For @bobknight33-
Oof….Trump is actually arguing in court he can’t be barred from office because he didn’t take an oath to support the constitution, and wasn’t an officer of the United States (not sure what he thinks holding the office of president of the United States/Commander in Chief is then) so his coup attempt and fomenting then supporting an insurrection was legal!

Again, Trump is arguing in court that the president has no obligation to follow, preserve, protect, or defend the constitution despite taking the oath “will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The judge disagreed. Trial starts Oct 30. This one you can say is just about stopping Trump from running again, but you can’t blame Democrats because it’s Republicans that filed against him in Colorado. D’oh!

I guess that means Joe is free to declare himself president for life with rights of succession in perpetuity! Thanks Trump! 😂

Ruh-roe…Trump’s business fraud case just exposed Ivanka for a $13 million tax fraud because they valued her penthouse at $21 million for loans and net worth but she only paid taxes on it at an $8 million valuation. That’s called tax fraud, WAY more than Hunter is being investigated over. Get ready, round two will be his children in court/prison. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving family. 😂

PS- I was right about Scalise. I seriously doubt rapist cohort (177 kids raped under his watch) Gym Jordan can do better with less support. Even republicans can’t work with republicans.

Bonus- Santos now says after he’s tossed out of congress he’s going to spill the beans on Republicans who he has mountains of dirt on. This is going to be fun. 😂

Second Bonus- Allen Weisselberg’s testimony yesterday may have unraveled a massive criminal conspiracy, including a $2 million severance on the condition he doesn’t cooperate with the prosecution…in writing! That’s the definition of obstruction, and idiot that he is Weisselberg perjured himself badly on the stand yesterday to the point where the DA paused his examination to decide how to prosecute him. May be a 5th criminal indictment for obstruction and witness tampering soon, and another stay in Rikers for Mr lifelong Trump CFO that has absolutely zero accounting knowledge…hide and watch! 😂

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Jesus fuck, @bobknight33….you can’t be this gullible. Some internet failure of a traveler blogger did not discover some massive nefarious Chinese plot to develop targeted diseases to release publicly against their genetic enemies….nor did he fact check it any more than you did. If there was a scintilla of truth to this nonsense, he would have been disappeared long before he could post this fantasy through the well monitored Chinese internet or leave the country. Duh. How do you fall for this…every….single….time?

I love how these idiotic conspiracy theories require unbelievable competence, cooperation on a scale never seen, planning and execution on a god level, but idiot internet sleuths think they, on their own, have unraveled the conspiracy because the god level conspirators made some idiotic rookie mistake no professional ever would, exposing the entire scheme….but only to them, the proof is hidden, just trust them.

Jesus fucking Christ, grow up and join reality, buddy. You honestly need mental help if you believe the nonsense you post.

The animated Tv show from the 80's, of course. The movie was a disappointment.

I mention it because Aeon, the female scientist/superspy/clone, is capable of doing her job and being nice....at least nice to those not trying to kill her. Capable of being impossibly good at her job and being a loving, caring partner. Capable of unraveling the labyrinthine, convoluted, outrageously sci-fi conspiracies while wearing heels and latex and looking sexy as Hell doing it.
If Ripley is the exception to the rule, what is Aeon, who ignores all these rules?

*quality

As someone who watches a LOT of kid's movies with my daughter, I notice an alarming regularity of torture in children's media.

You like Pixar movies, right? Pick a Pixar film, ALL of them have a torture scene. It's bizarre.

It's late, so I'll be succinct about these, but let's define torture as follows:
Torture - noun - the act of deliberately inflicting severe physical or psychological suffering on someone by another as a punishment or in order to fulfill some desire of the torturer or force some action from the victim

Fair?

This is a short list I can think of off the top of my head

Toy Story
Sid tortures Woody "Where are your rebel friends NOW?" as he burns his forehead

Toy Story 2
Stinky Pete tortures Woody "You can go to Japan together or in pieces. Now GET IN THE BOX!"

Toy Story 3
Buzz gets put in the "time-out chair" with a burlap bag put over his head and is forced to turn on his friends

Monster's Inc.
Mike is put in the "scream extractor" and is interrogated "Where's the kid?" as the extractor inches towards his face.

Wreck it Ralph
Ralph asks "What's going on in this candy coated Heart of Darkness?" Sour Bill tries to run away but Ralph picks him up and threatens to lick him. "I'll take it to my grave" "Fair enough" and Ralph pops Sour Bill in his mouth "Had enough?" "OKAY OKAY I'LL TALK!"

Cars 2
The green-gasoline in his tank, the spy car is put in front of the radiation shooting camera and is interrogated about who the other spy is and who has the information about the green gas he recovered that could unravel their plan to get revenge for being discriminated against for being "lemons." His engine explodes (he's killed?) in spite of giving up the information.

The Incredibles
Mr. Incredible is restrained via some black goop and asked about his family's whereabouts on the island.

Finding Nemo
Near the end of the film when Dory finds Nemo but Marlin has wandered off thinking Nemo was dead, they need to know which way Marlin went and come across the little crabs sitting on the pipe "heyyyyyyyyheyyyyyyyyyyheyyyyyyyy" "Yeah I saw where he went, but I'm not telling you, and there's no way you're gonna make me." Dory lifts him up and threatens to feed him to the seagulls sitting on a small rock until he starts screaming "OKAY ILL TALK ILL TALK HE WENT TO THE FISHING GROUNDS!!!"

I could go on, but I hope to make this simple point:
These films do NOT have to include a torture scene. It's simply odd to me that it appears so often, instilling the idea early on that torture works for getting information or cooperation out of people.

Finally, I point to one of many pieces of research on the matter https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5325643/

Really? Jimmy Carter said that?!

Seriously, please quote where in the bible Jesus said any such thing. I think you're misquoting the holiness code for Jews from Leviticus and attributing them to Jesus. Those same rules disallow cotton poly blends and shellfish, but you probably never considered boycotting Red Lobster or the Gap, and allow slaves from neighboring countries but you probably don't have a Canadian house slave. Learn about the difference between Christian and Jewish laws don't just watch fake news. ;-)

Really, Bob, you want to say banging kids is liberal after Republicans supported Roy Moore?! Lol. *facepalm
Looting and other crime is not a liberal idea, that's nonsense. Bat shit crazy, hyper partisan nonsense. Some liberals want it to be so easy to cross borders legally that illegal immigrants would cease to exist, I've never heard a sane one support illegal immigration, only illegal immigrants.
Crime could more reasonably be said to be a religious thing, atheists are vastly underrepresented in prison populations. You might say atheists are statistically far less likely to be missing out on life.

No actual science has ever pointed to a creator God....or any god. Anyone telling you different is lying to you about what science is. The closest science ever comes to saying "...so there must be a God" is when it says "we don't know" to a question, often followed by unraveling the mystery and never by finding God hiding behind a corner.

Christians have a much longer and more storied history of ruthless torture and murder in the name of faith than Muslims. Their motto is also convert or die. Learn about them before attempting to make comparisons, maybe?

Obedience to the law like the recently pardoned terrorist group, the Bundys, practiced? Obedience to the law like the bakers allowed by law to display their intolerance against whomever they deem unclean? Obedience to the law like Trump, who's been found guilty of multiple frauds....admitted them in fact? Obedience to the law only when it's convenient or self serving, intolerance whenever it can be gotten away with is what the right practices today.
Maybe you're still a kid who has yet to take critical thinking classes? ;-)

it looks like someone made a track out of a unraveled paperclip

Decent write-up of the current hacking hysteria:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-02/u-s-intelligence-got-the-wrong-cyber-bear

And the WaPo was caught in even more lies with regards to their shoddy reporting on the supposed hack of Burlington Electric:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/02/how-the-washington-posts-defense-of-its-russian-hacking-story-unraveled-through-web-archiving

The Unraveling was good, but my fave has always been Siren Song of the Counter Culture when they went to Geffen.

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Well, Syriza is an acronym for Coalition of the Radical Left (roughly), and everything left of the Berlin Consensus is considered to be radical left. So they are going to call Syriza a radical leftist party until the political landscape itelf has been pulled back towards more leftist positions. But you're right, if they were judged by their positions, they'd be centre-left in theory, if centre-left hadn't turned into corporatism by taking up the Third Way of Schröder/Blair/Clinton.

They are, without a doubt, radically democratic though. As your Grauniad article points out, they haven't turned on their election promises yet, which is quite unheard of for a major European party. Francois Hollande in particular was a major letdown in this regard. Few people expected him to bow down to German demands so quickly. Aside from his 75% special tax for the rich, he dropped just about every single part of his program that could be considered socialism.

Grexit... that's a tough one.

Syriza cannot enforce any troika demands that relate to the programmes of the Chicago School of Economics. Friedman ain't welcome anymore. No cuts to wages or pensions, to privatisation of infrastructure, no cuts to the healthcare system, nor any other form of financial oppression of the lower class. That is non-negotiable. In fact, even increases in welfare programs and the healthcare system are pretty much non-negotiable. Even if Syriza wanted to put any of this on the table, and they sure as hell don't, they couldn't make it part of any deal without further damages to an already devasted democratic system in Greece.

So with that in mind, what's the point of all the negotiations?

Varoufakis' suggestions are very reasonable. The growth-linked bonds, for instance, are used very successfully all over the world in debt negotiations, as just about any bankrupty expert would testify. Like Krugman wrote today, Syriza is merely asking to "recognize the reality everyone supposedly already understands". His caveat about the German electorate is on point as well, we haven't had it explained to us yet – and we chose to ignore what little was explained to us.

Yet the troika insists on something Syriza cannot and will not provide, as just outlined above. Some of the officials still expect Syriza to acknowledge reality, to come to their senses and to accept a deal provided to them. Good luck with that, but don't hold your breath. Similarly, Varoufakis is aware that Berlin is almost guaranteed to play hardball all the way.

Of course, nothing is certain and they might strike a deal during their meeting in Wednesday that offers Greece a way out of misery. Or maybe the ECB decides that to stabilize to Euro, as is their sole purpose, they need to keep Greece within the EZ and away from default. That would allow them to back Greece, to provide them with financial support, at least until they present their program in June/July. Everything is possible. However, I see very little evidence in support of it.

Therefore Grexit might actually be just a question of who to blame it on. Syriza is not going to exit the EZ willy nilly, they need clear pressure from outside, so the record will unequivocally show that it wasn't them who made the call. No country can be thrown out, they have to leave of their own. Additionally, Merkel will not be the person to initiate the unravelling of the EU, as might be the consequence of a Grexit. That's leverage for Greece, the only leverage they have. But it has to be played right or else the blame will be put squarely on Greece, even more so than it already is.

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Edit #1: What cannot be overstated is the ability of the EZ to muddle through one crises after another, always on the brink of collapse, yet never actually collapsing. They are determined to hold this thing together, whatever the cost.
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Speaking of blame, Yves Smith linked a fantastic article the other day: Syriza and the French Indemnity of 1871-73.

The author makes a convincing case why the suppression of wages in Germany led to disaster in Spain, why it was not a choice on the part of Spain to engage in irresponsible borrowing and how it is a conflict between workers and the financial elite rather than nations. He also offers historical precedent, with Germany being the recipient of a massive cash influx, ending in a catastrophe similar to Spain's nowadays.

It strikes me as a very objective dissection of what happend, what's going on, and what needs to happen to get things back in shape. Then again, it agrees with many points I made on that BBC videos last week, so it's right within my bubble.

Hey kceaton1,

I'm sorry to hear about the narcolepsy and sleep paralysis. I remember watching a video someone put out recently (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PuvXpv0yDM) that sort of explained what it is like and it didn't seem like very much fun. I can't really imagine what you're going through. I have a friend who has narcolepsy but it must be a mild version because it seems like she kind of winds up to it and comes out of it pretty easy.

In regards to your question, I appreciate you not writing off my response as one thing or another. In regards to supernatural experiences, I can see why you have a lot of skepticism as well. You have experienced things on the order of what you've heard other people call supernatural experiences, but you have a natural explanation for them.

Having a supernatural experience can be hard to quantify, and usually when God is revealing something to you, it goes beyond sense impressions. You could perhaps write some of them off as one thing or another but three experiences in particular stand out to me as being undeniable. They aren't necessary what led me to Christ but they really defy any kind of naturalistic explanation.

The first was from before I was a Christian, when I was into the new age. At the time I was exploring a lot of eastern spiritual practices. There is one in particular, which I wont go into detail about, that for a few minutes allowed me to see with my eyes closed. When I was in the shower one day I closed my eyes to rinse my hair and when I did I was utterly shocked and amazed to be looking right at my feet and the water falling down upon them. It was real time and the only difference from normal vision was it had kind of an energetic haze over everything, kind of matrix looking. It was otherworldly but still completely in sync with my normal vision when I opened my eyes.

I wasn't hallucinating because I was able to test it in real time by opening and closing my eyes and looking at various things. It was all completely consistent and completely real. I could see what was going on to minute detail with my eyes closed and when I opened them everything matched perfectly, and vice versa. I wasn't dreaming because I immediately got out of the shower and told my then significant other who would vouch for that happening. It didn't last long but I did experience it and there isn't a naturalistic explanation.

The second thing that happened to me is that is undeniable is that I was physically healed by a Christian praying over me. My left leg used to be shorter than my right leg by a quarter inch. I know this because I measured it a few times and it caused me to walk somewhat unevenly. The man prayed for someone else who had the same problem except worse, and I saw their leg grow out and even up with the other. When I saw that I asked to be prayed for and the same thing happened to me. I know it did because I measured my legs and they are exactly the same length. I also had to learn how to walk correctly after this happened. Again, no naturalistic explanation.

The third thing happened at my baptism. I knew I needed to get baptized, although at the time I didn't really understand what it was all about. When I got baptized, it completely changed me. The easiest way to described it is, when I went into the water I was one person, and when I came back up I was a different person. Different in this sense, that I was cleansed on the inside. Emotionally and spiritually, it was like a thick black sludge had been removed from the walls of my heart. An emotional weight had been lifted, depression and anger and sadness disappeared; it was replaced with an incredible lightness, with true peace and joy. This wasn't superficial; I was utterly changed. I was a different and better (healed)person, and on top of that I could sense the tangible presence of the Holy Spirit, from that moment on until now.

People have given me different explanations; hallucinations, psychotic break, etc. I've have a lot of experience with people who have mental illness; the things that happen to them aren't positive, they're negative. When they think they have entered Nirvana, their behavior is completely off and often self-destructive. Delusional psychosis doesn't heal, it hurts. One way or another, the whole thing is going to unravel because it isn't real. What has happened to me is very real and I experience Gods love, care and guidance every day of my life. The Lord is good, and He is faithful; He cares even about the little things of my life.

I am a Christian not simply because I have seen miracles, it is because I believe the gospel. I know I am a sinner and that I need a Savior. I know that Savior is the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for my sins and was raised to life on the third day. The Lord has made that clear to me and I don't have any trouble agreeing with Him. He gave it all for me; why should I do any less? Before I knew the Lord I was resigned to a meaningless death. Today, I have a living hope. But I didn't come to be a Christian because I am afraid of death. I came to be a Christian because God revealed Himself to me, that He created me for a reason, and that my true fulfillment and purpose can only be found in Him. Since I have given my life to Jesus Christ, I have found that to be completely true, in ways I could never have imagined. My life affirms the truth of this scripture:

Ephesians 3:20 Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,
Ephesians 3:21 to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, forever. Amen.

@Lawdeedaw - what's the source on that statistic? No need for a pre-emptive strike, you might want an argument but i just want information. All the other statistics have reasonable sources. In fact, i think some of those sources are in contradiction with what you say RE: the disparity.

In particular, the point @Asmo and the videographer made about the system being balanced in favour of equivalent white crime? In other words - if the statistic is reliable, what method do you use to claim that it "significantly" addresses the disparity? It's not easy to unravel the socio-economic factors and the inherent bias of the system in order to prove your point... I think it's pretty self evident that a white guy dealing coke in the bathroom of a wall street office has a pretty big positional advantage over a black guy selling crack from the ghetto. The black guy might do it in the open because crackheads in the ghetto aren't too fussy, but the cokeheads on wall street damn well don't want their dirty business known.

I'm willing to believe what you say, but you haven't done anything to prove or give confidence to it.

@bcglorf
so ignore what the man is saying because of the platform given to him by a group you find to be "mother earth loving hippies"?

i am not going to even attempt to unravel that kind of twisted logic.

wait..what?
thats simply just untrue bob.
unless you are saying there was ZERO voting in the beginning of this country.
is THAT what you are trying to say?
are you also implying that representative democracy is losing our way and therefore bad?
/holds head in hands...
im trying to unravel your comment but its not making much sense.

what the fuck is this "true" history you are talking about? hell..just plain "what the fuck are you talking about"?

are you confusing the articles of confederacy with the constitution?
or the fact that senators used to be picked by elected officials and now they are voted for by the citizenry?

good god man,you are giving newt shit for not knowing his history yet you are butchering the very thing you proclaim to know the "truth" of.there is no definitive "truth" when it comes to history.there is just data and books and transcripts and journals,all left to be interpreted by the reader.the more information that you have the clearer the picture becomes but it aint math bubba.
people will still debate the finer details,and historians often do.though revisionists are particularly venal in my opinion,because they have an agenda.

i think you may have read a revisionists history book.