https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-clocks-july-2023-as-hottest-month-on-record-ever-since-1880/

Do you think NASA is wrong?

Republicans were disciplined and did a good job tearing down Joe, but looks like it will be for naught.

Is a person who has no chance of winning a competitor? Aren't they, at that point, a spoiler?

These are the games the parties play to interfere with the will of the people being expressed. — Hanover

Right. I don't necessarily like Democrats trying to keep third parties off the ballot, but I know they're no different than any other political party that would do the same thing. The GOP would not hesitate to keep third parties of the ballot if they thought it would help their chances.

Jan 6th and the GOP's rallying around Trump after the stolen election drama are quite different, though. I like to think that in a parallel universe, where Trump is just as awful a person as he is now, but a champion of climate change, medicare-for-all, and high taxes on the rich, the Democrat party would still have nothing to do with him. What do you think?

One is a street level blue collar crime and the other an organized white collar crime. — Hanover

I'm not seeing anything criminal in Dems pursuing legal challenges.

I just found out who Amber Rose is. The Republican party has taken an odd turn.

almost always a sign of latent homosexuality
— Mikie

Strange though, is that supposed to be a bad thing? — Lionino

For a religious conservative? Yes.

You and I both know Trump would certainly sign a draft bill if Republicans sent it to him and the country was in dire straights. Supposing some Red Dawn type scenario, I would be in favor of a draft. Would you?

Do you think Trump would refuse to sign a draft bill if a Republican Congress sent him one?

We don't currently have a draft. That can change, of course, which is why men have to register for selective service. You have no problem with being forced to register for a draft?

So you have no problem with men having to register for selective service?

Register for Selective Service (the draft)
https://www.usa.gov/register-selective-service

The one we currently have where all 18 year old males have to register for selective service. You know, going to war because the government tells you to? You're saying Trump is against that?

Yes. People who think you should go to war because the government tells them to. — NOS4A2

Trump is against the draft? I know he's against drafting himself, but I haven't heard a peep from him about changing our draft policy.

Is there anything sadder than a draft dodger posing as a tough guy?

You think there's going to be a nuclear war?

Again, you are upset about words, something Sessions said on a right wing talk show. — fishfry

As you know, people go to prison all the time over "words". The words of the Attorney General matter, regardless of where he's talking. The whole country was upset by the zero-tolerance immigration policy (the action behind the words), which is why the policy ended just weeks after people found out. Discussing this with you is pointless. You're beclowning yourself now.

I think we have a duty to save a drowning child in the scenario I talked about. Why does that duty fade the further away the child is? If I can easily save a child by flying to a pond and rescuing them, don't I have an obligation to do so? If I have extra money and could save a child by sponsoring one through Save the Children, don't I have a moral duty to do so? Singer makes good points.

If you come across a child drowning and you have merely to reach out your hand and get your arm wet to save her, do you have a duty to do so? Are you acting immorally if you let her die?

Yeah, but I think animal rights will be near the top of the list.

When future generations judge us harshly, it will be for how we treat and eat animals. It doesn't bother me enough to change my behavior, but I would pay twice as much for meat if there was a lab-grown alternative that was as good.

What's wrong with solar panels? I live in the desert and my panels have saved me over ten thousand over the years. I lease them through Solar City.

How does theory of universals/platonism handle borderline cases where you have something that has qualities of both x and y, say a couch that folds into a bed? As you're manipulating the thing, there's going to be a point in time where half the people think it's a couch, and the other half think it's a bed.

What was the worst thing Trump did while he was president, in your opinion?

https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/29/politics/donald-trump-howard-stern-iraq-war/index.html

“Yeah, I guess so,” Trump said in the fall of 2002 when asked by Stern if he supported an invasion. “You know, I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

He's singing a different tune now, of course. But if you're going to call out the NYTimes for what they were saying back then, what's good for the goose...

The link is not about Trump, it's about Jeff Sessions.

"Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Fox News' Laura Ingraham on Monday that he hopes the administration's new policy that separates children from their parents will serve as a deterrent to other immigrants considering crossing the border illegally."

To recap: the Trump Admin started a new zero-tolerance policy to separate all families as a deterrent. This had never been done before and was ended just a few weeks after the public found out. Do you see how that is different than what Biden and Obama were doing?

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/11/pence-trump-endangered-my-family-on-jan-6-00086664

"“I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”"

If I was religious, I'd assume god really is on Trump's side. — Echarmion

Or Luck of the Devil?

Both sides have claimed over and over again their opponent is an existential threat. And this Republican nutjob apparently decided to do something about it.

"In addition to the QAnon-adjacent posts, Trump shared several conspiracy theories Tuesday on his Truth Social site and he re-posted a picture of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with the words “Your enemy is not in Russia” written in black bars over their eyes."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-shares-barrage-qanon-content-conspiracy-theories-social-media-pl-rcna45465

And then there's Qanon and Alex Jones. Remember the pizzagate shooter?

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5112472/donald-trump-calls-president-biden-threat-democracy
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/11-ways-biden-handler-hell-bent-destroying-america

I'm 90/10 sure they are going to abolish the filibuster to push through a lot of new legislation to ensure they are less likely to lose elections in the future. — Count Timothy von Icarus

They won't have the votes to do this. At best, they'll have a margin of 1 or 2. Susan Collins would never go through with it.

One bystander killed, another in critical. Sounds like shooter was on a rooftop with a rifle.

If you think Iraq was such a bad idea (which it was), why are you voting for the political party that got us into it? A majority of House Dems voted against the Iraq war authorization.

If there was going to be a democratic vote on same sex marriage, I'd bet everything I own that it would be outlawed. — Patterner

The polling on same sex marriage is that it's very popular.

The truth is you don't actually know that his motives were different than Obama's. — fishfry

https://www.axios.com/2018/06/19/sessions-says-he-hopes-child-separation-policy-will-serve-as-a-deterrent

You made my point for me. In 2014 when Obama was separating families and putting kids in cages, the MSM did not widely report the story. People were not outraged because they didn't know it was happening. When images of kids in cages covered in foil space blankets "like baked potatoes" started circulating on social media, Obama dialed back the cages and loosened the vetting of families. Even the WaPo was forced to report on the kids Obama was losing to traffickers. — fishfry

Sure, it looked bad, but the two cases are not the same. Obama was not separating every family. The Trump Admin was. Obama was not doing it as a deterrent. The Trump admin was. Those are crucial differences, don't you agree?

No, the behaviour is the same, no? Behaviour is public.

EDIT: for the avoidance of doubt, I agree with you. I'm arguing the opposite, I forgot why. — bert1

Yeah, I know. I play Devil's Advocate a lot too. B.F. Skinner thought that behavior is public. That's not too popular these days. I don't know how it ever caught on. But what can I say, other than I think it's loony. It's so obvious to me that my feelings cause my behavior. It's axiomatic to me. It's like trying to prove a=a when someone is trying to argue a can sometimes be b.

For the same kind of reason that a ball rolls down an incline. — bert1

But I don't go through life like a ball rolling down an incline. None of us do. We don't behave like that. To say the p-zombie does the same things as us because it's an elaborate pachinko game is to already admit we're talking about something fundamentally different than us. That's not how we work.

Suppose I'm acting in a play. My line is "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" Then I run off stage. Now suppose in a parallel world I've taken a drug that is making me paranoid. I'm hallucinating. I think a priest is trying to kill me. I run into the backstage of some theater, wander out on stage at a pivotal moment and say "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" and run off stage. To the observers, both me and parallel world me did the same thing. But are we going to say we behaved in the same way? No. In one case I'm acting, in the other case, I'm freaking out. Wouldn't you agree?

I don't find it plausible. It doesn't make any sense. Why would someone do something like heroin if not for the high? There's some hidden program in the brain telling the person to shoot up? The conscious high is only there for the ride? The simplest explanation is the best: I shoot up because I want to get high/don't want to be dope sick. P-zombies fall apart when analyzed closely over just this sort of thing. The idea of a p-zombie ODing on fentanyl is absurd. Why would it do something so dangerous if not for the feels?