or... was that Jefferson?

Our western allies haven't done anything serious to piss us off other than not meet some obligations with respect to military spending and NATO. Not the worst sin in the world.

Trump doesn't really understand what he is doing but I bet Bannon is behind this potentially disastrous attempt at a reversal of alliances. Yes, we should only have national interests, but he is taking a huge risk for little gain. Why bluff when you have the nuts?

Hell, even North Korea can legitimately call us out on the Paris accords. So many unforced errors, it's painful to watch.

I heard a bit of his speech demonizing Qatar today and fawning over the Saudis who are by far worse purveyors of terrorism. So pathetic. He just doesn't get it.

"read the damn order you absolute liar. it never even says the words "Christian" "Muslim" or "Islam" ONCE"

It's kind of sad really, but then the stories get shared quickly among those who want to believe them and so it goes.

Ok, the *draft* order called out Christians. That shows his actual intent with future EOs.

Still waiting on Trump to figure out (120 days since) what is going on with this Muslim thing. Seems like his rhetoric was overblown.

So, was Trump lying?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-approves-extreme-vetting-of-refugees-promises-priority-for-christians/2017/01/27/007021a2-e4c7-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?utm_term=.e223f6d7bd19

@JK

context is important, Trump responded to the question

"Trump was asked whether he would prioritize persecuted Christians in the Middle East for admission as refugees, and he replied, “Yes.”"

They didn't say prioritize it OVER persecuted Muslims, we was simply asked, if he would prioritize persecuted christians

your OWN article says

"“They’ve been horribly treated,” he said. “Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough, to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian it was almost impossible. And the reason that was so unfair — everybody was persecuted, in all fairness — but they were chopping off the heads of everybody, but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair."

This is Trump wanting fairness. he believed (Whether or not it's true) that the Christians were being held up under Obama, and he will work for fairness.


The narrative that this is an attack against Muslim people takes at least silver medal in mental gymnastics


and to your claim that "Ok, the *draft* order called out Christians. That shows his actual intent with future EOs."

nope. he said that he wanted to ban Muslims once on the campaign trail, and his people tried to emulate what they believed his policy prescriptions were from the campaign. there's actually a funny john oliver skit addressing how problematic that was for them to do... but at the end of the day there has been no official draft that ran across Trump's desk that prioritized Christians OVER Muslims.

@JK

and i've already addressed the Paris accords in an earlier thread. We've got our lowest Carbon emissions since 1991 currently, and green technology is surging onto the free market. the oligopoly fossil fuel got on energy was because of leftist anti-science fear mongering around Nuclear technology, that had a regressive effect and stunted our scientific progression as a nation.

If we want to solve climate change, we need to hold China to the sword.

Implementing MODERN nuclear (a key point of context, as most green sites claim that nuclear is less efficient than alternatives, which is only true for hydroelectric, because they cherry pick OLD reactors) not only provides us with no more carbon costs than alternative energies (except offshore wind) it actually could LOWER energy equilibrium price.

meanwhile people are whining about Nuclear saying it is evil (for some reason) and Germany's phasing out of nuclear, actually eld to some slight carbon emission increases in 2015. nice.

plus, India is demanding 2.5 trillion dollars from more advanced nations to implement green energy.

the Paris accords aren't effective, and they promote bad economics. we need some thing solid that will hold China and India up to global standards, and we need to allow for Nuclear to progress.


sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources#2014_IPCC.2C_Global_warming_potential_of_selected_electricity_sources

https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-load-following-e.pdf

https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/ECOFYS%202014%20Subsidies%20and%20costs%20of%20EU%20energy_11_Nov.pdf

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/progress-u-s-carbon-emissions-decline/

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Renewable_Infrastructure_Investment_Handbook.pdf

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/planetpolicy/2014/05/20/why-the-best-path-to-a-low-carbon-future-is-not-wind-or-solar-power/

"@Manwe
"I don't think you can convict her of any criminal wrongdoing though. She gave bad counsel in an impersonal setting, that's not illegal."
Encouraging someone to kill themselves is serious bullying, which should be illegal."

It can be serious bullying, that depends on the intent of the person though. Clearly, it does qualify as bullying in this case. I don't think bullying should be illegal though. There's this thing called asking someone to stop. If they continue to hound you, it turns into harassment, and that should be illegal. It doesn't appear the girl was harassing the young man from what I read, there was no indication he expressed a desire for her to stop communicating with him.

@Manwe, having a captive audience doesn't make your harassment any less damaging - many examples of donestic violence appear like this; for whatever reason the abused partner feels like they can't leave, whether for their safety or the safety or their children. And they still deserve protection from harassment under the law.

Well Jeff, that's what "Trumptruth" is...rather like "truthspeak" from George Orwell's 1984, a play based on this novel & referencing Trump is enjoying some popularity at present.

And is it Trump driving this anti Islam/Muslim agenda, or his puppet master ?

Trump is jumping onboard the anti-Muslim/Islamaphobia train and using it to advanve his own popularity.

Under instructions from Steve Bannon ? He's the one driven by hatred of Islam and Muslims. He bought that agenda into Trump's campaign and now presidency. Look at the film he made about Reagan, this goes "way back" with Bannon

@"1. clearly hers was a deliberate attempt to get this man to commit suicide, but if the precedent is set for this kind of behavior being illegal, then we're going to have a dilemma when arbitrating what truly is an attempt to push someone to suicide and what is not."

That is why we have judges and juries, and before that police investigators.

They will continue to do their best and make mistakes. This is inevitable.

Not trying to minimize the issue as you are entirely right, but it is already a consideration which we have systems to deal with.

@"2. i'm interested that you dismiss the notion of free will so easily. "

I've done so often on other threads. It is not that i completely dismiss the notion, i believe in a very materialistic world-view, without any mind-body duality. I don't need to say 'there is no such thing as free will' - i can say, "there is 'free will' but it doesn't work the way you* think it works"

As it happens it was watching some videos about this lately, the philosophy of libertarian free will forms a dichotomy with hard determinism. Which i think is deeply flawed (ie both positions are wrong in so far as they contradict each other).

Fundamentally, i think human brains are decision making machines, so of course we think we have 'choices' to make, because we do, we are the decision maker; but that doesn't stop us from being deterministic; you can take any algorithm what-so-ever and use it to make decisions (think of flow charts as algorithms - and then think of the neurons in the brain as a massive flow chart).

It is entirely possible to be fully deterministic AND have 'free' will. Except the 'freeness' of the will is slightly in question. As i believe you readily accept when it comes to children, the mentally ill, and similar. The question isn't 'when does a child become culpable for their actions' it is, 'how culpable is the most capable of adults, and what percentage of that ability does a less able person have?' - if no-one has some perfect ideal of 'freeness' then it is all down to relative ability.

*For certain values of you, taking very specific philosophical positions.

@"3. whenever there is a child, or person with a mental illness, rights become much more of a touchy issue. ownership of weapons and the ability to influence such a mind always are more protected by the government than with a normal healthy mind. whether this young man had a mental illness or not is pivotal to deciding whether or not we need society-wide reform, or simply more protection for the mentally ill."

I think i already touched on this.

A) It is hard to assess the ability or lack thereof in the first place; harder still when they are already dead.

B) We are social creatures, we create systems to influence each other, knowing they will have consequences and curtail our freedom. Be it law enforcement, property rights, religions trying to act as moral police. All of these are social systems created by social creatures.

We know that whatever 'freeness' the individual may have, it can be and should be controlled in some fashion. Because it allows us to build societies, and 'society' has decided it wants to exist and be powerful.

I am not saying this is right or good. Merely that it is.

C) I don't know about your point on society-wide reform. As our ability to influence others and be influenced by others changes (with technology, and other social changes, like the changes in religious involvement, or family involvement, various structural changes...) society always needs to re-assess and reform to some extent. I don't know what that should look like in this case, but i know i'm condemning bullying.

@"4. you are framing the issue of suicide as someone being hurt, which is not up to you to decide. as i already laid out, there are logical coherent reasons to commit suicide. driving someone to a logical coherent reason is not fundamentally illegal. the question society must phase is should we allow for illogical suicide? this boils down heavily to the will one is allowed to exercise over him or herself. if i decide right now with no logical bearing to take a gun and shoot myself-

***thought experiment, not an actual consideration guys ***@DO in background "damn"

-then should the government punish me if i do not successfully kill myself?"

Society does act to further it's own aims/power. Not going to say what it should or shouldn't do, because judging morality is just another mechanism for control invented by people and useful to society; so without saying 'should' - I will still try to answer by saying: I would like to live in a society which/where (IWLTLIASW)... In this case I would like to live in a society which protects people from bullying, which protects the right to die with dignity, and the right to live with dignity.

(In fact i live in a society where pregnant girls (14) can be locked away because they are suicidal - see http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/fury-young-irish-woman-sectioned-10610963 - NB 'sectioned' is the British/Irish equivalent of being committed - and i am not happy with this society)

In the case we were discussing, i think, IWLTLIASW: 'telling someone to kill themselves' is a crime. Most of these crimes will not be investigated, but when someone actually dies, those who are found to have been fucking jerks can be punished.

Still, i am against stupid laws which aren't applied most of the time, and which be comes a joke; so i'd prefer to see a better system, which would require immense social reform.

PS: sorry for taking so long to get back to you, i've been away from the laptop where i started writing this.

well i suddenly just lost a lot of respect for Ireland... damn

@Manwe, having a captive audience doesn't make your harassment any less damaging - many examples of donestic violence appear like this; for whatever reason the abused partner feels like they can't leave, whether for their safety or the safety or their children. And they still deserve protection from harassment under the law.

I don't think I said what you think I said. At least, I can't understand how any of that relates to what I said.

Ireland is a pro-life utopia, this is just the most recent incarnation.

Before, they used to send women who 'got in trouble' away to the nuns, never to be seen again, used as slave labour in laundreys, with big contracts from the irish military and public service.

They were forgotten, abused, and shunned. Now we seem to be replacing nuns with the more secular psychiatrists. Pity we're not treaing women with any more respect. Legally the only way to obtain an abortion is to have your life endangered, which means suicidal women are legally entitled to an abortion. But it is much safer to go quietly to england, where the NHS treats thousands of irish women each year (from both Northern Ireland and the Republic).

Ireland is a VERY conservative place.

She was found guilty.