, the signal needs to be relayed by a node, which decrypts and re-encrypts the data before passing it on. This process makes the nodes susceptible to hacking. There are 32 of these nodes for the Beijing-Shanghai quantum link alone.

The main issue with warfare today is that it really doesn't matter unless the battle is between one of the big 3. Which means that ANY action could provoke Nuclear conflict. Is Russia going to hypersonic missile one of our carriers without Nukes become an option on the table as a retaliation? Is China going to railgun a ship and risk nuclear war?

Hell no, no more than we would expect to blow up some major Russian or Chinese piece of military hardware without severe escalation! Which means we can create all the technological terrors we like, because we WON'T use them unless they somehow provide us a defense against nuclear annihilation.

So just like China and Russia steal stuff from us to build military hardware to counter ours, if they create something that is significantly better, we will began trying to duplicate it. The only thing which would screw this system to hell is if one of us actually did begin developing a successful counter measure to nukes. If that happens, both of the other nations are quite likely to threaten IMMEDIATE thermonuclear war to prevent that country from developing enough of the counter measures to break the tie.

Asking @bobknight33 to engage in some form of cogent argument is as pointless as asking shit to smell nice. Ain't gonna happen.

He comes, he drops a few word bombs, if anyone questions him or attempts any form of intelligent argument he fades into the woodwork. Why? Because he knows if he engages, he loses, because he's got nothing. Just word bombs. To quote the Bard, he is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

I know, I know, be nice to fellow sifters. @BobKnight will receive a full apology and retraction from me if and when he proves me wrong by presenting a cogent argument instead of his usual disingenuous crap.

Although amazingly interesting and engaging, I was bored and had to stop watching....

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.

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.

Dude you are so toxic.... trying to now bait me into arguing about the definition of plant based lol because I didn't engage with your FOX news like hyperbole above, you figured you'd keep poking until you at least get something.

All I can say is thanks, because every time your reply you help spread this vegan message.

@navlasop that's part of the problem.

For example, there is no doubt that pharmaceutical companies engage in some EXTREMELY shady shit. But when someone screams that vaccines are evil and "big pharma" is hiding the cure for cancer, it becomes difficult to discern the genuine issues (evergreening, etc) from the noise.

"Chem trails!
Global Warming!
9/11 was an inside job!
Aliens at Roswell!"

One of those is a real and serious problem, but if it gets lumped in with the orders, it becomes easy to dismiss it as nonsense.

We need to get better as a society at filtering the signal from the noise.