See, the important Clinton here is Hillary. Despite your hope and your ignorant conflations, Bill is not running for the presidency. Hillary Clinton is just as moral as Reagan and Romney. (Period, but also specifically with respect to sexual indiscretions. She has been faithful. Don't take that away from her just because she's a woman.)

And with respect to the rape allegations, it's disingenuous to presume they're true. Bill Clinton was accused of rape, yes. But no charges were brought against him. Indeed, one of the women who accused him signed an affidavit saying that she was lying about the accusation and then later (now) wants to rescind her affidavit. Until there are charges it's just more bullshit to slander the Clintons.

(Trump, on the other hand, is actually facing charges soon regarding the rape of an underage girl.)

And if you think that a woman standing by her man when he's accused of rape isn't a beautiful thing, well, I would question your humanity. If Hillary hadn't stood by Bill it would have reflected poorly on him. That she did tips the scales in the other direction. Also, it reflects well upon her. (I am sure Melania will stand by Trump during his trial and that will speak well to both of them.)

Again, it comes down to allegations vs. facts. Your whole characterization of the Clintons is based on allegations. The right's characterization of the Clintons is based on allegations. All of the characterizations come down to histrionic allegations. The things that are facts that they've done wrong they've apologized for. Hillary apologized for using a personal e-mail server, despite the fact that it was common practice for people to use personal e-mail servers in the 2000's. Hillary has apologized for the mistake at Benghazi, despite the fact that many similar attacks happened under Bush/Cheney's watch. The allegations of 'voter fraud' in the Democratic primary are bad, but even Hillary's opposition sided with her in the end.

And there's really nothing else propping up the perception that Hillary is bad in any way other than these allegations. It's just a matter of the right's echo chamber (including you) repeating it over and over again, which anybody can see is totally devoid of substantive reason. People 'feel' like Hillary is bad, but there's nothing there to show it.

It is because there is indeed, nothing there.

But with respect to Trump he has shown time and time again that he is unfit for any office, that he will take personal advantage of any power given to him. He continues to act in a way antithetical to the position he seeks. They say that you should dress for the position you seek. If the position of the Presidency requires one to wear a button down shirt and nice slacks Trump is a drunk, dirty, smelly bum wearing a trenchcoat, running down the street with no self control, yelling about how great Putin and Kim Jong Il are, grabbing whatever pussy he can find.

This admission of sexual assault is just the final nail in the coffin for him. (Or perhaps just the latest final nail.) To speak of sexual assault as anything other than the dictionary definition of being unfit to be president is just wrong.

Hey, um, the weed . . . um you're spilling the weed . . . seriously, that's a lot of weed you're dropping there . . . uh, weed's expensive and shit, like a lot of money . . . unless you go to OCEAN GREENS!

That's right -- OCEAN GREENS: Seattle's #1 recreational pot retail store! Ocean Greens is home of the $200 OZ and the $30 eighters of primo bud! And it's right on Highway 99, so you can score some smoke and a handjob from an underaged Asian hooker as well. OCEAN GREENS: I scream, you scream, Seattle screams for OCEAN GREENS!

(nb: I was not paid in any way, shape or form by Ocean Greens for this post. Except for the couple of joints of Golden Pineapple they kicked down. And that Oz of God's Gift. But apart from that, I got nothing.)

There was an interesting comment on NC's list of links yesterday, comparing Trump to Berlusconi.

This part, for instance, is quite poignant:

The exquisite thing about the modern reality show campaign/administration is that you get to keep your vices and actually leverage them. No need to hide your underage prostitutes (or worse not have any) when you can make them part of the Grand Show. This weeks episode is “Virility. Got caught buying a parliamentarian with 1 mil euros in a paper bag? This weeks episode is “Cunning”.

Your video, Underage Drinking And Driving-Busted, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Look @shinyblurry, nobody sane wants to mess with religious viewpoints regarding marriage. Your religious community gets to decide who can marry in your church and that is how it should be. Don't like it? Leave the religious community. Don't like, for example, the rules of the Amish? Stop being one. It's as simple as that.
The government can not afford to pick a religion. It needs to stay neutral. Would you like your government to simply endorse and act upon what the pope says? Imagine the government turns atheist and bans going to church. Nobody wants that.
That's why the government should stay the fuck out of who I or my children can marry. It's none of their business. As long as I want to marry a legal person that is neither a close blood relative (incest is bad, mmmmkay), married or underage, it shouldn't be their business. Neither trees nor dogs are legal persons.
I don't want big government to control my life. Why is that hard to understand? Why is this something that needs debating?

"Is that the best you can do?" Is a pretty strange thing for Thor to yell.

Clearly the missing answers to the tights question were 'merry man' and 'boy-whore'.

I like dressing underage rent boys as little girls so I can fuck them and jerk them off and pull on their pigtails all at once.

You don't drive? Underaged? Disabled like me?

Yummy, arguing on the internet!
I haven't done this in years, I'm gonna throw my hat in the Ring now.
I spent countless hours here for years, just enjoying the show. Staying out of all this, in the end at least, unimportant chatter. I came for the videos. Then somebody starts singing about sluts and I end up with an account. What can I say? I like sluts.
I spent much time reading and skipping over the posts of @shinyblurry here. And I still wonder why people feel the need to argue with him in such detail and length. He talks a lot about his faith in God and Jesus but what it come down to is this: He believes in The Bible.
The Bible features God and Jesus and all that but most important of all, it features a heckload of arguments for all kinds of things that are often in direct conflict.
Earlier in this thread, somebody threw a Bible quote about how rape victims have to marry their rapist in @shinyblurry's face and he actually started to explain (correct me if I misunderstood) how it's a punishment for the rapist that he has to pay money and marry the woman if the father chooses that.
I have money to burn. Is Jessica Alba married and where does her dad live? She's super hot and I *need* that kind of punishment. God wants her to fulfill her marital duties, right? If she's not available, I could make a list.
Now, I could argue this IMO rather distasteful idea with him, quoting the Bible back and forth, using other philosophical sources for arguments (I'm sure Hitchens mentioned rape somewhere sometime) but all that doesn't matter.
He believes in The Bible.
If I went back in time and edited early versions to my liking to include gems like "Every man shall also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed no abomination: they shall surely be praised", old shiny here would organize gay pride parades now. Because it's in the book. Whatever is in there, it's the truth. Whatever.
It's the same reason why creationist (I have no idea if old shiny is among them) can not accept evolution. It's not in the book.
They believe in this powerful, omnipotent god, not just in I-can-command-all-sea-animals-god. No, not that Aquaman shit the Greeks had, I'm talking about I-invented-the-universe-god. Get this, this guy did *invent* the universe. And still it was all some Siegfried and Roy BS we *know* to be nonsense. 7 days? Really? Was he in a hurry? Couldn't he wait until we get to the Game of Thrones and Tivo part of History? Was there another Earth to take care of? Contract work?
The idea to credit that dude for creating Evolution itself is too much to ask for these people. The idea that God created a giant machine (the universe) and allowed it to feature other tiny, tiny machines that repair, reproduce and improve themselves (life itself; evolution), is too mindblowing.
Who's more awesome in your book? The god that can do magic or the god who could do magic but opted for inventing everything science has discovered so far?
You know, science failed to disprove the existence of god. They can't do that yet. But they can disprove The Bible, at least parts. And yet, they still side with that darn book.
They don't care about God, the don't even care about Jesus. They care about what they read about them. They care about their perception of it.
Telling @shinyblurry that Jesus was a little, brown, jewish Hippie who got mixed up with existing mythology is like telling a fourteen year old that Ed Cullen is, by his own admission, a creepy murderer who stalks underage girls 80 years his junior. They don't want to hear it because that is not what the book said. They book didn't say that god created the natural laws of physics, chemistry and biology and set them upon the universe to wreak havoc until dinosaurs showed up. The book said it took 7 days. And ribs and dirt.
The Bible says so. Nothing else matters.
That's why it's pointless to argue scripture with him. The book is everything and allows so brilliantly for circular logic and cherry picking. It worked with slavery and how many are willing to argue nowadays in front of a TV camera for it? But gays are not slaves and women can always be picked on. Some wrong ideas are easier to conceal behind a book cover than others.
The Bible is everything to him, God and Jesus are just featured players. In the end they could be replaced by Donald Duck and Batman, they just weren't around back when they started to write it.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't love to hear your thoughts about the latest Daft Punk single, @shinyblurry. Or are you more into Rock music?

Hey, hin an Marion Barry should hang out and party. Marion could teach him a little bit about the importance of respecting other races, lifestyle choices, and if there's still time, an appreciation for underage prostitutes. Guaranteed re-election right there,

and here I just was commenting and defending us officers on the other "police state" video (where law enforcement handled it properly) and then here comes a video like this.

Only thing to say is the cop made a mistake and obviously become completely flustered by it as he probably knew he was being filmed. This does not give him the right to be an asshole. I have to ask what is the age of the male that is taking the PAS (preliminary alcohol screening) test? If he is under 21 there is a no tolerance policy towards underage drivers with alcohol in there system. He could of blew .01 and still be arrested. Anyone under the age of 21 should not be consuming alcohol (I know I know, we all did it) but if you do, DON’T DRIVE.

That being said, just a few notes so everyone knows (may only apply to California). In California (and I believe everywhere) you can be under the legal limit of .08 BAC and still be arrested for a DUI. There are two subsections of the Vehicle code for a dui, VC 23152(a) and VC 23152(b) which are usually both charged. The B section is only for if you are over .08 BAC. The (A) section can be used if you are driving erratically or unsafely even if under the legal limit. That section is also used for when driving under the influence of a drug (pot, prescription meds, etc..). 9 Times out of 10 in court the charge of VC 23152(A) will get dropped to a wet and reckless which is treated like a DUI but with fewer consequences.

Now, please do not take the advice of these other people and refuse all testing (in California). In California, there is a law called Implied Consent, please read here:

http://dui.drivinglaws.org/resources/dui-refusal-blood-breath-urine-test/california.htm

but to sum it up, you have to give breath, blood, or urine when arrested with probable cause for a DUI. This may not sound fair but it was put in place so people could not refuse all testing then go to court and argue there was no proof of their intoxication. There are penalties if you do not give samples so please read that link. This law can help both ways, as an example if you really are not under the influence of alcohol or at least under the legal limit, then the blood test (most accurate) will show this. This will either liberate you in court showing you were not intoxicated as the officer said or at least get your DUI dropped to a wet and reckless if you were under the influence but at a legal level. Of course, if you were really under the influence or got into a DUI crash nothing is really going to help you but a good lawyer.

Just as an example, a woman was stopped for making an illegal U-Turn. Before this officers admitted she had been driving ok. Once officers pulled her over to issue a citation they immediate smelled alcohol coming from the car and her person. The female agreed to a breath test and blew a .38 BAC! For most people including guys, you would be unconscious if you had that much alcohol in your system. The woman was charged for a DUI but more importantly got alcohol counseling because the court ordered it. This is just an example of times where people who drink on a regular basis (alcoholics) may not show signs of alcohol impairment. They are such sever alcoholics who can function to an extent while intoxicated. That DUI arrest probably saved the women’s life.

All I am trying to say is I know it may seem unfair or prying to have an implied consent law here in California. All it is meant to do is to encourage people when they go out to drink to please GET A CAB or SOBER driver to take you home. Sober does not mean you “feel” sober, sober means no alcohol or you have followed the guidelines issued by California DMV on how many drinks / how many hours it takes to be sober enough to drive.

Lastly, I will say there are ways of helping yourself during a DUI situation so educate yourself and do some research (not that rusty penny or mustard or barely blowing your breath crap) if you are really worried that one day you’re going to be pulled over after consuming alcohol.

I do not trust the wikileaks because the main man who was in charge got caught giving an underage salmon Bass To Mouth

I love how so well aware they are too :-p Makes it that much more amusing. Aside the one looks a little underage to be, um, product demo-ing. Or maybe I'm just too old?

Joris Luyendijk - They're just like people (2006)

"
In People Like Us, which became a bestseller in Holland, Joris Luyendijk tells the story of his five years as a correspondent in the Middle East. Extremely young for a correspondent but fluent in Arabic, he spoke with stone throwers and terrorists, taxi drivers and professors, victims and aggressors, and all of their families. He chronicles first-hand experiences of dictatorship, occupation, terror, and war. His stories cast light on a number of major crises, from the Iraq War to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with less-reported issues such as underage orphan trash-collectors in Cairo.

The more he witnessed, the less he understood, and he became increasingly aware of the yawning gap between what he saw on the ground and what was later reported in the media. As a correspondent, he was privy to a multitude of narratives with conflicting implications, and he saw over and over again that the media favored the stories that would be sure to confirm the popularly held, oversimplified beliefs of westerners. In People Like Us, Luyendijk deploys powerful examples, leavened with humor, to demonstrate the ways in which the media gives us a filtered, altered, and manipulated image of reality in the Middle East." -- amazon
http://www.amazon.com/People-Like-Us-Misrepresenting-Middle/dp/1593762569

I have no affiliation with the book, except to say I've read it and its amazing. Its brilliant at describing both the Palestinian and Israeli media extravaganza and what both sides do to get on the cover of time magazine. You'll be ashamed of the way our media forms us about the conflict and about the entire region and how wrong we all are.

@shinyblurry

The facts are simple: the existence of God explains everything that you feel about wanting to do good, and the love that you have for people and life, and your atheism denies it. Yet you embrace what is contrary to your own experience.

AND from farther down

… your atheistic presuppositions about reality. You say no one has come back but one man has, but of course you dismiss the account as fantasy (again because of your atheistic presuppositions).

Those aren't facts though. Those are your opinions and conjectures. Your theory of God may explain a greater number of things around me than science, but it also raises more questions than it answers, which makes it a horrible theory. "My atheism" doesn't exist as a concept. I don't subscribe to any belief about Gods any more than a monkey does. Are monkeys atheistic? I'm like a monkey. I have no "-ism" that "denies" anything. I happen to lack belief in any supernatural deity. *This lack of belief defines my atheism, rather than atheism defining my lack of beliefs.* I can't believe you still don't understand my position (or lack thereof). I have no idea what you mean by embrace. Nothing about my experience with "meaningfulness" requires me to believe in any gods, particularly not Yahweh.

So if it makes you feel good its okay to be a slave? You don't mind being enslaved to a mindless irrational process because you get rewarded for it like a rat activating a feeder?

Chemicals in my brain cause me to feel hunger and crave food. I follow them because doing so makes me feel good. I don't consider myself weak for being driven by those chemicals in my brain. To really feel like a slave, I'd have to be compelled to follow the commands of a sentient being, like a plantation owner with a whip, or a god of love threatening me with eternal torture, for instance, not chemicals in my own brain. Can there be shame in being a slave to yourself?

So I will modify this and say that you're living like a theist does but denying it with your atheism.

You changed one word, but missed the point of mine, so I've changed the same word: So I would turn it around and say instead that it's Christians *theists* who go about their lives living like normal humans, but thinking they're being good because their religion tells them to.

Now what?

Therefore what you're talking about is a herd morality.

Yep. Pretty much.

The entire point of my example was to show that if we simply have a herd morality where the majority tells us what is good and evil, then if the majority ever said child rape is good it would be.

If your whole final end goal is to prove your child rape hypothetical is internally consistent, and not to extend it into the real world, then yep, that's logically quite true. However, if you want to use it make any point about proving my beliefs to be somehow wrong, then you'll have to give me reason to believe it could ever possibly happen in a sustainable way.

My point was that we all come pre-programmed with a need for worship, which you apparently agree with. That is what is natural to us … It is actually more natural for us to rebel against God because of our corrupt nature.

Are we programmed to worship, or to rebel against God? Which is it? I propose that we're genetically designed to do exactly what makes us happy. Being good to others makes us (non-psychos) happy. Worship also makes many of us happy. Cognitive dissonance does not. I don't believe in any god, so I can't possibly worship one with a straight face. That would be cognitively dissonant and make me unhappy. I see no need to introduce the concept of "corruption".

The sense we agreed upon and have been discussing is that that life without God is meaningless … Therefore the meaning you derive from your feelings is only an illusion created by chemical reactions in your brain.

All cognition, from self-awareness, to thought, to the senses, to desires, to emotions, to numinous experiences, all of it is 100% chemical reactions. It's only fair to call my conscience an "illusion" if I also consider everything else that I perceive to be an illusion created by the chemicals in my mind. My feelings are as subjectively real as my senses.

There are other causes of depression but you see my point. Hope is the solution to depression.

That can be true. It's human nature to want to worship, and worshipping something can give hope. So for some people, if they can convince themselves to believe it, worshipping a god can lift them out of depression.

On what basis do you say your belief is more likely?

Occam's razor.

You say there is no reason to speculate (ever); now that is an interesting statement from someone who believes in open inquiry. What you've said is actually the death of inquiry. And let's be clear about this; you have speculated.

If there's no way to establish the truth of something, then there's no sense in trying to do so. There are no reliable records of the afterlife, so hoping to reach a conclusion is a vain pursuit. You can imagine hypotheticals, but you can't give any rationale for preferring one over another. Except by Occam's razor. What you consider "speculation" is just me saying, "nothing disproves anything about the afterlife".

Of course anything is possible when you summon your magic genie of evolution. "Time itself performs the miracles for you."

It's scientific fact, not mine, not anyone's. It's yours too, if you want it. You just have to go and learn about it from an unbiased source, not from uninformed people with pre-conceived ideas about what it is and isn't.

So no one is really bad?

In the relative non-objective morality sense, no, nobody is inherently bad or "evil" apart from our judgement of their actions. We often call people "bad", but that's just shorthand for what I said, or for having difficulty accepting that another person can do something so contrary to our concept of good.

Well, I'm fairly sure you've told me before that you hate the idea of God telling you what to do.

True, I would resent anybody giving me free will, then giving me a choice of doing what they say or accepting the worst conceivable torture for eternity. Did I misunderstand something?

[me:]Does the bible that say that rape is wrong? Does it say you cannot marry a child?

[you:]I've covered this above, but I will also add that if we had evolved differently, then in your worldview, all of this would be moot. We are only in this particular configuration because of circumstance, and not design. It could just as easily be 1000 different other ways. There could easily be scenarios where we evolved to exploit children instead of nuture them.

For a species to evolve to exploit children rather than nurture them is nearly impossible. That gene would get weeded out of the gene pool very quickly. Maybe I'm missing your point, and what you're really trying to say is that according to me, human feelings about right and wrong are, at their essence, random, because humans could have developed different feelings about right and wrong. I agree.

Back to my question: Does the Bible say that rape is wrong? Does it say that you cannot marry a child? To save time, could you point me to a neat summary of all the biblical rules that still stand? The Commandments were given in the Old Testament. I thought that law was struck down and there was a new covenant now, no? No sex before marriage is one, I'm assuming. Do you have to attend mass on Sundays? What are the others? I'm surprised to hear that you don't think the Bible suggests any position on condom usage. Is that just a Catholic hang-up then?

[me:]In both cases, you didn't address my point. 1) I'm stating that Yahweh's laws are far, far more complex than secular morality. You countered that Yahweh's laws were as simple as Jesus' two rules.

[you:]Romans 13:9-10

I agree that the rules in that verse are clearly derived from "love your neighbour", except maybe coveting, but that's not the point. Once I see the summary of biblical edicts, I'm sure I'll be able to point out that "Love your neighbour" isn't enough, that there are rules you would only follow because they're stated in the Bible, not because they obviously flow from the concept of neighbourly love.

So, when we think about doing unto others, we would think about it in the context of how Jesus taught us to behave.

So you're saying that we have to adjust our conscience first to align with the Bible, and then follow it. I'm saying we can just follow it according to what is bad for people.

abortion statistics

Good point. Foetal rights/women's rights is the moral debate of our times, IMO, maybe of all history. I haven't found any solid position on that issue. I've thought a lot about it, but this isn't the place to debate it. Suffice it to say I don't see abortion as a good thing, but not equal to infanticide either.

So your answer is yes? You think that without religion, society may decide torturing babies is good because it decided that killing Jews was good?

Yes, I think an entire society could end up agreeing on something that depraved, just like the ancient Greek society approved of paedophilia.

You know Germans were 94% Christian during WWII, right? And that the Greeks had those relations consensually? I'm against legalizing sex with children because it would be abused and children would be victimized, not because I think it's impossible for a child to enjoy and benefit from sex. I did it when I was underage and it was nothing but good.

You also act as if I am trying to defend all religion, which I'm not.

The thing is, you regularly invoke the 85% of humans who are theist when having a large number bolsters your argument, yet you disassociate yourself from most of them when their behaviour weakens your argument. I can never tell who you're talking about. Clearly identify the people you're talking about at all times, and we won't have this problem.

In any case, there are many examples of non-believing societies doing sick and depraved things to their populations.

And many Christian societies too, but I'm sure you'll disassociate yourselves from *those* Christians.

Tortured for Christ

According to Jesus, the Romanian government was appointed by God, so those Christians must have been doing something wrong, perhaps rebelling:

Romans 13:1-5

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.

That passage, BTW, makes my stomach turn for all the people (Christian or otherwise) who have been tortured and killed at the hands of immoral rulers. And Jesus says might makes right. Go Jesus go. Prick.

[you:]… logic, rationality, morality, uniformity in nature …

[me:]You're slipping back into solipsism. We agreed not to go there. I'm not going to answer any of those things.

[you:]Now you're just trying to duck the issue, and perhaps you don't understand what solipsism is, because this is not solipsism. Solipsism is the belief that only your mind is sure to exist.

What I am talking about is right in line with the video. Without God you don't have any ultimate justification not just for any kind of value, but even for your own reasoning. It is a direct implication of a meaningless existence. This is what I mean about a justifies b justifies c justifies d into infinity. You have nowhere to stake a claim which can justify anything which you experience, or even your own rationality. If you feel you do, please demonstrate why you believe your reasoning is actually valid.

Then you've entirely missed the point of me making those rules back at Qualiasoup v. Craig.

We agreed not to question the validity of our senses. If I can trust my senses, then I am self-aware. I must assume I'm a rational agent, since it was my own rational awareness that defined my self. If I'm a rational agent, then I can trust logic, which Craig tells us in the same video is a rational thing to do.

If your whole argument is, "a god must exist for you to be able to use logic" then I put it to you to show me logically (and not tautologically) why that must be true. To me, there's no connection.

I still don't see the infinite regression. Give me a real example of it in the form a justifies b which justifies c....

Also, what's "uniformity in nature" and when do I ever appeal to it?