Elerond

Trump lost in New York

If it so sad, you probably should think how you speak about those who have different political views than you (I am talking those evil left wing people who you usually verbally attack)

I think he has lost it, considering that last time he worked on CBS show was 1993 (Alex Haley's Queen), when he was 11.

People assume that? seen some stuff like that, I mean I seen a lot of them saying he was comunist or socialist, seen few about anarchist as well Well, the notion that he was any of those things is dumb, of course. What one can say, though, is that Jesus' morals, as set out in the gospels, fit quite nicely with communist and socialist ideals. The largely American phenomenon where capitalism is morally attached at the hip to Christianity is, obviously, patently ridiculous. This is nothing new, though. Supply side Jesus was a great comic. Personally, I've always thought Marxist rejection of religion was a huge mistake, at least from a "marketing" perspective. And what about all that '"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's'. Really not fit that much That is kind of contentious in interpretation but, do you mean separating church and state and putting the law of God above the law of man doesn't fit with communism? I dont think its about separation of church at all, as at that time there was no church to talk about. And Rome at that time was senate ruled republic (well, kinda ) in sea of feudal kingdoms. I am pretty sure that commies called religion 'opium of humanity' so that really does not click either, I can see why people would kinda see him as socialist but I am not sure if he ever talked about 'politics' or how society should be structured, only on personal level According to Bible Jesus and Marx's writings they both had quite similar ideas towards organized religion. Also according to Bible it was Jewish scribe and rabbis that convinced Romans that Jesus was demagogue who needed to be nailed on cross and there was clear reason for that as Jesus was against temples collecting money and putting law above reason. Also Bible also tells how Jesus tells a rich man that only way he can guarantee to go in heaven is to give all his wealth to charity and follow him (Jesus), teaching that created monasteries.

Conservatives: No big government Power grab by president is not only bad but unconstitutional Forcing private land owners give up their land is not only bad but tyranny which needs to be resisted with arms Trump: I want billions for wall on Mexico-USA border from which large parts would be build on private lands regardless of what said land's owners say and I am willing to use my presidential powers to shut down government if my demands aren't met. Conservatives: You are our new messiah, show us the way.

Considering that Irish border is difficult issue, because of Good Friday agreement that was done to end Northern Ireland conflict or The Troubles as conflict is called in UK, which was guerilla war which Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) fought against UK. As there is fear that hard border which is against Good Friday agreement will start said conflict again, in other words war is actually one possibility that people fear when it comes to hard Brexit.

Bit better than predicted, but not in way that it matters. Tomorrow's no confident vote and next weeks new plan are bit more interesting, but if something miraculous don't happen to unite the parliament then UK will leave EU without any additional agreement. It was considerably worse for May than predicted as the worst analysis was around a -200 loss, and the worst defeat for a government in modern history. Not really 'better' for those who wanted to stay in Europe either as the Tories who crossed the floor are euroskeptics and won't vote for a second referendum or to stay which is what the remainers want. No confidence vote won't go through either as turkeys won't vote for an early christmas; the DUP already has what it wanted (no back door Irish union, as they saw it) as do the euroskeptics (what they saw as a 'soft' EU membership rather than withdrawal) so they'll vote for the government and that gives a majority. They'd need remain Tories to cross the floor which is highly unlikely as it would almost certainly end their careers. Our news yesterday morning said that only 198 mps had said that they will vote for the agreement and end of day 202 mps voted for it, so bit better than what was predicted (at least compared to what was prediction yesterday morning based on what mps had said)

Bit better than predicted, but not in way that it matters. Tomorrow's no confident vote and next weeks new plan are bit more interesting, but if something miraculous don't happen to unite the parliament then UK will leave EU without any additional agreement.

Yeah which is why I would look how much they have been willing to go against party line when it comes to voting on issues instead of what they are saying in order to gather votes. Because I don't think it really matters what are politicians' personal beliefs if they always vote according to what their party says.

That's not really being similar to Hillary in particular though, that's basically just plain old standard being a politician. Politicians will try and make their views palatable to the largest number of voters possible, if you don't you generally don't win elections. But otherwise Hillary is pretty much a dead straight typical corporate Democrat in every respect. Gabbard is a lot less tailored to getting the party hierarchy onside and at times she's completely disregarded them eg endorsing Bernie; she's also a lot less tailored in her general and policy views whereas Hillary came across as not having had a thought that wasn't vetted by focus groups beforehand. No doubt Gabbard does have some sort of message tailoring/ control going on- as above, she is a politician- but it's a lot less overt than Hillary's was. There's also very little similarity in terms of their rise and they share some considerably differences in both policy formulation and application/ theory of those policies. They have a fair few similarities on policy too, but they are in the same party. I might agree in the future though, we've had 30 years to get to know Hillary fairly well even if you don't live in the US; if I list the things I definitely know about Gabbard it's a lot shorter and there are more gaps to be filled in. She is from Hawaii, where being those things is popular these days. If you look what she advocated in beginning of 2000, you will see that she supported same things as Hillary. Also Hillary's and Bernie's voting record in senate match over 90% of time, so difference between two them is more flavour how they present themselves than politics they do.

Gabbard is very much younger version of Hillary in that she changes her political agenda to fit what will most likely get her elected. So I find it quite funny that people who don't like Hillary like Gabbard and vice versa. It is like their actual politics has less effect on people's opinions than mental image caused by media narrative

https://twitter.com/RepMarkMeadows/status/1083733171106209792 Mark Meadows Democrats continue to refuse to negotiate in good faith or appropriate any money for border barriers. If they won’t compromise, POTUS should use asset forfeiture money or other discretionary fees to start construction. If not, he should declare a national emergency. It's time. But at least it isn't suggestion to increase taxes to pay health care for all

Well there are a few examples but most recently, the government taxing the rich by 70%. This is of course a socialist ideal... 70% marginal tax that would come in effect after first 10 million dollars. Highest marginal tax rate in US history was 94% that come in effect after 200 000 dollars (2.5 million in today's money) in 1944. And during USA's "golden years" from 1950 to 1970 marginal tax rate for those who earned over 200000 dollars never dipped under 70%. It wasn't until 1981 The Economic Recovery Tax Act which drop highest marginal tax rate in USA from 70% to 50%. High marginal tax rates aren't really meant to collect taxes but direct rich people invest their money instead of hoarding it.

Isn't that been norm in US politics in past two years. I mean alternative facts don't appear in impromptu interviews but they have been used as reason for many policies like current shut down, but for some reason lots of people only care that politician don't really know their facts when some newbie youngling politician who can't really effect any policies by herself, don't know some details how things work in US political system.

Not any worse than they now have after Trump negotiated the peace

Which one did he talk the US out of ? And who knows if they're actually leaving Syria, Bolton is speaking differently from Trump. And hey, government employees are people, too North Korea Conflict which didn't exist until Trump's threats and insults is good example how he talked people out from war?

If not ‘going woke’ means ignoring the allegations of misconduct, then I don’t think you have any idea what ‘going woke’ means. The article (despite it being breitbart) doesn’t say anything about the reforms (or ‘going woke’) being responsible, just being saddled with a large amount of lawsuits. https://www.vox.com/vox-sentences/2018/12/13/18139984/vox-sentences-yemen-senate-boy-scouts-bankruptcy has a teensy bit more information than the breitbart article that should clarify it for ya. It was already going downhill for years before it ‘went woke’, and doing so simply didn’t change it’s trajectory. Yup, they become woke in hopes to stop constant decline of their membership. Worked like a chart Hard to say, at largest they were in bit over 4 million members which had declined to about 2.6 million members in 2013 when they decided that they don't expel openly gay members, after that they saw big drop in 2014 after campaign from conservative and religious organisations as their member number dropped to 2.4 million. But now they are still in about 2.4 million members. Although Mormon church announced that their long standing relationship with boy scouts will end in 2020. About 425k boy scout members are Mormons. Next year boy scouts will start accepting girls as their ranks, but that may not bring many new members as popularity of girls scouts is also in heavy decline.

If not ‘going woke’ means ignoring the allegations of misconduct, then I don’t think you have any idea what ‘going woke’ means. The article (despite it being breitbart) doesn’t say anything about the reforms (or ‘going woke’) being responsible, just being saddled with a large amount of lawsuits. https://www.vox.com/vox-sentences/2018/12/13/18139984/vox-sentences-yemen-senate-boy-scouts-bankruptcy has a teensy bit more information than the breitbart article that should clarify it for ya. It was already going downhill for years before it ‘went woke’, and doing so simply didn’t change it’s trajectory. Yup, they become woke in hopes to stop constant decline of their membership.

Sorry, Elerond, but it's not. Not yet (do hope we are heading there though). Even the theoretical part is questionable - point mutations within the living cell is a very resent thing, while practical (in case of human) is close to impossible: all these experiments require a lost of repetitions, one success out of very many is the lucky event. But one that survives and continue to develop, yet maintaining changes - is a miracle. How many human embrions one can get to experiment on? So far it's in the same league with head transplantation. People have successfully inserted new DNA in plants and animal genomes which mean that it can be also be done for human genome, but because it is complex operation which can easily go wrong and it doesn't necessarily give beneficial results it is quite unlikely that anybody would get permission to do human trials in near future let alone it would actually used to do anything meaningful. But anyway we know that it is possible to add or remove DNA from any genome including human genome and use that genome to grow new thing, but change to do unintended changes which can lead to make genome unsuitable to produce living thing. And experimentation becomes even more difficult when you can have only small number of test subject at time and it takes at least 9 months to see if genome change actually did the thing that you wanted to achieve. One big ongoing HIV cure research projects which is closing human trials is looking way to use genome editing to cut genetic material of HIV from human genome and same time change in the genome would give immunity for HIV. In this study changes are only meant to do in cells that have been infected by HIV. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/genome-editing-cuts-out-hiv-37148 https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/jax-blog/2016/july/battling-hiv-with-crispr Things you mentioned (and linked) have nothing to do with single gene modification in an embrio. For now it's a direction to move on but far from an end point. So, no, I do not believe that scientist truly altered genes in those embrions (and there are no evidences supporting his claim either, which is mentioned in the paper). So, moralists can sleep safe and sound - it's not here yet. And official science will not get there any time soon. There is always biohacking, of course, like DIYbio, but as much as I want human gene modification happen, I would not hope to see it happening for real. It is easier to change genome in embryo than in thousands cells all around adult body. EDIT: To add, editing genome in embryo's cells is possible, getting that editing to fix some specific problem in that genome is of course more difficult especially if you need to change multiple parts in the genome in order to achieve what you want. So in other words we have technology to have genetically edited babies, but that does not mean that those edits make anything better in said possible babies and there is also change that said edits will actually cause harmful changes for said babies genome.

Sorry, Elerond, but it's not. Not yet (do hope we are heading there though). Even the theoretical part is questionable - point mutations within the living cell is a very resent thing, while practical (in case of human) is close to impossible: all these experiments require a lost of repetitions, one success out of very many is the lucky event. But one that survives and continue to develop, yet maintaining changes - is a miracle. How many human embrions one can get to experiment on? So far it's in the same league with head transplantation. People have successfully inserted new DNA in plants and animal genomes which mean that it can be also be done for human genome, but because it is complex operation which can easily go wrong and it doesn't necessarily give beneficial results it is quite unlikely that anybody would get permission to do human trials in near future let alone it would actually used to do anything meaningful. But anyway we know that it is possible to add or remove DNA from any genome including human genome and use that genome to grow new thing, but change to do unintended changes which can lead to make genome unsuitable to produce living thing. And experimentation becomes even more difficult when you can have only small number of test subject at time and it takes at least 9 months to see if genome change actually did the thing that you wanted to achieve. One big ongoing HIV cure research projects which is closing human trials is looking way to use genome editing to cut genetic material of HIV from human genome and same time change in the genome would give immunity for HIV. In this study changes are only meant to do in cells that have been infected by HIV. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/genome-editing-cuts-out-hiv-37148 https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/jax-blog/2016/july/battling-hiv-with-crispr

It is possible Moral objections against genome modification come usually either from religious grounds as genome modification are often seen as thing where humans are playing god, quite similar to issue as why cloning is seen as bad, or from societal grounds where there is fear that genome modifications would be used to pursue goal to achieve ultimate human and kill diversity from the population. Genetic modifications killing diversity and natural ability to adapt to changing conditions isn't necessary unfounded fear as it is something that has observed with genetically modified plants.

What does he plan to do, give the moffs direct command of the outlying sectors? She didn't open any borders and she didn't change any rules about immigration or how EU or Germany treats refugees, she only publicly said that Germany will accept refugees according to their laws, laws which have existed over 60 years. Please, she 100% issued an invitation knowing exactly what it would mean practically. Whether she already had her fall back positions formulated at that time is an open question, it seems more likely she was just plain stupid but maybe she was actively malicious as well, who knows. She may not have changed the rules at that time, but she definitely took and has taken advantage of them to the detriment of just about everyone else in the EU and to her and Germany's benefit. Which is what is the fundamental problem with the EU as it always happens with the EU- Germany collectivises her problems while nationalising everyone else's. Merkel's idiotic invitation results in too many refugees? Collectivise the problem by sending them off to other countries to bail her out. But, too many refugees still arriving? Well they have to stay in Greece and Italy since that's where they landed, why can't those countries take responsibility and follow the rules? German banks lent idiotically to Greece? Bail them out collectively via the European Bank, then make the Greeks pay for it! Plus bonus, tons of leverage against Greece when you want the refugee spigot turned off, after all surely refugees love extended holidays on Greek Islands as much as anyone so it's win win. Euro massively overvalued for Italy, Greece etc? Tough noogies, it's wonderfully undervalued for Germany and that's what is important. That's the fundamental flaw of the EU, and it will never be fixed. Every country from Italy down in importance will be treated as vassals, and any benefits to them from the EU are incidental and not the core aim of the organisation. It's also why Britain is better with a hard Brexit no matter what, there's no chance of EU reform and the laughable 'concessions' they gave Cameron to try and stave off the referendum showed it- and, frankly, those pathetic concessions was likely a contributing factor to the referendum loss for remain. While meant to be a sop to get just enough votes to win they were actually an insult and extraordinarily tone deaf, symptomatic of the EU's technocratic rule from the top mentality. Problems was not caused by her invitation, but existing laws, processes and lack of people to process people who come and lack of infrastructure to handle massive amount of immigrants. Merkel or Germany didn't change any directive, law or policy in Germany or EU. Germany also did quite lot to help Greece, for example by paying Turkey that they prevent refugees leaving from Turkey with boats. They also organized direct line where they transported refugees from Turkey to Germany.

USA's asylum laws are only partially based on UNHCR - The 1951 Refugee Convention and even they seem to have problems to control flow of immigrants coming in. USA also has deportation agreement with the countries where the immigrants are coming in, which makes deporting people easier for them. But it seems that many cases their official try to cut corners and do things that their courts find to be against their laws. Burning cars and rape gangs in western EU are so few compared to general criminality level of eastern EU that western EU needs to take tens of millions of immigrants to achieve those levels. So I would not necessary be so muck about things.

Mass flight from Syrian and Iraq and then from several African countries has showed that European countries refugee laws which are based on UNHCR - The 1951 Refugee Convention (and its extension in 1967) don't work well when there is such mass of people seeking asylum. Which is why many countries made emergency changes on their laws in order to limit amount people coming in. Addition to European refugee laws, we saw that countries weren't really prepared to handle such mass of immigrants coming every day for months, meaning there was no process/procedure that countries officials would follow, which allowed lots of unregistered people enter in EU area where they were able to travel freely thanks to EU's free travel agreements. But eventually countries were able to put processes in place to control those masses, but it lead to new problem in southern Europe, especially in Italy and Greece which are two main countries where people enter in EU, which is that they have now big camps of people whose refugee status need to be determined and other EU countries are reluctant to offer their help in that. UNHCR - The 1951 Refugee Convention (and its extension) gives people right to seek asylum and countries obligation to go through comprehensive process to determine if their situation demands international protection aka asylum. Meaning that even though situation of their home country didn't fulfil criteria of asylum in case of majority of people who come to seek asylum or better life during refugee crisis, our laws forced officials to go through that comprehensive process in case of every one who seek asylum and most of the countries didn't really have enough people who handled asylum applications to handle amount of applications they faced and addition to that in asylum seekers whose applications were rejected had/have right to complain to courts about their rejected application, which means another time consuming process before our laws allow to deport person whose application was rejected. And even after official finally get right to deport person it can be quite problematic as Iraq, Syria and some African countries refuse to take person back as in many cases there are no deportation agreement between European countries and said target countries, which can mean that those people who have given deportation order stay in limbo state where they don't have right to stay in the country where they sought asylum, but officials can't force them go to their home country, which has lead to voluntary return policy where governments pay asylum seekers money if they voluntary go back to their home country. problem is, if you don't 'catch' those people at borders and they lie to you about country of origin, where do you deport them? They don't have papers with them on purpose (not always) Also those laws you mention require those seeking asylum to do so in first secure country. There is plenty of those around the world but we all know why this flood of people is heading to Germany. I am sorry but I don't feel for those people, and worst part is that people will loose feeling even for those who would deserved it. Also paying someone to GTFO where they should not be in first place just encourage such actions also this: Not knowing person's country of origin is also problem if you catch them on border. And even if you know their country of origin deportation can be difficult as their home country can refuse to take them back.

Mass flight from Syrian and Iraq and then from several African countries has showed that European countries refugee laws which are based on UNHCR - The 1951 Refugee Convention (and its extension in 1967) don't work well when there is such mass of people seeking asylum. Which is why many countries made emergency changes on their laws in order to limit amount people coming in. Addition to European refugee laws, we saw that countries weren't really prepared to handle such mass of immigrants coming every day for months, meaning there was no process/procedure that countries officials would follow, which allowed lots of unregistered people enter in EU area where they were able to travel freely thanks to EU's free travel agreements. But eventually countries were able to put processes in place to control those masses, but it lead to new problem in southern Europe, especially in Italy and Greece which are two main countries where people enter in EU, which is that they have now big camps of people whose refugee status need to be determined and other EU countries are reluctant to offer their help in that. UNHCR - The 1951 Refugee Convention (and its extension) gives people right to seek asylum and countries obligation to go through comprehensive process to determine if their situation demands international protection aka asylum. Meaning that even though situation of their home country didn't fulfil criteria of asylum in case of majority of people who come to seek asylum or better life during refugee crisis, our laws forced officials to go through that comprehensive process in case of every one who seek asylum and most of the countries didn't really have enough people who handled asylum applications to handle amount of applications they faced and addition to that in asylum seekers whose applications were rejected had/have right to complain to courts about their rejected application, which means another time consuming process before our laws allow to deport person whose application was rejected. And even after official finally get right to deport person it can be quite problematic as Iraq, Syria and some African countries refuse to take person back as in many cases there are no deportation agreement between European countries and said target countries, which can mean that those people who have given deportation order stay in limbo state where they don't have right to stay in the country where they sought asylum, but officials can't force them go to their home country, which has lead to voluntary return policy where governments pay asylum seekers money if they voluntary go back to their home country.