You are truly a saint in the basket of deplorables.

Lol just looking out for you, bub.

All it took to refute your piffle about announcements was to refer to the testimony. It was presumption, guesswork, fantasy. Like I said, fabricated from thin air. Do you admit this? No, you double down, kick the can down the road to the overheard phone call.

Watch as Holmes melts under cross examination.



I don’t care if you want to waste your time with me or not, I don’t care if you will not defend your fetid propaganda. You’re a lost cause. I’m trying to defend those you are lying to.

All of this was in order to coerce President Zelenksy to announce an investigation into the Bidens so as to undermine his 2020 campaign...

Which was attested by several thousand pages of witness testimony.

The witness testimony says otherwise:

Rep Mike Turner: 00:56:49 Not just the President, Giuliani didn’t tell you, Mulvaney didn’t tell you. Nobody. Pompeo didn’t tell you. Nobody else on this planet told you that Donald Trump was tying aid to these investigations. Is that correct?

Gordon Sondland: 00:57:04 I think I already testified-

Rep Mike Turner: 00:57:05 No. Answer the question. Is it correct? No one on this planet told you that Donald Trump was tying this aid to the investigations. Because if your answer is yes, then the Chairman’s wrong, and the headline on CNN is wrong. No one on this planet told you that President Trump was tying aid to investigations, yes or no?

Gordon Sondland: 00:57:23 Yes.

Rep Mike Turner: 00:57:24 So you really have no testimony today that ties President Trump to a scheme to withhold aid from Ukraine in exchange for these investigations.

Gordon Sondland: 00:57:36 Other than my own presumption.

***

Mr. Castor: (01:08:42)
I want to turn back to your opener on page five under, when you talk about in the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I later came to believe that the resumption of security aid would not occur until there was a public statement from Ukraine committing to the investigations, correct?

Gordon Sondland: (01:09:05)
Correct.

Mr. Castor: (01:09:06)
And you acknowledge that this is speculation, right?

Gordon Sondland: (01:09:11)
It was a presumption.

Mr. Castor: (01:09:13)
Okay. That it was a guess. In fact, I think you even said this morning-

Gordon Sondland: (01:09:18)
Well, I want to say that it goes back to Mr. Goldman’s point or Chairman Schiff’s two plus two equaled four in my mind at that point.

Mr. Castor: (01:09:27)
Okay. But you didn’t have any evidence of that, correct?

***

Mr. Castor: (01:19:06)
And are you aware that he was also interested in better understanding the contributions of our European allies?

Gordon Sondland: (01:19:12)
That I’m definitely aware of.

Mr. Castor: (01:19:13)
And there was some back and forth between the state department officials trying to better understand that information for the President.

Gordon Sondland: (01:19:20)
Yes, that’s correct.

Mr. Castor: (01:19:21)
And how do you know that wasn’t the reason for the hold?

Gordon Sondland: (01:19:24)
I don’t.

Mr. Castor: (01:19:26)
But yet you speculate that there was, you know, a link to this announcement?

Gordon Sondland: (01:19:34)
I presumed it, yes.

So how do you explain your falsehoods—credulity or lies?

What is the origin of the concept "reason", how did its applications develop, and what does the term mean in relationship to current knowledge?

There are plenty of online dictionaries of etymology that might suffice to answer your questions.

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=reason

So more irrelevant nonsense then?

Let me know when you find some.

Well if according to the white house the bad terrorists are dead and we should be thanking them, maybe it's time for that military parade?

I think filling your head with dreams of coming wars and Adolph Trump suffices enough to keep you entertained.

All of this was in order to coerce President Zelenksy to announce an investigation into the Bidens so as to undermine his 2020 campaign. So, as always, your posts on this matter are the opposite of the reality - which as I suppose as a disinformation agent, you're supposed to do.

Completely fabricated from thin air, or Democrat propaganda, both of which suit useful idiots just perfectly.

Right. You're just ignoring the point in favor of an irrelevant red-herring appeal to the fact that armies exist.

No I’m ignoring your piffle and histrionics about this event in particular, and war in general.

Because of who they killed. Apparently Soulemani was one of the most important people in Iran, protege to the Iranian Ayatollah, and one of the top-most field commanders...

Are you even reading my posts? I'm saying Trump may have just precipitated war with Iran by assassinating a member of their government.

But of course, that's neither here nor there right? War is ambivalent; blowing shit up is what soldiers are for.

This was, according to the Whitehouse, a “decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad”. So much for sending them to die. But as you know, no war has been started.

Soulemani was the commander of the Quds force, a terrorist organization. I’m sorry for your loss.

I’m just saying no one is sending them to go die, but to carry out military operations. That kind of pacifist rhetoric is false on its face.

It was a missile attack against a terrorist organization threatening American soldiers and interests. Do you think that was stupid? Why?

No my point is soldiers volunteer to fight for their country and their leaders, and they do so knowing the risks involved. No one is sending them to die.

Oh shoot... You got me there. How can we blame politicians for starting wars? Since the soldiers voluntarily joined the army, it's not the politicians' fault...

Which war are you talking about?

Nothing about Biden or the 2020 election in those emails. They only suggest that all relevant actors were trying to do things legally, and in fact did so.

Some wise-ass once remarked that war consists of old men sending young men away to die.. (some old Roman dude IIRC)...

Some other dude once said that war seems sweet and romantic only to those who have never experienced it...

Conclusion: Old men who have never experienced war are sending young men to suffer and die; war kills the best of us, and we're then left with draft dodging cowards hypocritically waging war for frivolous and ultimately counter-national reasons.

It’s a volunteer army. It was a missile strike.

Too old.

Subjects are called 'beings' for a reason; whereas objects lack being. I think this is a valid ontological distinction but one that is obfuscated in much modern thought. So it is wrong to treat beings as objects, except for technical purposes, such as demographics or epidemiology. (Interesting to note that the airline industry uses the expression 'sob' for those lost in airline crashes, where the term stands for 'souls on board'. )

I never knew that about the souls on board. Neat.

Living creatures are objects insofar as they are finite, have a surface, move as one, and so on. I think we should treat humans as objects, not because it objectifies the human, but because it humanizes the object. We’ve already tried applying spirits, minds, souls, and other words; and these figments end up gaining prominence over the object itself, so much so that the objects—human beings—were sometimes destroyed in order to redeem them. So I think we need to learn to value the objectivity of a human being, or else we’re left to apply value through a sort of linguistic trickery.

I think it’s a distinction without a difference. All subjects are objects.

To me illness (which I am currently experiencing) reminds me that I have a body and that body is fallible and finite. I have to try and cope with this finitude. I am not sure how finitude squares with beliefs looking for eternal truths.

It’s true that disease, illness and pain are keen reminders of our mortality, but to push it a little further, they should remind you that you are a body, as fragile as you are finite.

Unrestricted freedom of speech can lead to massive manipulation of the population by those who hide behind freedom of speech. As you said, the KKK hid behind hoods, but what happens when they hid behind freedom of speech and you cannot do anything to battle their manipulation of people desperate to find a black sheep for their problems? If you had a method to pinpoint when they are manipulating, when they don't have reasonable or rational opinions and through that be able to pierce their defense of hiding behind free speech, without restricting free speech. Isn't that a powerful weapon against the populism and growing common racism and polarization we see right now?

I don’t think that’s true at all. “Massive manipulation of the population” would be nearly impossible where free speech exists because dissent wouldn’t be suppressed. Though it’s true that Truth will be distorted in a free speech society, it is far worse in a censorial society, which not only distorts the truth but also actively suppresses it.

Another argument is that more speech, not censorship, is the antidote to “harmful speech”. Censorship not only robs the speaker of his fundamental rights, but it also robs the rest of us the opportunity to see his ideas destroyed, and as a corollary, the opportunity to arm ourselves against them.

In fact the Nazis saw any criticism of their pseudoscience as harmful speech, and thus led one of the most censorial regimes in human history.

The State of Anti-Trumpism in 2019

What a year. The biggest thing for me was the end of the Russia witch hunt. Not only did it fail to find any collusion, it proved Trumps opponents in the media and elsewhere to be credulous, conspiratorial, and illiberal.

But it never stopped. “Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim”, wrote Santayana. Do they remember their aim? Because Trump’s opponents have redoubled their efforts with their impeachment, which now center around Russia’s opponent Ukraine, and Trump’s conversations with the president there. No crime had occurred, no victim was apparent, leaving inquisitors such as Shiff to ad lib the conversation in front of Congress and the American public, all while lying about his coordination with the alleged whistleblower, who has “arguable political bias”.

Then the IG report came out, proving the Devin Nunes memo of early 2018 mostly right, and the Adam Schiff response memo mostly wrong. We already know which of the two memos was vilified and praised by the press and their base at the time.

So in my opinion the big story of 2019 was the anti-Trumpism, which is the rot festering away at this great republic.

Consciousness is not only inside an individual brain, and this relationship explains the transition of life when the body dies.

Consciousness extends beyond the brain but not past the surface of the skin. It’s a 1-to-1 ratio with the body, and is in fact the same thing. When we speak of consciousness we are speaking of the body in abatracto.

As Camus famously put it: "“There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy." the question of life's worth and suicide has been going around my mind for months now.
Do you think that life is worth living? And if so, what fuels that belief?
And what would your reaction be if on your commute you saw someone on the verge of taking their life by jumping off a bridge?

Yes, I think life is worth living. I suspect I am biased because I have lived a good one.

To have been born and persisted (at least for a while) should be seen as a great honor because very few objects in the universe come to exist this way. Each human is rare in this respect, one of a kind, and is priceless thereby. I have come to cherish my life and the lives of others with this belief.

Will this prediction of doom affect the way you go about your life?

I’m a rare optimist regarding climate change, so I remain unaffected. Perhaps some good will come of it. If it doesn’t prolong the Holocene, staving off the inevitable ice age, we will at least learn a valuable lesson.

If you have record low unemployment, then salaries ought to rise. Yet then again it's a sign that the business cycle is reaching it's peak.

Yeah, workers have options for employment now that they are in high demand. They can afford to be picky about what job they want. As such, wages must be raised to remain competitive in the job market. The oft-dreaded “trickle-down” economics seems to be working in that respect.

Race isn’t a unified group either. But democrats have embraced identity politics in more recent years, to the detriment of the worker in my opinion.

But given that “wages for rank-and-file workers are rising at the quickest pace in more than a decade”, one cannot really treat this as the work of Obama.

The proles are doing really well in this economy, and Trump always speaks highly of the working man and woman, much more so than the Democrats. Will Trump’s GOP become the party of the worker?

Wages for rank-and-file workers are rising at the quickest pace in more than a decade, even faster than for bosses, a sign that the labor market has tightened sufficiently to convey bigger increases to lower-paid employees.

Gains for those workers have accelerated much of this year, a time when the unemployment rate fell to a half-century low. A short supply of workers, increased poaching and minimum-wage increases have helped those nearer to the bottom of the pay scale.

Rank-and-File Workers Get Bigger Raises

You're either delusional or dishonest. Neither is acceptable.

Neither of which is true. There go those standards again.

But if you don’t want to discuss the topic, I understand. Cognitive dissonance can be ruinous to mental health.

Wait till Biden testifies. Hopefully your double standards will become more apparent to you.

That's some of the dumbest shit I've heard so far.

The impeachment is not attempting to stop Trump from upholding the law...

Sure they are. The inquisitorial Democrats pretend he is seeking dirt on a political opponent to influence the 2020 election, completely sidestepping Trump’s actual queries about Biden’s possible corruption.

There is Nothing wrong with investigating corruption.

The impeachment process is about Trump's purported abuse of power and obstruction.

Joe Biden has nothing to do with any of that. There is nothing he can say that is relevant to what's under consideration.

It won't happen anyway. There are no grounds for compelling Biden's testimony in the impeachment matters. May as well subpoena Oprah.

Sure, it is. The president has a duty to uphold the law. If either Biden is guilty of corruption then Trump was right, and it is the Democrat’s who are abusing their power to obstruct justice.

For an elected official like Trump. Biden is currently not.

But what about the law?

18 U.S.C. § 1505

Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress

Prima facie evidence that you either do not know what you're talking about when it comes to who can be impeached and on what grounds, or you are deliberately misrepresenting your own belief.

And here I though this was impeachable conduct.

Joe Biden said he would defy subpoenas to appear in senate impeachment trial. He’s not even the primary candidate and he’s already committing impeachable offences.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-says-he-would-defy-subpoena-to-appear-before-senate-in-trumps-impeachment-trial/

I think the case should be dismissed. But then again I I also want a senate trial where everyone testifies, including the ones Whitehouse counsel didn’t want to testify, but also Schiff, the whistleblower, and Hunter Biden, just to see it all blow up one way or the other.

And here you are sharing the words of an anti-Trump conspiracy theorist, Lawrence Tribe.

Laurence Tribe, the renowned Harvard scholar of constitutional law, has been an especially active booster for the site [The Palmer Report] routinely tweeting links to highly questionable, unverified news stories about Trump.

How The Left Lost It’s Mind

"Bizarrely," wrote Mr. Nyhan last weekend, Mr. Tribe "has become an important vector of misinformation and conspiracy theories on Twitter."

He was referring on his colleague’s tendency to amplify unreliable news sources. Mr. Tribe had retweeted a Twitter user who had claimed that Steve Bannon, President Trump’s chief strategist, was being investigated for physically threatening White House staffers.

"You can’t make this sh*t up," Mr. Tribe wrote in a tweet that he later deleted.

2 professors Walk into a Dumpster Fire

But rather than resort to the genetic fallacy, and rather than point out his consistent conspiracy theorizing and susceptibility to fake news, his political affiliations, all we need do is point out that he believes Trump is guilty before it has been proven in any matter of a fair trial. So much for the constitution.

You dismissed what I said as sounding like it came from Hannity or Levin, and that I’m “emulating congressional Republicans”, then cry foul when I punch back a bit. Pretty typical.

But I respect your perspective for being a bit more nuanced than the breathless fear-mongering. For what it is worth I will offer my own perspective. Anti-trumpists have cheapened impeachment, blatantly lied and mischaracterized Trump’s call, whether for their own political gain or because they are hysterical. They dangled crimes in front of their open-mouthed goslings only to pull back when the focus groups told them to. So it’s no wonder their base think he is guilty before he is given a fair trial.

All they want is that is that Scarlett letter of impeachment, a purely symbolic gesture, so they can further enable the hysteria of their followers.

I want to change the subject... sort of...

There are many Trump supporters and non supporters alike who buy into the witch hunt explanation. They believe that there are some government officials who are doing everything in their power to remove Trump, and these people will do whatever it takes to get the job done.

I, for one, believe the witch hunt analogy. Also, the “boy who cried wolf” is an accurate portrayal of the Dems and a large faction of the media, hence their credibility wanes.

True, but he evoked executive privilege, something many presidents have done. It is a check on the power of congress.