Yeah, but which plot? The plot to make you believe there was a plot, or the plot to make you believe there was no plot? Or perhaps, the plot was about making us so sure that there could never be a plot so that anyone could plot whatever plotting they wanted.

Conspiracy theory are self-realizing endless mazes.

The Decalogue is for the Jews, not the Christians. There are only two Christian commandments, and they are both positive - exhortations to love. — andrewk

Sorry, but that is false. Matthew 19:16-30, Mark 10:17-31, and Luke 18:18-30, Jesus with the rich young man reiterates the commandments of the Decalogue.

As per the Catechism : "1858. Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: "Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother." The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger."

Michelle — Relativist

While I really like her, as a European I'm baffled at these political family dynasties. The Kennedys, clintons, bushes, Obamas (if Michelle would run) and then possibly the Trumps. Smells too much like aristocracy. — Benkei

I remember an interview from a Law School teacher of both Michelle and Barrack, who basically said he couldn't believe it wasn't Michelle on the ticket. From the impression I got, she was the one who had political ambitions from the start.

Human Rights are the exact inverse of the Christian Decalogue:

The Right To Free Speech is the Right To Lie
The Right To Bear Arms is the Right To Kill
The Right To Freedom is the Right To Oppress Others
The Right To Property is the Right To Theft
The Right To Freedom of Worship is the Right To Idolatry

The Decalogue has no positive content but is merely negative. It restricts what can be done. Whereas Human Rights have solely positive content, and hence miss delineating the negative. It is no wonder that Western permissive culture has adopted human rights and forgotten about the Decalogue. — Agustino

This is why legal hermeneutics are best left to those who have actually completed a Philosophy of Law (or a Law degree) course. In any legal reading, and the highest on the totem pole the act being interpreted, the more relevant this becomes, you must both consider the positive and the negative meaning. In legal mumbo jumbo terms, its called reading the a contrario of a law.

So, the Right to be protected from abusive searches and controls by government official also means, a contrario that you are not protected from un-abusive searches and controls by government officials.

All Rights have both a positive and negative claims, that is why Rights and Obligations always goes hand in hand.

We could also analyse the individual claims you make and see how each and every one of them contain clear pro aristotelico-thomist biases. Free speech doesn't actually protect from prosecution over falsehoods that caused real damages. You will likely not be able to dodge a murder charge simply because your carry papers were in order. Freedom and Oppression are too politically charged to be really useful. Theft could not be prosecuted without a concept of property being in place, so there really is nothing more false than saying that the right to property is the right to theft. And, "Idolatry", really? I mean, who cares?

Again, its just dumb. If Rosenstein somehow contaminated the evidence, didnt recuse himself, introduced a vice of procedure, went to trial, and the Reps knew about it...

WTF ARE THEY DOING?

They have the whole thing wrapped up. They go to trial and humiliate the life out of the FBI. They close both the Stormy Daniels and the Russian connection story in one go.

Instead, they prefer to project to anyone and everyone listening that they are terrified of Rosenstein and Mueller actually going for prosecution.

Well, that is really for discovery to determine in a court, not Congress.

That is dumb, tho. You dont impeach someone for missing a legal deadline, or else there would not be a single attorney practicing. You just get in court and set another date.

And it isnt like there is already a trial going. No ones defence is even affected by this.

It is as petty as it is stupid. The last weeks have shown Mueller and Rosenstein to be machines. They wouldnt be affected by these theatrics.

In the end it really doesnt matter. Comey said it himself : given the current spirit of the FBI, Trump could sack Rosenstein, Mueller and 99% of the leadership, and it wouldn't stop them from continuing the investigation.

I guess I really dont get american politics and optics, but shouldnt this be the exact type of things the reps should avoid doing? Couldnt this very well be ingerence into Justice affairs?

Homosexuality, by definition, does reproduce in a biological sense. Evolution is tied into reproduction. Male-male or female-female cannot reproduce. This is biological fact. If you want to call that God's law then fine. Either way, there is no perpetuation of the DNA, even if a homosexual person offers many selective advantages. — wellwisher

What you fail to take in account is that homosexuals can and do reproduce (yes, with females) all the time. Their reproduction is not tied to the Church, and it happens in lands that aren't Catholics.

And if homosexuality is the result of multiple beneficial interacting genes, it doesn't matter if it is coming from an homosexual individual or an heterosexual.

- And yet the Catholic Church has been one of the larger crosses gay Catholics have had to bear. So, it sounds like pious bullshit.

To be fair, its the Catholic Church. It is all going to sound like pious bullshit, no matter what is said.

I also think the claim would need to be explored. I'm never going to deny that the Church has its doctrinal and structural problems, but I really dont know that minus Catholicism, the situation for homosexuals throughout history would have been dramatically improved. I sincerely doubt Jeremiah's idea that homosexuals play a sort of peaceful regulating function in society, if only evil bigots would not be so evil. Bigotry does not stem from religion, spirituality or adherence to a specific creed. It is but the negative aspect of normalisation of social behaviours, and thus will always have to be defeated yet again.

And, to be perfectly candid, I think that the Church is facing a series of problems, of which its attitude and doctrine toward homosexuals is not of the highest priority. And I get that I say this to someone who is positionned to be a victim of unjust discrimination from the Church because of its ridiculous stance, and that it must suck ass to be told this. But the Church condemning homosexuals is not the Church covering up rapes of children and murders of nuns who wanted to blow the whistle. It is not its default implication in the AIDS epidemic in Africa. It is not x, y and z.

Still. Gotta wonder, really, how much effort it would really take for the Pope to simply decide that from now on, the Church stays out of the bedroom affairs of people. Shortest encyclical ever.

he Roman Catholic catechism calls homosexuality "intrinsically disordered". In pastoral letters, the bishops may say that homosexuals are "persons of sacred worth" etc. -- and good for them — Bitter Crank

To be fair, the Roman Catholic catechism also immediately state "They must be welcomed with respect, compassion and gentleness. We will at all cost avoid toward them any unjust discrimination. These individuals are called to realize God's will in their lives, and if they are Christian, to bond with the suffering of the sacrifice of the Lord on the cross through the difficulties they can encounter because of their condition".

Well, the Russian invasion of Georgia occurred two years before the interview, so what about that? — Sapientia

You don't have to convince me that something should've been done earlier about Russian expansionism.

But, to be fair, the USA, Canada and the UK did attemp to bring in Georgia into NATO before 2008. On this one it is the French and Germans who did done goofed.

???

"The Crimean peninsula was annexed from Ukraine by the Russian Federation in February–March 2014. Since then, it has been administered as two Russian federal subjects—the Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol.[33] The annexation was accompanied by a military intervention by Russia in Crimea that took place in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and was part of wider unrest across southern and eastern Ukraine.[34][35]"

Said the guy who decried warmongering before.

But you are right, Obama failed on that one. War was the correct answer. Yall just too soft to ever have a hope to survive the nuclear post-apocalyptic wasteland.

In that they are two different words.

They are, however, similar in that neither really apply in then context of either Trump's or Clinton's meeting.

Pffffft. No one else but the glorious Russian people can claim the honour of having destroyed their country.

Yeah. 2010 sure wasn't 2018. :lol:

Gotta wonder why Clinton didn't use her future-crime-fighting superpowers to defeat Putin 4 years before he invaded Crimea. Would have solved soooo many problems. :ok:

Well, how could I possibly have known that before?

And please, 'butthurt'? In this thread? I would have expected that of Hanover, but not you, oh Great Professional Writer! :broken:

Although Hanover would have at least owned it, and added more flourish.

Yes, because Nicolas Boileau is renowned for saying "What is well thought-out can be well enunciated, and should fit in 140 characters or less, #voltairesucks".

You can be so cute when you are all puffed-up. Wait, does that make me gay?

Oh, right, according to Jerimiah we can't ever be sure. :chin:

So there are philosophical questions to make both the liberal and conservative uncomfortable. Does either understand the nature of gender sufficiently to be able to arrive at sound social policy? — apokrisis

Ah, Apokrisis strikes again, in all his wordiness!

I mean, I know this sounds ridiculously dickish, but I really have the impression you have said nothing in those 16 paragraphs that you couldn't have said just as clearly in 16 sentences. :kiss:

Although I quite agree with the quoted part. I have always warned liberal-minded folk when they argued that homosexuality was a genetic condition and not a mental one, that this somehow did not mean that bigots would all of a sudden relent from their bigotry.

That was the point. To turn the argument back onto itself. — Jeremiah

I corrected Wellwisher because he was clearly spouting trollish nonsense.
You are doing the same, the only difference is that you happen to be on the right side.

Doesn't mean the argument is any less faulty.

i.e : More truth, less talking-points

That is because it is homophobia that is contrary to evolution. — Jeremiah

:brow:

That's doing exactly the same thing as Wellwisher, just inverted.

You are pronouncing yourselves on empirical matters out of ethical concern. At the very least, the Universe's current position on homosexuality is closer to yours then to Wellwisher. But you can't tell what natural selection with select until you have an idea of the environmental pressures that are going to be in play.

I don't like the notion that the bar for evolution legitimacy is entirely based in procreation, when the healthy continuation of a species depends on so much more than that aspect and I embrace the notion that homosexuals facilitate a deeper social connects and create a stronger community by giving such support. A man's man and a woman's woman if you like. — Jeremiah

I will go to the bat for any sexual orientation that isn't based on deceipt or abuse, but I think you are patting your own back a little bit too much here. Like women who claim that there would be no wars if the politicians were all women.

I mean, you say you are homosexual, that you have lived horrible abuse and discrimination in your life because of it, but that homosexuals brings about greater social cohesion and harmony... ?

These don't follow one another.

The message was never intended for him. — Jeremiah

Ah. One could have concluded the contrary from the fact that you replied to him.

...

:roll:

For instance, these two male black swans hooking up, building a nest, and then stealing fertile eggs from straight black swans which they then hatch and raise the chicks. Fascinating -- but is it an evolutionary advantage or just something that happens? In their case, two male swans carry a lot of social weight in the flock, and their borrowed chicks tend to do quite well. But then, everything else being equal, most swans do a pretty good job of hatching their eggs. — Bitter Crank

Homosexuality could be considered an evolutional advantage in that families that have homosexuals in them have members that are not directly implicated in the reproduction race, but who still have a stake in it, and have ressources to contribute to the other members of the family who are directly implicated.

Lets say you, as an homosexual man, have an heterosexual sister. Her genetic material is not yours, but it is about as similar as it can possibly get. If all you can do is make sure that her child is well taken care off, and she does successfully, even if you didn't, you didn't quite lose the reproduction race.

The second possibility (which is actually not exclusive to the previous one) is that homosexuality is the result of the interaction of multiple individually-advantageous genes with specific foetal conditions. There's a gene for better health, for better diction, for shinier hair, which are all great by themselves or in group, but as a group, they come with the additionnal possibility of changing your sexual orientation. Because they are still great genes to have, and because you could potentially have all of them without the orientation trigger, and because, this is important to note, homosexuals aren't sterile , whatever genes end up in their jeans, aren't really condemned to stay there.

Don't lose your time, Wellwisher is a troll.

I mean, "homosexuality is contrary to evolution". Do you really need a deep critical philology to figure out he's just inserting a more hip word in " X is contrary to the will of God"?

Beside being entirely wrong, besides, since we already have working models showing how homosexuality could be considered an evolutional advantage.

I appreciate your need to defend your phantom cat. Its organized military exploits I was really condemning. — frank

Same difference really.

Vladimir Putin wants to drown all the kittens. He sends forth his evil legions. Do you now appreciate our organised military defense of all these kittens? Or do you think we should all let them get curbstomped because it is more evil to do something about it?

I mean, this isn't really a choice. You are objectively a horrible human being if you are not willing to declare full nuclear war for the sake of your pets.

"What would the most angsty mysoginist philosophers say about modern feminism, and why would they be MRA".

I foresee this thread going into heretofore unknown philosophical landscapes. :smirk:

Amongst Rep he is still at 87%.

About 9 republicans out of 10 still support him, after this weeks revelations.

Look at Raza's, En Passant's, Tiff's and Augustino's degree of doublethinking when they accuse Stzrok of dubious character because of his affair and yet paint Trump as an honest person full of integrity despite being guilty of the same multiple times over.

I fear there are no ways to penetrate those cognitive defenses. Americans now have to face that a large part of their electorate are willing to defend a racist, sexist, criminal idiot because of party lines.

Those numbers are surreal, but not in a good way, like reading The Colour Out of Space while on acid surreal.

You tell me who could he possibly not lose to in 2020?

Well, many dems have shown a willingness to adopt the "abolish ICE" stance, and while I may support 100% that decision, I'm not sure how well that might play with the american public.

Perhaps if the Dems could produce their own version of an hawk, they could garantee a win.

Give me names and deeds, not talking points.

Who was evil and removed by Trump? Who and what was worse than beating your spouse, as SLX spotted? How can a deceiving, multiple-times-bankrupt wife-cheating-with-pornstars shyster possibly improve on the moral fabric of the DC establishment?

How does it work with state laws? We know Cohen committed bank fraud at the California state level, and that Trump cant pardon those, and that Trump could als be charged of the same. Is impeachment an absolute prerequisite in such a case?

"Since I took office, the GDP has doubled and tripled"

- someone who clearly doesnt know what GDP is, and happens to be the leader of the free world (god I hate this expression)

He's finished. I'm calling it now. No second term for Putin's poodle. He probably won't even run.

His last chance for a clean break was bringing back at least some of the 12 russian hackers to face prosecution by Mueller. Instead he blamed Obama and did nothing about the fact that we already know Russia is setting up to do it again in 2018.

Rosenstein has no reason anymore to hold back against Trump. He can now fully cast the 27th october "russia, could you find the missing emails" as collusion, since thats the exact date of the first DNC hack attempt.

Cohen will be arrested for bank fraud by the end of august. If Trump isnt in prison by 2020, then truly there will be no future for America.

That is a joke, right? Kavanaugh was the most "swampy" pick ever. President under federal investigation nominate the one person who has at some point said that he thought Presidents should be exempt from federal investgations while in office... Yeah, thats some draining, alright.

Also, its insulting to swamps everywhere, which are wonderful and vibrant ecosystems.

Yes. And please keep thinking that, our auto industry really appreciates the effort.

https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/07/news/economy/ge-jobs-moving-to-canada-paul-ryan/index.html

"President Trump has blasted companies for shipping U.S. jobs to Mexico. But Canada is also aggressively luring factories from across the northern border. The Canadian government gave GE $2 billion in incentives to shut down in Wisconsin and move to a city in Ontario, Canada."

Well, yes and no, St James Palace was really a multilateral effort. FDR gave it its name, and had the gravitas to put it in motion. But, and this comes from a book I red a terribly long time ago, so sorry if I cant provide quotes and ref, the administrative impetus was provided disproportionnately by Canadians. Thats why for a short time putting its headquarters in Montreal made sense (as also providing an appearance of neutrality).

Which makes sense, really, if you think about how the U.N. are perceived by americans. It is the quintessential Canuck enterprise of patient if somewhat ineffective political deliberation. And I guess that comes of as "weak and meek" to a certain strata of americans.

The UN was our idea. — frank

So wrong. The UN was a mainly Canadian project. It's why it was going to be located in Montreal until New York forced its muscles.

So he could say things bluntly that past presidents would only express gently. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

No other president has had the stances on trade and post-war alliances that Trump does.