Political Thread XX

[Agiel]

Emphases mine.

 

 

 

Trump's military parade is now estimated to cost $92 million – $80 million more than earlier estimate

by Amanda Macias

 

-President Donald Trump's military parade is estimated to cost $92 million, according to a U.S. defense official with firsthand knowledge of the assessment.

-An earlier estimate pegged the cost at $12 million.

-The parade will take place in the nation's capital on Nov. 10 and will feature armored vehicles, aircraft flyovers and period uniforms.

 

President Donald Trump's military parade this fall is shaping up to cost $80 million more than initially estimated.

 

The Department of Defense and its interagency partners have updated their perspective cost estimates for the parade, according to a U.S. defense official with firsthand knowledge of the assessment. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity.

 

The parade, slated for Nov. 10, is estimated to cost $92 million, the official said. The figure includes $50 million from the Pentagon and $42 million from interagency partners such as the Department of Homeland Security. An initial estimate last month pegged the prospective cost for the parade at $12 million.

 

A Pentagon spokesman said in an email to CNBC that the Defense Department expects to make an announcement soon, but he would not comment further. The White House referred questions to the Defense Department.

 

The $92 million cost estimate includes security, transportation of parade assets, aircraft, as well as temporary duty, or TDY, for troops. The official also noted that while the size and scope of the military parade can still shift, the plans currently include approximately eight tanks, as well as other armored vehicles, including Bradleys, Strykers and M113s.

 

The official also said that experts put to rest concerns about whether the Abrams tank, which weighs just shy of 70 tons, would ruin infrastructure in Washington. Their analysis found that, because of the vehicle's distributed weight and track pads, the streets of the nation's capital would not be compromised.

 

The parade is also expected to include helicopter, fighter jet, transport aircraft as well as historical military plane flyovers. Troops in period uniforms representing the past, present and future forces will march in the parade, as well.

 

Inspiration from France

 

The ceremony is said to be largely inspired by Trump's front-row seat at France's Bastille Day military parade in Paris.

 

In September, Trump met with French President Emmanuel Macron and recalled how much he enjoyed watching the parade. "It was a tremendous day, and to a large extent because of what I witnessed, we may do something like that on July 4 in Washington down Pennsylvania Avenue," Trump said.

 

"We're going to have to try to top it, but we have a lot of planes going over and a lot of military might, and it was really a beautiful thing to see, and representatives from different wars and different uniforms," he added.

 

The U.S. has not held a major military parade in Washington since 1991 to mark the end of Operation Desert Storm. The 1991 parade reportedly cost approximately $8 million and was paid for with about $3 million in government funds and the rest with private donations.

 

The $92 million figure dwarfs the $12 million estimate that was first reported by CNN last month. As noted at the time, the military parade was expected to cost as much as the "tremendously expensive" bilateral military exercise that Trump swiftly cancelled with South Korea in the wake of the historic Singapore summit.

 

"We save a fortune by not doing war games, as long as we are negotiating in good faith – which both sides are!" Trump tweeted after meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore.

 

After meeting with the reclusive leader from the North to negotiate a nuclear deal, Trump said: "I think it's inappropriate to be having war games. No. 1, we save money. A lot. And No. 2, it really is something that I think they [North Korea] very much appreciated." Trump also said that flying U.S. Air Force bombers in regional training missions is another drain on resources.

 

Trump's move falls out of step with the Pentagon, which has maintained that the joint exercises are routine, purely defensive and vital to maintaining readiness on the Korean Peninsula.

 

There are currently 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the Korean War, which ended in 1953 in an armistice that left the two Koreas technically still at war.

[Agiel]

Addendum piece from Mackenzie Eaglen at AEI:

 

 

 

The $700 billion in enacted defense spending for 2018 is a substantive increase over 2017 enacted and 2018 requested spending. However, the $716 billion topline for 2019 just keeps pace with inflation... The ratio of procurement to RDT&E spending reflected in PB19 is consistent with the underinvestment in procurement during FY02–FY12. The FYDP presents little opportunity for change: Growth from FY18 through FY23 annualizes to 2.1 percent. This sclerotic increase barely keeps pace with inflation, causing real defense spending to flatline in the out-years. The president’s 10-year budget plan would reinforce this trend by increasing defense spending at inflationary levels to keep real spending constant. There is no plan to introduce real growth in defense spending to compensate for the bow wave’s arrival. In fact, expenditures are projected to decline after the conclusion of the FYDP.

[smjjames]

 

Believing in god isn't a requirement for being nice to each other. The fact that 'there is judgement' hasn't stopped people from doing things in the name of god that god would probably disapprove of.

 

 

There are no magical 100% foolproof solutions you know. You need to weight the scales. Organized religion surely stopped more atrocities and wars than it created.

 

Good luck proving that though. The Church certainly did get involved in some conflicts like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas (which didn't stop later wars happening between the two colonial powers) and I can't discount instances of at least trying, but the record is probably 50/50 at best.

[Blarghagh]

Here's my theory on religion and its effect on "good and evil".

 

There's a difference between instinctual and naturally evolved. Humans evolved larger brains and developed complex social behaviours to deal with increasing needs of infants because of those large brains. Evolutionary mandated complex behaviour, because if we hadn't organized in such a way there's no way we could have kept reproducing with infants as helpless as ours. This suggests being nice to people in your community is a natural part of life, but natural doesn't mean instinctual. It is conditioned, it is self-organized, because that's how human behaviour has naturally evolved to exist. Religion has been part of the human drive to self-organize and in the past has been useful to keep doing that in the face of population growth and the chaos that exists outside of human organisation, but at this point it is no longer strictly neccesary to do so. Our sphere of existence has grown to deal with those things in other ways, hence the slow removal of organized religion. Change doesn't come easily, however.

The problem with "kindness" lies in our brains not being a unified organ. For example, the part that says "I'll be more socially accepted and healthy if I work out and eat right" is at odds with the holdover little rodent brain going "need to grab as much sugar and fat as I can because I don't know where my next meal is coming from". Most people will attempt to self-organize in a beneficial way, but some will be listening to old instincts that evolution has allowed us to grow beyond but never truly gotten rid of. That's where greed and selfishness come from. There's a reason we stereotype greedy people as weasels and rats. Most will not have learned how to succesfully be part of a self-organizing community and individuals like that can work as serious wrenches in the works - one single person listening to their rat brain by, say, robbing people, requires the entire community to adapt their self-organisation in favour of security. Sadly, with the breakdown of real communities due to urban living and the internet we might need another paradigm shift in how we self-organize.

 

tl;dr Humans on a whole are generally built towards being good, but brains are ineffective tools that make some people jerks that ruin it for everyone

[SonicMage117]

Google tells me that 2 souls enter the great beyond every second. Now that's a busy god!

 

I wonder, if god is all powerful, can it make infinite copies of itself?

I can't pretend to know the answer to this so I probably shouldn't waste your time

 

If I were to guess though, I'd say that since the Holy Bible says God is infinite, that there is no limitations to space or time but if we want to point out specifics, we could say that God may be limited in the fact that He cannot make another God or that He cannot kill himself. Just as atheism requires a god not to believe in.

 

As for me though, I think that God has made a system to where the waiting seems fairly short. I'm not sure I can fathom how such a system would work. I don't even know if my spirit would fly, glide or walk lol

So any idol is fine? Like money?

 

Seems like you cherry pick what is learned and what is instinct. For someone who is hungry stealing food is instinct, yet the one who got robbed will not like it. Shagging anything which moves is instinct yet most religions does not support it or deem it 'good'

I'm not cherry picking though, there seems to be a fine line of moralism and instinct. Is it wrong to steal food if you are hungry and nobody will care enough to give you something to eat willingly?

 

And...

 

How is shagging anything instinct? In religion, such a sexual act would be considered an act of the flesh. Instinct has never told anyone to go around and be a hoe, it has only told us to go and be with someone to reproduce and make offspring. The need for sex with a person you love is instinct, the urge of desire to sleep with anyone is either an act of pleasure to the flesh or desperation. Maybe that's where the whole rapist thing comes in to.

 

What does that have to do with anything? I was replying to your post where you said we need God to be moral. I refuted that by pointing out that the most "moral countries" (at least in terms of crimes committed) are largely irreligious. Not sure what you're trying to say with your followup?

The point of the followup was that atheists extremist have even more broken logic than the hardcore Christian extremist. Anyway, moving on...

 

We don't need God to be moral people, I never said that. The fact is that we shouldn't need God to be a moral people. What I said was that the purpose behind morals is ultinate judgement and I went on to saying that living life with morals would be ultimately pointless with some sort of judgment in the afterlife. In other words, it's silly to enforce any type of good and evil relation if we don't believe in a foundation of it, and when that foundation is removed, things just don't make sense. Questions like "Why does good exist?" Or "If I see a stranger helpless in the middle of the road, why do/don't I want to help them?" Are being excused with "We don't need a reason" but think about it carefully, why are we robbing ourselves from doscovering reason? It's a pretty backwards concept lol

 

Also, I'm curious where you got the info that the countries in the world with least crimes are irreligious... I do know that the countries which ban Christianity and other religions are the ones with the most crimes, not to mention they kill inmocent people on sight for claiming to believe in God but even if you had statistics, I'm wondering how you could prove such a thing since history has proven just the opposite.

Edited August 16, 2018 by SonicMage117

[Gfted1]

Same idea, your next life quality depends on your current lifestyle. Reward and punishment.

 

But reincarnation has a finite limit of whatever is the lifespan of your current incarnation, no? Also, if what you say is true, how does one improve from a lower life form? For example, lets say some terrible person dies and is reincarnated as a buttworm. This buttworm lives its normal life cycle, but being a buttworm, it isnt afforded any opportunity to worship or improve its station in the hierarchy. Seems like a soul can only go down from humanity to something lower.

[smjjames]

I guess it's more about the bad karma wearing off? The rationalization varies from religion to religion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation#Hinduism Most of them don't seem to have the reincarnation go back into animals/plants or perhaps it's just vague.

[HoonDing]

Hinduism is awesome, four-armed warrior women with big b00bies.

[Malcador]

You all should worship this guy I know.

[Gfted1]

Hmm, so in Hinduism the souls will retain the memories of its former lives? Otherwise, whats the point in reincarnating as a buttworm / human if that soul never has the capability to understand that it is being punished / rewarded.

[smjjames]

Maybe it stays dormant until the nervous system is advanced enough to proccess said memories properly. It's like the bible, there are all kinds of things that don't make logical sense or contradict each other and religions don't always go out of their way to correct contradictions, they treat it as 'it just IS'.

 

I wasn't giving Hinduism as a specific example, just the start of the 'contemporary religions' section. Since you're using Hinduism as an example anyway, it sounds like Karma (their interpretation of it that is) is an invisible number that slowly resets to zero or something.

Edited August 16, 2018 by smjjames

[Elerond]

 

Same idea, your next life quality depends on your current lifestyle. Reward and punishment.

 

But reincarnation has a finite limit of whatever is the lifespan of your current incarnation, no? Also, if what you say is true, how does one improve from a lower life form? For example, lets say some terrible person dies and is reincarnated as a buttworm. This buttworm lives its normal life cycle, but being a buttworm, it isnt afforded any opportunity to worship or improve its station in the hierarchy. Seems like a soul can only go down from humanity to something lower.

 

 

There are multiple reincarnation teachings. But in most popular versions (Hinduism and Budhist versions), souls of animals collect good merit by lessening suffering of other beings like for example by becoming meal of some other creature or by just showing companionship.

[smjjames]

 

 

Same idea, your next life quality depends on your current lifestyle. Reward and punishment.

 

But reincarnation has a finite limit of whatever is the lifespan of your current incarnation, no? Also, if what you say is true, how does one improve from a lower life form? For example, lets say some terrible person dies and is reincarnated as a buttworm. This buttworm lives its normal life cycle, but being a buttworm, it isnt afforded any opportunity to worship or improve its station in the hierarchy. Seems like a soul can only go down from humanity to something lower.

 

 

There are multiple reincarnation teachings. But in most popular versions (Hinduism and Budhist versions), souls of animals collect good merit by lessening suffering of other beings like for example by becoming meal of some other creature or by just showing companionship.

 

 

And I suppose parasites get bad karma because they're parasites? Otherwise, it sounds like the normal cycle of life, also, if you die of old age, you still become food, for the worms and flies (or carrion birds in the case of sky burials), so, therefore, even those get to take part.

 

edit: What if you die in a tar pit and sink before anything non-microscopic has a chance to get at you? Maybe you just continue forward without moving vertically.

Edited August 16, 2018 by smjjames

[Chilloutman]

and I thought desire is animalistic, turns out someone told me to get errections

[smjjames]

Jainism takes it further, right down to microscopic, maybe even subcellular. The concept of Nigoda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigoda sound kind of like 'midichlorians' (you know, that attempt to explain 'the force') doesn't it. It also comes pretty close to acknowledging the existence of bacteria.

[SonicMage117]

Hmmmm... So you think pedophiles and rapists' actions are instinct justified by instinct? Do you need to rape someone or be a pedophile to survive on instinct? Sounds like this is to be turning out to be a nature vs thought process thing rather than a survival/instinct vs taught topic but if you want to get technical, how would you measure the validation of someone saying they were born homosexual preference when you were born heterosexual preference? Or is that when you make the exception to where desire differs among animalistic tendencies. After all, there are not "gay" animals....

 

Also, as human beings, we don't even come out of the womb knowing what sex is or how it works, we do need to be educated on it. Animals on the other hand are the opposite, their one-track mind is likely doing to their faster maturing response, thus the instincts are quite different in that respect. Attraction if human does begin at an early age and is instinct though so I will say that.

Edited August 16, 2018 by SonicMage117

[Gfted1]

Homosexual behavior in animals.

[Chilloutman]

Hmmmm... So you think pedophiles and rapists' actions are instinct justified by instinct? Do you need to rape someone or be a pedophile to survive on instinct? Sounds like this is to be turning out to be a nature vs thought process thing rather than a survival/instinct vs taught topic but if you want to get technical, how would you measure the validation of someone saying they were born homosexual preference when you were born heterosexual preference? Or is that when you make the exception to where desire differs among animalistic tendencies. After all, there are not "gay" animals....

 

to first question: primal survival instinct is to procrastinate yes

it does not mean that organisms does not evolve into blind twigs on tree of life

as society we learned that some of our primal insticts are no longer acceptable and/or needs to be controlled if we want to survive as community, society and later civilizations.

There are gay animals - ninjed

Edited August 16, 2018 by Chilloutman

[Gromnir]

 

Emphases mine.

 

(edited to avoid clutter) 

 

 

 

it perplexes us why trump, o' all people, would want a military triumph through the streets o' dc. in days and weeks leading up to such a parade, we will no doubt be regaled by numerous news sources with the military exploits o' cadet bone spurs.  he shed no blood for his country. he won no victories for his nation while fighting on the battlefield. why advocate a costly endeavor which will only draw more attention to trump's avoidance o' military service?

 

at the very least, if a parade does happen, we suggest trump riding at the back o' the parade, with a muslim woman or mexican child deportee holding a golden crown over the President's head and whispering into his ear, sic transit gloria mundi.

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[SonicMage117]

Hmmm... I stand corrected but I have to wonder is it choice by the animal or is this recorded companionship out of desperation or traumatic events. I'm wondering why exactly this is.

 

*Me starts researching/Googling to educate himself*

 

Okay, I can admit I was wrong on that point. I'm watching a political documentary on dolphin orgies

https://youtu.be/5I5N34Q1Bio

Edited August 16, 2018 by SonicMage117

[smjjames]

Hmmmm... So you think pedophiles and rapists' actions are instinct justified by instinct? Do you need to rape someone or be a pedophile to survive on instinct? Sounds like this is to be turning out to be a nature vs thought process thing rather than a survival/instinct vs taught topic but if you want to get technical, how would you measure the validation of someone saying they were born homosexual preference when you were born heterosexual preference? Or is that when you make the exception to where desire differs among animalistic tendencies. After all, there are not "gay" animals....

 

Not sure who you're responding to, but nobody's saying that about pedophiles and rapists actions or implying such. If it was at Chilloutman, it seemed like he was being sarcastic.

 

As for 'gay' animals, there are definetly recorded cases of animals doing 'gay' behavior, but whether they actually feel the same way as human gays do or whether we're just overlaying our own emotions/biases/etc of human behavior onto animals whose behavior may not be for the exact same reasons as we do.

 

 

Homosexual behavior in animals.

 

That has the same points that we may just be applying our own psychology to animals who would have completely different reasonings for the behavior, even ones that would never apply to humans.

 

 

Hmmm... I stand corrected but I have to wonder is it choice by the animal or is this recorded companionship out of desperation or traumatic events. I'm wondering why exactly this is.

 

*Me starts researching/Googling to educate himself*

 

It's possible that there are cases like that, but again, we are putting human rationalizations onto animal behavior.

[SonicMage117]

So far the dolphin gangbang seems to be an initiation ritual thing: We don't have weapons so we'll humiliate you by doing this, then you will have earned your rites. That's what I've gathered so far from it.

 

I have a long ways to go in the video though lol

 

@SSJjames True, I'm just curious to find out what the domcuenters/scientists say

Edited August 16, 2018 by SonicMage117

[Chilloutman]

I have told that desire is instinct or primal urge, i think its same even for deviants, ti does not mean we as society should tolerate or accept it. I think you confuse validation as primal urge versus validation as ok in our socitey

[SonicMage117]

Okay, but what do you say to people who don't have the primal urge to have sex? There are plenty, they called themselves Asexuals.

 

"Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity. It may be considered the lack of a sexual orientation, or one of the variations thereof, alongside heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality."

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexuality

 

Do you believe these people to be going against their primal urges/instinct?

[smjjames]

This kind of segues into the current discussion. You know that Masterpiece Cakeshop thing? Well, it's back in the news, this time https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/8/16/17701712/masterpiece-cakeshop-jack-phillips-colorado-baker-transgender for refusing to bake a cake for a birthday plus the anneversary of the transgender lawyers coming out party. They say that they're being targeted and I'm kind of with them on this one. I mean, it seems too coincidential, a transgender lawyer of all people, the fact that it was ordered on the same day that SCOTUS announced they'd hear the case (whether it was before or after the exact time it was announced, the article and sourced artiicles don't say), and the fact that of every bakery that lawyer had access to, why that bakery? True, the announcement was on that date, but the case itself was in the news for months before that.

Edited August 16, 2018 by smjjames