The president is a criminal

[pcgeek11]

I'd really like to hear your thoughts on why it is bad to own up to your mistakes? I think reality is quite complicated and there are multiple potential goods and bads of each choice. Overall, I skew good for admitting error, as otherwise how could we learn from our mistakes?
.

I never said it was bad to own up to your mistakes. So I really don't know where you are coming from.

 

[pcgeek11]

Yes someone who opposes torture. You really should be ashamed for supporting it.

America is supposed to be a shining light not sink to the depravity of other countries.

You are entitled to think whatever you want. I see nothing wrong in waterboarding people (terrorist) that purposely murdered thousand of innocents in the world trade center.

 

[zinfamous]

You are entitled to think whatever you want. I see nothing wrong in waterboarding people (terrorist) that purposely murdered thousand of innocents in the world trade center.

The Geneva Conventions does, however. And I am glad you are irrelevant.

 

[interchange]

I never said it was bad to own up to your mistakes. So I really don't know where you are coming from.

I thought your reply of disagreeing was to that. I see it was to something else.

 

[pcgeek11]

The Geneva Conventions does, however. And I am glad you are irrelevant.

That is fine. I'm also glad you are as irrelevant as I.

 

[Moonbeam]

I never said it was bad to own up to your mistakes. So I really don't know where you are coming from.

But perhaps you can see the moral advantage of not saying that but not having to do it either if you are unable to see a mistake as a mistake. If, as I have suggested over and over to you and to others in countless posts, That our beliefs are accepted as truth on an unconscious level, how will we ever see them as just garbage we were handed as kids at a time when we were incapable of analytical reasoning, garbage that we were forcibly fed as truth, just like all those Madras raised lunatic terrorists you wish to waterboard to make them own up to their real evil. Do you really imagine there is such a thing as THE OTHER for people who can own up? Have you any idea, also, as to what the price of owning up is? The price is everything you hold sacred, in other words, a thousand tons of shit.

 

[interchange]

But perhaps you can see the moral advantage of not saying that but not having to do it either if you are unable to see a mistake as a mistake. If, as I have suggested over and over to you and to others in countless posts, That our beliefs are accepted as truth on an unconscious level, how will we ever see them as just garbage we were handed as kids at a time when we were incapable of analytical reasoning, garbage that we were forcibly fed as truth, just like all those Madras raised lunatic terrorists you wish to waterboard to make them own up to their real evil. Do you really imagine there is such a thing as THE OTHER for people who can own up? Have you any idea, also, as to what the price of owning up is? The price is everything you hold sacred, in other words, a thousand tons of shit.

Perhaps you missed what I saw, which is that in his defense, he declared that I was mistaken. I think in fact I was -- and am glad he pointed it out. And in he is also working on this very question at the same time because his words provoked us to enact the conflict right here. It is not fair to criticize his conscious when his unconscious readily engaged in the conflict. I much prefer that to intellectualized discussion whose purpose is to engage in the topic at a safe distance from experiencing it. When I get stirred up in a conversation, very often it's because I have found myself on the side of intellectualizing. If you learn to view negative feelings as an invitation to engage instead of pontificate, you will learn that your feelings are a signal of self-vulnerability and not actually derision toward the other.

 

[brycejones]

You are entitled to think whatever you want. I see nothing wrong in waterboarding people (terrorist) that purposely murdered thousand of innocents in the world trade center.

So now you're limiting who should be waterboarded? If it isn't torture why restrict it to terrorists involved in the WTC? Are you ever consistent about anything?

BTW "9/11!" is a pathetic argument.

 

[zinfamous]

That is fine. I'm also glad you are as irrelevant as I.

I didn't say I was more or less irrelevant, just that it is absolutely not a matter of opinion what torture is or is not. It is legally defined, and those tasked with defining it say you are wrong, and that of course, water boarding is torture.

So stop being a willful idiot when the incontrovertible truth is slapping you in the face.

Holding an opinion that rejects observable, defined truth is not "holding an opinion." It's being a fucking idiot. See this all the time with conservatives such as yourself that gleefully stand on the wrong side of every moral and social topic: "Well, that's just my opinion! I can't be wrong if I have an opinion!" Redefine absolute, defined truths, claim that you have an opinion. You wouldn't let your grandchildren get away with this playground nonsense.

 

[Moonbeam]

interchange: Perhaps you missed what I saw, which is that in his defense, he declared that I was mistaken. I think in fact I was -- and am glad he pointed it out.

M: I would not have posted my previous post had you not separately answered it yourself because I did not want to interject myself in your discussion with him. I wanted to engage him on a separate track. I may have missed what you saw in total but I did see what you say here.

i: And in he is also working on this very question at the same time because his words provoked us to enact the conflict right here. It is not fair to criticize his conscious when his unconscious readily engaged in the conflict. I much prefer that to intellectualized discussion whose purpose is to engage in the topic at a safe distance from experiencing it. When I get stirred up in a conversation, very often it's because I have found myself on the side of intellectualizing. If you learn to view negative feelings as an invitation to engage instead of pontificate, you will learn that your feelings are a signal of self-vulnerability and not actually derision toward the other.

M: These are, to be sure, important and valid points. The point I want to make and feel is important is trying to understand the condition that precede the arising of self questioning. I don’t intend derision. I intend to stimulate or present ideas that I think create a notion that a self questioning state of mind is one that can actually exist. I want to describe what I see as unconsciously assumed because it requires darkness to exist. There are two conditions involved, I think, the darkness and the motivation to keep it that way. Who can say what percentage any one person’s blindness lies in one or the other.

 

[pcgeek11]

I didn't say I was more or less irrelevant, just that it is absolutely not a matter of opinion what torture is or is not. It is legally defined, and those tasked with defining it say you are wrong, and that of course, water boarding is torture.

So stop being a willful idiot when the incontrovertible truth is slapping you in the face.

Holding an opinion that rejects observable, defined truth is not "holding an opinion." It's being a fucking idiot. See this all the time with conservatives such as yourself that gleefully stand on the wrong side of every moral and social topic: "Well, that's just my opinion! I can't be wrong if I have an opinion!" Redefine absolute, defined truths, claim that you have an opinion. You wouldn't let your grandchildren get away with this playground nonsense.

I'm not arguing about the "legal" definition. I only voiced my opinion with respect to terrorist and waterboarding.

The same as in some states the use of drugs is illegal and many hold that it should not be.

 

[VRAMdemon]

This article has a nice recap of last few weeks of Trump crazy and some predictions for the rest of Trump's term..

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/25/donald-trump-democrats-subpoenas-house

This Micheal Steele tweet is what many are starting to come to think..Just shut the fuck up!

Steele - : “just shut the hell up and get on the helicopter. Give us a rest from your crazy. You don’t know the 9th circuit from a circuit breaker. It’s Thanksgiving for crying out loud. Let us be thankful for your silence. You’ve said enough this week.”

https://twitter.com/MichaelSteele/status/1065360689223614465

IMO that's going to be the biggest single factor in why he doesn't serve a 2nd term. The country is just getting tired of listening to this jackass bray day in and day out. Sometimes a week would go by and I wouldn't even think about Obama or Hillary, but Trump can't let us go more than a couple of hours without giving us a reason to think about them. It's fucking exhausting.

​

 

[VRAMdemon]

Trump wants to skip over all those courts he's never heard of and take his ban on transgendered people serving in the armed forces directly to the Supreme Court.

The administration's explanation for this is that Obama's order allowing transgendered people to serve is creating such immediate problems in the armed forces that the issue can't wait.

No explanation is given why the Trump administration has waited two years before taking this step to address the emergency

I'm gonna assume it's taken all this time to catch up to Obama's golfing numbers. He passed all eight years of Obama's golfing numbers in his first 2 years in office. Trump can take a breather now and deal with less important issue's.

It's no coincidence that Trump wants to bypass the rest of the federal court system right after he got Kavanaugh on the court. Trump probably now feels the Supreme Court will give him the amount of rubber stamping he wants.

 

[Moonbeam]

I'm not arguing about the "legal" definition. I only voiced my opinion with respect to terrorist and waterboarding.

The same as in some states the use of drugs is illegal and many hold that it should not be.

Your thinking, it seems to me, is based on the notion that opinions somehow have equal weight, as if, were a state to have a majority that believes in slavery, slavery in that state would be OK. The issue I think you fail to address is the subjectivity of your opinions, the subjectivity of your moral convictions. You go no farther than to think that because you have them that they are OK. This implies there is no such thing as Truth at any deeper level than personal opinion. In your world view the scales of justice have just one pan, the one that you envision. The problems begin when you start to think deeply about what you believe, when you start to question. What happens, for example, when those who say, believe in God, are considered to be the terrorists, or those who say the use of marijuana by adults should be a personal freedom. Combining that with your notions of waterboarding and it becomes perfectly ethical to waterboard drug user of believers to root out their suppliers or compatriots. You make the terrible mental error in thinking that everybody else shares your personal notion of what a terrorist is. You can't rationally approve of waterboarding without opening the door to its use on any we decide to call a terrorist, and that includes yourself. The only way to avoid these facts are simply choosing not to think. I suggest that a true morality will not allow that. I suggest then, also, that it is fear induced haste, fear of the evil other, that creates this will to blind thoughtlessness and that the only reason at all that you may have ever known safety is because liberals in the past (and still now in the present) have done the kind of deeper thinking about what justice must include.

The only way to insure that violence isn't used against the evil other who is not actually an evil other but yourself in a mad world is to draw bright lines in the sand. Your conservative motivation not to look deeply is a real danger to yourself and one you also choose to ignore.

So what is the point of suggesting you do not think carefully as to the consequences of unexamined moral beliefs to make you feel bad about yourself or to help us all avoid the negatives such lack of forethought can create?

 

[zinfamous]

I'm not arguing about the "legal" definition. I only voiced my opinion with respect to terrorist and waterboarding.

The same as in some states the use of drugs is illegal and many hold that it should not be.

"I only voiced my opinion!"

Great, you're an idiot. So why do you think anyone wants to hear the shit that comes out of your mouth?

 

[Moonbeam]

"I only voiced my opinion!"

Great, you're an idiot. So why do you think anyone wants to hear the shit that comes out of your mouth?

I want you to listen to me and do not speak.

 

[Sunburn74]

You are entitled to think whatever you want. I see nothing wrong in waterboarding people (terrorist) that purposely murdered thousand of innocents in the world trade center.

You realize cruel and unusual punishment is something in the bill of rights, something that we believe establishes American principles of basic human rights?

Should we be burning terrorists alive to get information? Cutting them open with chain saws Scarface style? Feeding them to lions? I don't like terrorists anymore than you do but if you do those things you are not morally superior.

 

[pcgeek11]

"I only voiced my opinion!"

Great, you're an idiot. So why do you think anyone wants to hear the shit that comes out of your mouth?

For the same reason they listen ( read ) that crap you post.

 

[pcgeek11]

I want you to listen to me and do not speak.

That is exactly what he wants...

 

[pcgeek11]

You realize cruel and unusual punishment is something in the bill of rights, something that we believe establishes American principles of basic human rights?

Should we be burning terrorists alive to get information? Cutting them open with chain saws Scarface style? Feeding them to lions? I don't like terrorists anymore than you do but if you do those things you are not morally superior.

I didn't mention any of those things. Learn to read.

 

[Moonbeam]

That is exactly what he wants...

Now that we know that we can ask ourselves why he wants that. It makes sense to me that people want something for some reason. In our case he wants something to not happen. It happening is a negative for him. We judge such things, I think, based on feelings. Your words cause him to experience some feeling(s) he doesn’t want to feel. Any ideas?

 

[Sunburn74]

I didn't mention any of those things. Learn to read.

I'm just inquiring on how much torture you think moral and civilized people should be engaging in.

You're certainly down for waterboarding. Sleep deprivation? Electrocution? Beatings? Burnings?

 

[Moonbeam]

I'm just inquiring on how much torture you think moral and civilized people should be engaging in.

You're certainly down for waterboarding. Sleep deprivation? Electrocution? Beatings? Burnings?

I would be willing to bet that the people who most identify waterboarding as torture as opposed to some harmless picnic are those who have been subjected to it. It is always easier to dismiss the distress of others if you yourself have never experienced what may be causing it for others. To do evil to one person you view as worthless for the supposed benefit of somebody of value is easier if you can't identify yourself via experience with the pain you inflict.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Here's a good one

There's no collusion unless EVERYONE colludes.

 

[fskimospy]

I'm not arguing about the "legal" definition. I only voiced my opinion with respect to terrorist and waterboarding.

The same as in some states the use of drugs is illegal and many hold that it should not be.

Here's an article from a guy whose original opinion was that waterboarding was not torture. Then he actually went through it and booooooy did that change his mind.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/08/hitchens200808