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 Ustrello wrote:
I look at it this way, any christian that supports the registry of muslims can never complain about freedom of religion again.

I don't support this at all. I do support the monitoring of certain groups of Muslims though. Such as those known to be attending radicalized mosques.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:
I look at it this way, any christian that supports the registry of muslims can never complain about freedom of religion again.

I don't support this at all. I do support the monitoring of certain groups of Muslims though. Such as those known to be attending radicalized mosques.

And would you support the monitoring of christian militia groups? Such as the oathkeepers, since they are a possibly violent christian organization?

SemperMortis wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:
I look at it this way, any christian that supports the registry of muslims can never complain about freedom of religion again.

I don't support this at all. I do support the monitoring of certain groups of Muslims though. Such as those known to be attending radicalized mosques.

So you are okay with monitoring potential terrorists who attend meetings where terrorists may meet?

It's okay to say that. There are many people in many faith groups that fall in that category. We just arrested some white guys who were members of a group who planned an attack. We monitored that group.

You keep on using "Muslim" in a context where it isn't needed or warranted.

Mitochondria wrote:
Mattis would be a brilliant SECDEF.

There are a lot of guys out there who are qualified...sort of. Remember that secdef is mainly an adminstrative job. Think more Eisenhower and less Patton. Patton was the better General but Eisenhower could adminsitrate and use all the tools on the board in a way that Patton couldn't.

I'd take rumsfeld over most of the guys out there (and i'm a liberal!) because at least he had the guts to kill expensive cold war projects that were no longer feasible. Or Powell. He understood the political dimension of war better than most.

ender502

If a group is potentially dangerous they're religion doesn't matter, and it never has. There are plenty of Islamic and Christian groups on the US terror watch list. This idea that there's some ambiguous other in the US that doesn't think radicals Muslims are a threat is absurd, and always has been. The objection from the left has always come from the ease with which accusations of radicalism flow to broad strokes.

Given how much the right seems to complain about such things, you'd think they'd be as willing to condemn such tendencies as me. Experience tells me otherwise however.

 d-usa wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

 Ustrello wrote:
I look at it this way, any christian that supports the registry of muslims can never complain about freedom of religion again.

I don't support this at all. I do support the monitoring of certain groups of Muslims though. Such as those known to be attending radicalized mosques.

So you are okay with monitoring potential terrorists who attend meetings where terrorists may meet?

It's okay to say that. There are many people in many faith groups that fall in that category. We just arrested some white guys who were members of a group who planned an attack. We monitored that group.

You keep on using "Muslim" in a context where it isn't needed or warranted.

Thank you for implying racism D-USA, the context was in the original comment.

I implied whatnow?

 ender502 wrote:

He was attacking the method. He got caught peddling false fox newstalking points that don't stand up to a google search and then changed direction. Don't apologoze for being right.

ender502

Note that I didn't apologize.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Every lib rag is pimping that Bannon quote entirely out of context...it's pathetic and desperate. They should devote more energy to trying to understand the man...the Buzzfeed article was actually quite enlightening: https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world

This is how he characterizes WWI:

Steve Bannon wrote:the Judeo-Christian West versus atheists, right?

Yeah, I feel 'enlightened'. Just not in a good way.

Yeah there was no implied racism there. Maybe you saw it because something deep inside is telling you that it probably is

 Spinner wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Every lib rag is pimping that Bannon quote entirely out of context...it's pathetic and desperate. They should devote more energy to trying to understand the man...the Buzzfeed article was actually quite enlightening: https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world

This is how he characterizes WWI:

Steve Bannon wrote:the Judeo-Christian West versus atheists, right?

Yeah, I feel 'enlightened'. Just not in a good way.

Good to know my instincts about what dribble to read and what garbage not to read are still working

 LordofHats wrote:

 Spinner wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Every lib rag is pimping that Bannon quote entirely out of context...it's pathetic and desperate. They should devote more energy to trying to understand the man...the Buzzfeed article was actually quite enlightening: https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world

This is how he characterizes WWI:

Steve Bannon wrote:the Judeo-Christian West versus atheists, right?

Yeah, I feel 'enlightened'. Just not in a good way.

Good to know my instincts about what dribble to read and what garbage not to read are still working

I mean, it's his unedited remarks.

So, yes, dribble, but I figure it's important to know. This man is going to be advising the President.

Urgh.

I mean that I skipped the article because I figured it would fail in the purpose proposed by the person who linked it.

And I was right

 Ustrello wrote:
Yeah there was no implied racism there. Maybe you saw it because something deep inside is telling you that it probably is

I mean, unless he took the "white guys" remark the wrong way.

I was talking about the militia members in Kansas, just to be clear for anyone else reading this. They were monitored, not because they were white but because they were members of a militia group. And I'm okay with that. Monitor known groups where radicalization happens. The FBI didn't target them because of race, or because of religion, but because of an association with a known group of potentially violent people.

I think that people have a tendency to make the jump from "radical" that is islamic to "radical islam" pretty easily. Unfortunately it seems to jump quickly to "any one of...them." AT that point you've gone from sensible, to phylosophically correct, to racism.

Trump likes to fan that flame either because it gives his base supporters a hardon or he doesn't understand there is a big difference between an observant muslim and a radical terrorist that uses out of context passages and writings to justify their own ignorant hatred.

I honestly don't care that much about racism up until the point it tries to call itself something else. You want to hate brown people? Go on ahead. Just don't call it reason.

The worst part of the folks that Trump is surrounding themselves with is that they represent the greatest threat to our greatest assett in the war against terror, allied muslims. Their broad strokes are going to dry the well of support that the US has in the middle east by using inflammatorty language. And to what purpose? For political gain at home? To justify their own racism? Neither of those are good enough when all you are doing is making it harder to prosecute the war on terror. And who pays the bill for the incindiary language? Our troops abroad and our citizens at home.

If I thought, for even a second, these guys would actually help win the war on terror I would support them in their mission. Trumps inner circle represents nothing more than a profound ignorance of the dimensions of this war. It's not their language but the effect that language will have. They will weaken our efforts at home and abroad.

ender502

Since when was Islam a race? Its a religion you can covert to. If you can convert to it, its not a race.
The term you are looking for is Islamophobic.

That's true. Of course, prejudice against a specific religion is also against the US constitution and human rights.

People use "racism" as a shorthand for Islamophobia partly because Trumo uses Islam as a shorthand for "foreigners with brown skins."

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Since when was Islam a race? Its a religion you can covert to. If you can convert to it, its not a race.
The term you are looking for is Islamophobic.

On the other hand, when people talk about Islam being a threat, they tend to be talking about people from the middle east and have a clear racial stereotype in mind.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Since when was Islam a race? Its a religion you can covert to. If you can convert to it, its not a race.
The term you are looking for is Islamophobic.

Insert explanation of the term "cultural racism" here, followed by two pages of posts throwing a hissy-fit over a concept that dates from the 70's.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Since when was Islam a race? Its a religion you can covert to. If you can convert to it, its not a race.
The term you are looking for is Islamophobic.

Insert explanation of the term "cultural racism" here, followed by two pages of posts throwing a hissy-fit over a concept that dates from the 70's.

From the Swiss I believe;

After WWII, as the idea of different biological races became controversial, the term culture received increased significance in racist reasoning. Scientists usually talk about so called "Culture racism". Instead of starting from biology, culture is used to explain how people are and what they do. Culture is seen as something solid and unchangeable. The rhetoric and the purpose of the division is the same as when talking about biological races though. Stereotypical notions about the cultures of ethnical groups as essentially different and incompatible with the (for example) Swedish culture lies as a foundation of cultural racism. Cultures are seen as unchangeable and very "deciding" for a person's characteristics.

Also from Wikipedia

 Spinner wrote:


This is how he characterizes WWI:

Steve Bannon wrote:the Judeo-Christian West versus atheists, right?

Yeah, I feel 'enlightened'. Just not in a good way.

Pffft, everyone knows WW1 started because a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry.

 Peregrine wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Since when was Islam a race? Its a religion you can covert to. If you can convert to it, its not a race.
The term you are looking for is Islamophobic.

On the other hand, when people talk about Islam being a threat, they tend to be talking about people from the middle east and have a clear racial stereotype in mind.

Not really, they're talking about an ideology that can affect someone regardless of their racial background. We've had cases of blue eyed white skinned kids going to violent extremist Islam as well.

Maybe you're only hearing the whites talking about the middle easterns, but it's far from the only people talking about Islam as a threat. You can go to India and hear Hindus, Christians, atheists (maybe Sikhs? I haven't spoken to all that many) talking about extreme Islam being a threat there as well.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Since when was Islam a race? Its a religion you can covert to. If you can convert to it, its not a race.
The term you are looking for is Islamophobic.

That's not really the right term either. That's the fear of Islam. The term for people who hate Islam and/or muslims is 'Bigot'

 whembly wrote:
But, the fact is, Reid invoked the Nuke option that drastically reduced the minority's influence in the future. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, and what I'm saying is that when a minority exploits a process to block not just problematic nominations, but almost all nominations, then no-one should be surprised when the minority loses the power to block nominations.

Maybe Reid shouldn't have done it, but no-one should act surprised that he did. Republicans were basically goading him in to doing it.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SnakePlissken wrote:
I disagree with this statement. A large part of why Trump exists, is because people were upset with what Obama had been doing by ramrodding his agenda by executive fiat.

That argument makes no sense. First up, if you're angry about a president pushing the boundaries of executive power, you don't pick the guy who's out there talking like he will do anything he wants as president.

Second up, there's nothing in being angry about a Democratic president that would make a party pick a crazy man. Bases have been angry before, the Dems were plenty angry in 2008, and the Republicans were plenty angry in 2000. Both parties elected candidates who stuck pretty close to their party's mainstream, because that's a normal thing to do when you want to win an election.

In 2016 Republicans didn't pick an ordinary candidate, they picked a total lunatic. The question is why, and anger about Obama is not the answer. The answer comes from how abnormal Republican politics have become, how extreme the faux outrage is now, and how poor the match is between how the base is energised, and what the party is acting attempting to enact in legislation.

And Superpower #2 is right there to pick up the ball we just dropped. TPP, NAFTA...who needs global trade when you've got all those scary illegal immigrants running around taking jobs that nobody wants. The ignorance is beyond mind-boggling.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/as-trump-talks-wall-china-builds-bridges-to-latin-america/ar-AAkrFhg?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=ASUDHP

sirlynchmob wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Since when was Islam a race? Its a religion you can covert to. If you can convert to it, its not a race.
The term you are looking for is Islamophobic.

That's not really the right term either. That's the fear of Islam. The term for people who hate Islam and/or muslims is 'Bigot'

No, that's wrong as well. You can hate Islam without being a bigot as long as you have well considered reasons for hating it.

 whembly wrote:
— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) November 18, 2016

That's a hella admission of guilt.

I guess he didn't want to be compelled to take the witness stand...

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
But, the fact is, Reid invoked the Nuke option that drastically reduced the minority's influence in the future. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, and what I'm saying is that when a minority exploits a process to block not just problematic nominations, but almost all nominations, then no-one should be surprised when the minority loses the power to block nominations.

Maybe Reid shouldn't have done it, but no-one should act surprised that he did. Republicans were basically goading him in to doing it.

Yes, the Republicans are not blameless here...

So, for all those who were cheering on Reid after he nuked the filibuster (sans scotus picks)... you're witnessing the reprocussions of this decision now that obviously benefits the Republican party *now*.

Don't like Senator Sessions as AG? Pre-Reid Nuke the Democrats would've been able to stop that pick.

Now while that would likely help the agendas I would like to see happen, I still hate the idea that the minority party is weakened as such.

The Senate was built to be a much more deliberative body than their counter parts in the House.

So, to me, as the leader of the Majority... Harry Reid's option should've been to bring the Republican to the table and try to hammer out a compromise. I've looked, and I haven't seen any evidence that the Majority leader even tried.

He simply took the easy way out... from now on, the Senate is going to swing bigly depending which party has the majority, which will increase the divide at Cognress.

There's never going to be any compromise when one side builds their entire ideology on the idea that government can't successfully do anything.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
I hate to point this out but you seem to be equating working behind a desk with a job being 'good'. I see 'good' jobs as having a high rate of job satisfaction and a wage capable of keeping one at a decent standard of living.

I've got genuinely no clue how you reached that assumption about my statement. I listed industries with high rates of pay, pharmaceuticals, aeronautics, and finance. I do assume these industries are better to have than industries like textiles. I base this on the idea that it is better to have a high wage than a low wage.

I do not consider that idea a high wage is nicer to have than a low wage controversial.

California in and of itself is, depending on who you ask, either the 6th or 8th largest economy in the world. Texas isn't very far back behind it. Hell, Pennsylvania, not exactly a star player, has a GDP equal to Switzerland. (Numbers as of 2015)

So, looking at that, if Trump starts some protectionist policies, will foreign companies pack it in and just give up on being part of the largest economy on earth, or do you think they'll play ball? I think that Trump is gambling that they'll stay, and I don't think he's entirely wrong.

Your argument above has nothing to do with the actual cost of protectionism, and largely buys in to Trump's own misunderstanding of the issue. Your argument relies on the old fallacy that trade is about a winner and a loser, and so if you can set up trade barriers and use strength, either military or economic, to prevent retaliation, then you 'win' at trade. This was the basic logic of mercantilism.

But Adam Smith demolished those ideas 250 years ago. He showed that trade is a mutually beneficial process, it allowed each party to specialise, just as within countries we naturally specialise in to farmers, butchers, bakers etc, to maximise overall production. By preventing trade with another country, say putting up a tariff on their butchers for instance, then you force some of your own labour back in to butchery, drawing them away from baking or something else where they would be more efficient.

Latter work in comparative advantage lay out the model for this clearly, but the core of the idea has been in place so long now, and people still don't get it.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
There's never going to be any compromise when one side builds their entire ideology on the idea that government can't successfully do anything.

That's horse gak. The GOP party never ran on the idea that government can't do anything. Both parties argue that "their way" is better.

They compromise all the fething time. Reid thought it's a political win to sick it to the GOP while he could.

If you're paying attention, the Democrat Party has been steadily getting their asses kicked.