[jonottawa]

This wasn't some fake edit. Watch the whole interview if you want.



RODRIGUEZ: Many of the millennials, Dreamers, undocumented citizens -- and I call them citizens because they contribute to this country -- are fearful of voting. So if I vote, will immigration know where I live? Will they come for my family and deport us?

OBAMA: Not true. And the reason is, first of all, when you vote, you are a citizen yourself. And there is not a situation where the voting rolls somehow are transferred over and people start investigating, et cetera. The sanctity of the vote is strictly confidential in terms of who you voted for. If you have a family member who maybe is undocumented, then you have an even greater reason to vote.

Someone asks on behalf of NON-CITIZENS if they should be fearful of voting and Obama's reply was an unequivocal NO.

He didn't immediately say:

If you're not a US Citizen, it is illegal for you to vote & you should not register to vote.

He said some malarkey about if you vote, you become a citizen. I don't understand what he meant, but neither would some uneducated non-citizen. He UNDERSTOOD the question, and his answer was shameful.

As for Snopes, yeah, they were in the tank for Hillary. So linking Snopes as some kind of authority is absurd.

Take the simple claim that Hillary defended a child rapist & then later laughed about it. 100% true.

Snopes' verdict: Mostly false.

http://yournewswire....estions-raised/

And if you don't know the Kathy Shelton story, you should educate yourself. Because it's truly heartbreaking.

[ggwhiz]

It's over, it's done but what comes next?

The transition team Trump is assembling is scaring me. One nod to the GOP establishment, two to the white supremecists.

[PassedOut]

jonottawa, on 2016-November-14, 16:59, said:

Someone who is CLEARLY NOT a US CITIZEN asks if she should be fearful of voting and Obama's reply was an unequivocal NO.

Gina Rodriguez is an actress born in Chicago, Illinois in 1984. There should be no doubt that Obama knew who she was.

Obama went on to explain in that interview that, as a citizen, it was important for her to vote because the undocumented could not. The main-stream media clearly edited that out for unethical reasons.

[jonottawa]

PassedOut, on 2016-November-14, 17:08, said:

Gina Rodriguez is an actress born in Chicago, Illinois in 1984. There should be no doubt that Obama knew who she was.

Yes, I amended that post in the <10 minutes between when I posted it and when you replied. I worded it sloppily.

[awm]

I'll give one liberal's opinion on Kaitlyn's post:

The Constitution: Liberals view the constitution as a governing framework, which sets forth a set of principles for balancing individual rights against the power of the states and federal government. We believe that these principles have to be interpreted in a way that meets the standards of the time. America was a very different country in the 18th century than it is today, and founders knew there would be changes when they wrote the Constitution and (we think) intended it to be more of a living document than a hard and fast set of rules. For example, it says nowhere in the Constitution that individual citizens should not be allowed to own nuclear weapons. In fact, the second (right to bear arms) and tenth (rights not explicitly delegated reserved for the states and/or people) amendments seem to imply that the federal government cannot restrict the ownership of nuclear weapons. But no sane person really interprets things this way! We don't "hate the constitution" -- we just don't think it should be treated as a straightjacket.

Rule of law. The outward appearance to us (liberals) is that conservatives will always take the side of a policeman against a black person, regardless of the circumstances. We see cases where a black person is accused of a very minor offense or even non-offense (selling loose cigarettes, playing with a toy gun, not obeying a police order) and is clearly no threat to the policeman (doesn't even have a weapon) and yet is shot to death, and conservatives immediately defend the police.

Checks and balances: I actually agree that some of Obama's executive orders overreached. Years before issuing the orders, Obama himself would agree that some of his immigration orders were overreach! On the other hand, I also believe that some of the Republican congress's actions have been overreach (for example refusing to even give Merrick Garland a hearing when the constitution requires them to "advise and consent" or putting the full faith and credit of the US at risk by threatening to not raise the debt ceiling). In general when there is an outcome that we think is really important for the country we are sometimes willing to forgive procedural overreach (i.e. I think it will be really good for the country if we allow "undocumented" people who have lived here since early childhood and have no criminal record a path to citizenship, and I am somewhat disgusted that Republicans who used to support this idea have moved in the opposite direction, so while I agree that Obama's decision to "defer action" is not strictly constitutional I'm not going to really condemn him for doing what I see as the right thing).

Ethical journalism: We have a lot of problems with media in this country. I think the media is more biased towards the "mainstream" and away from "fringe ideas" than liberal or conservative (although there are definitely exceptions). The Republican party keeps moving further right, and it can be hard for media to keep up (i.e. a reporter who joined the news station in the 1980s and agreed with Reagan on most everything and still holds the same opinions is now part of "liberal bias" considering that such a reporter would support "amnesty" for the undocumented and taxing capital gains as ordinary income, to name two things that Reagan did).

Morality: There is a high correlation between being religious in the sense of church attendance, and being conservative. However, we on the left do not identify morality with church attendance. Rather, we identify morality with having empathy for other people and treating them as we would want to be treated, regardless of how different they might be than ourselves. Conservatives (especially the ones who regularly attend church) seem to us to have a problem with non-christians, with homosexuals, sometimes with people of different races... and while they "take Jesus as their savior" they do not seem to be trying particularly hard to live up to his example of love and forgiveness.

Patriotism: The United States has at the best of times been a shining light to the world of acceptance and hope. We have been a country that fights against evil wherever we find it, that takes in refugees of other country who "yearn to breathe free." We liberals believe that part of being patriotic is keeping America as a beacon of hope. Sometimes that means admitting when we make mistakes and improving on them. Sometimes that means committing our country to help other people in the world even if it's not in our short-term benefit. I don't think what's "best for America" and "best for the world" are always in conflict.

Meritocracy: The liberal view on this is complex. One point is that peoples' views of "merit" are often actually discriminatory; if you ask managers to look at resumes of a white candidate and a black candidate with exactly the same qualifications, they will call in the white candidate (only) for an interview. We believe there's a problem with that. We also believe that people who had a lot of obstacles in their path sometimes deserve a break in part because their potential is likely higher -- for example, if you take a kid from a poor rural community who had to help out for long hours at the farm and went to a school with unqualified teachers, and ended up with an 1800 SAT (SAT is out of 2400 now)... and compare him against a wealthy kid from New York city who went to an elite magnet school and whose parents hired tutors and test-prep coaches for him, and ended up with a 2100 SAT... it seems eminently reasonable to us to accept the rural kid to a top college over the higher-scoring wealthy kid since he had to overcome so much more and probably has higher potential to succeed when placed in the same college environment. You can call this affirmative action if you want, we call it meritocracy. And we believe that minorities with a history of discrimination against them do face obstacles that the rest of us don't..

Freedom of speech: No one I've talked to on the left is opposed to freedom of speech from a legal standpoint. I think people have a right to say things that I believe are offensive. I don't want to give my money to help them get a louder microphone. So I think it's perfectly fair to complain if my university is offering to pay someone thousands of dollars to come say offensive things in a big auditorium. And I think it's fine to refuse to buy products from companies that use the money to run ads for conservative candidates. We liberals don't really see money as speech; we don't believe that just because you have a right to say whatever you want (you do!) means that I have to hire you or buy your products or invite you to speak to my company if you are saying things I disagree with.

Right to bear arms: Honestly I think most of us just want to feel safe. Personally, I feel safer if I know that the crazy homeless guy down the street doesn't have a gun, or that the guy who just got out of jail for domestic abuse doesn't have a gun, or that my neighbor's five year old isn't playing with a loaded gun. Owning a gun myself won't really make me feel safer (maybe this would be different if I was very experienced in shooting and maintaining guns, but I'm not). Now I understand that some people feel differently than me, and that the 2nd amendment prevents us from banning guns completely. But I don't really understand the opposition to regulating guns much the way we regulate automobiles (i.e. to own a gun you need a license that verifies that you don't have a criminal record, you're not clinically insane, you're not on a terrorist watch list, and you have some basic knowledge of how to shoot your gun and put the safety on and lock it up so little kids don't play with it).

I don't think I "hate America" -- but I do take a more nuanced view than many conservatives seem to. There are great things about our country both in our present and our past. But we have also done some terrible things in our past, and it is possible we might do so again. There are things we can improve. And we should.

[cherdano]

jonottawa, on 2016-November-14, 16:59, said:

RODRIGUEZ: Many of the millennials, Dreamers, undocumented citizens -- and I call them citizens because they contribute to this country -- are fearful of voting. So if I vote, will immigration know where I live? Will they come for my family and deport us?

OBAMA: Not true. And the reason is, first of all, when you vote, you are a citizen yourself.

You = Gina Rodriguez, US citizen.

The question was a mess, but Obama is clearly answering about Gina Rodriguez (hypothetically or not) being afraid to vote.

[Winstonm]

jonottawa, on 2016-November-14, 15:54, said:

Kaitlyn, let me flesh out my answer a bit since you went to the trouble of composing such a well-reasoned post:

The Constitution.

(I think the verb 'rape' is overused fwiw. But anyway.) Yes, "liberals" are all for the Constitution as long as the Constitution enshrines whatever pet issue is popular in the CURRENT YEAR as an inviolable human right for all time. You can't say you're FOR the Constitution if that essentially means you IGNORE the plain language of the Constitution at your discretion. We used to amend the Constitution when we wanted new rights (or to give up certain rights as in the case of Prohibition.) That's our tradition. That's what being FOR the Constitution means.

Rule of law.

POTUS went on television and urged non-citizens to vote for Hillary. Soros riots are going on right now. Sanctuary cities. Come on, how many examples do you need?

Checks and balances.

Executive orders overturning US immigration law. Partisan DoJ interference in the FBI investigation of Hillary. A judiciary that's as politicized as the legislative branch. I think this administration has taken all the bad examples from Dubya and Dubyalled down on them.

Ethical journalism: "Some liberal posters agree that the mainstream media is slightly biased in their favor. Most liberals agreed with me when I stated that journalists kowtowed to CAIR instead of reporting their honest findings for fear of being sued or fired by their employer who feared being sued."

Slightly biased? Only with respect to CAIR? C'mon now. The MSM is no longer credible as a news source. It's gotten so bad that even FoxNews (with the exception of Hannity, who is too powerful to be bullied by the Murdoch boys) were shilling for Hillary this cycle!

Morality: "This is an interesting one. I believe there is a high correlation between religious people and conservatives. However, the Left believes they are the moral ones while we are being the immoral (racist, bigoted, deplorable) ones."

Here's another case of Humpty Dumpty and Alice. Bigotry means intolerance for views you disagree with. Is there anyone MORE bigoted than a typical 2016 "liberal"? Is there anything more racist than discriminating against someone because of the color of her skin (Affirmative Action)?

Patriotism

We agree.

Meritocracy.

We agree. America has always been the land of opportunity. Equality of opportunity. Not a communist-style equality of outcomes.

"However, I voted or someone who I guessed would be less qualified for the job of POTUS. I think that probably less than half the people that voted for him thought he was less qualified than Ms. Clinton. However, ilke me, they either thought that corruption would be worse under her, or favored him over her selecting Supreme Court justices. So TBH I did not choose the top position based on merit alone so I have to admit that there are things other than merit that matter."

I think you're (inadvertently) playing word games a bit here. If we agree that Hillary (who I supported in 2008 fwiw, because she was VASTLY more qualified than Obama) is theoretically more capable than President Trump, but way too corrupt to effectively serve, then HE is MORE QUALIFIED. Not being corrupt or owned/controlled by lobbyists is one of the QUALIFICATIONS for being a good president.

Freedom of speech. "Both sides have issues there. The right wants to limit free speech in mosques that they feel will lead to terrorism, or least monitor the speech and shut down the mosques if they fear the speech might lead to terrorist plots. While I am undecided whether this is a good idea or not, it definitely flies in the face of free speech. The left wants to curb speech that they feel might be hurtful to snowflakes, and in some cases curb speech that espouses conservative ideas because it might make people who were brought up with liberal ideas uncomfortable. In the former, they have gone too far in some cases but their rationale is that they are trying to stop people from just being jerks who want to belittle others. To us that seems laughable because they are belittling us calling us bigots and stupid and backward and deplorable but they honestly believe that their motives are good. And if you need a law to keep someone from saying something to a known autistic person that the one saying it knows is going to cause a fit, so be it. Yes, it's curbing free speech, but if you need to curb free speech to stop someone from being a hurtful jackass, I guess I have to agree with the Left on that one. However, the Left will take it much too far and curb some free speech that has no business being curbed just to make sure all the cases where people are being hurtful are included."

Inciting violence (or terrorist acts) has always been against the law and has never been included in the common definition of "free speech". So I see your argument as a false equivalence.

Right to bear arms.

We agree.

"However, overall, I don't think that most liberals hate America. When conservatives argue that America was better before progressiveism started, the liberals correctly point out that those were the days of Jim Crow laws and women not voting. Many of them are idealists and see a country that they love that can be improved. In every generation, the youth were idealists who pictured an improved America and the older people, many of who were idealists in their youth, have come to realize what works and what won't work and embrace more conservative principles. Some never switch over. But they don't hate America in their own minds, which means they don't hate America."

They hate what America has always represented. They want to transform it into something else, something completely foreign to its magnificent founding documents of 1776/1787. Something all of its founding fathers would have been appalled and disgusted by. So yes, they hate America. Do they hate the dirt? No. But America is not magic dirt. America is a nation based on very real & timeless ideals.

Your view of liberals and indeed the world is quite juvenile. I would guess you to be about the same age I was (20s-30s) when I was just as arrogant about my views of the world.

[hrothgar]

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-14, 14:42, said:

Ethical journalism: Some liberal posters agree that the mainstream media is slightly biased in their favor. Most liberals agreed with me when I stated that journalists kowtowed to CAIR instead of reporting their honest findings for fear of being sued or fired by their employer who feared being sued.

Just when did this happen?

[kenberg]

I want to take on a few items on the list. I think it could be useful.

Rule of Law: Well, people are supposed to obey the law. At least mostly, I might make exceptions. But rarely.
But law and race, two sides:
1. I accept that Blacks are often treated unfairly. I have two reasons for this. First, I have been told that it is so by African-Americans that I trust. Secondly, I remember how I was treated when young, say 15-22. It simply was different from how I was treated when I was 40.
2. To go to the example that, I think, got the BLM movement going in earnest: Michael Brown would most likely still be alive if he hadn't slugged a cop and tried to grab his gun.
Hegel says that from thesis and antithesis we get synthesis.
Synthesis: Young African-Americans would like to get home alive, cops would like to get home alive, responsible members of the community want crime controlled. This is, or could be, a basis for cooperation.
I see this sort of synthesis as different from compromise. Compromise would be just shooting at each others legs. What I have in mind is people really trying to work something through so that everyone benefits, and at no cost at all. I do not see why this cannot be done, but first someone has to see that it is worth doing.


Morality: This is a tough one for me. With religion, I distinguish between theology and worldview. I don't think Jonah lived in a whale, I don't think Good said Let There be Light and Then There was Light. Perhaps more importantly, when I die I am dead and that's that. I was confirmed in the Presbyterian church when I was 13, I was gone by the time I was 15. Ah. But then there is the general view of life. After we grant that life ends at death, how do we live? Faith, hope and charity, and the greatest of these is charity. But why? Dostoevsky was right. Without God, anything is possible. That's both the bad news and the good news (but not the Good News). I think one of the greatest challenges of the age is finding a basis for the type of worldview that I was given, without the theology that came with it. In my opinion, anyone who thinks the solution is obvious is fooling himself. But, as I see it, we must somehow cope with it.


Meritocracy: We are all God's children but oops, see morality above. Some can do more than others, everyone needs to eat, it would sure be nice if everyone could have a decent life. We simply have to solve the educational problem. That will not, by itself, solve everything. But surely we can do better. We need to provide as much opportunity as we can, but I want good care when I go to the hospital.



General Statement: We have a lot of problems. Some are subtle. Some aren't. We could do much better, and we should.

[Kaitlyn S]

When I read your post, I realized that while I was trying to show that most left-leaning Americans still did love America (essentially taking the liberal side of the argument), it was hard for me not to let some conservative bias come through and I didn't totally succeed in that effort.

awm, on 2016-November-14, 17:28, said:

I'll give one liberal's opinion on Kaitlyn's post:

The Constitution: Liberals view the constitution as a governing framework, which sets forth a set of principles for balancing individual rights against the power of the states and federal government. We believe that these principles have to be interpreted in a way that meets the standards of the time. America was a very different country in the 18th century than it is today, and founders knew there would be changes when they wrote the Constitution and (we think) intended it to be more of a living document than a hard and fast set of rules. For example, it says nowhere in the Constitution that individual citizens should not be allowed to own nuclear weapons. In fact, the second (right to bear arms) and tenth (rights not explicitly delegated reserved for the states and/or people) amendments seem to imply that the federal government cannot restrict the ownership of nuclear weapons. But no sane person really interprets things this way! We don't "hate the constitution" -- we just don't think it should be treated as a straightjacket.

TBH, the Constitution doesn't have to restrict nuclear weapons because I don't think a singe state of the fifty would allow it.

awm, on 2016-November-14, 17:28, said:

Rule of law. The outward appearance to us (liberals) is that conservatives will always take the side of a policeman against a black person, regardless of the circumstances. We see cases where a black person is accused of a very minor offense or even non-offense (selling loose cigarettes, playing with a toy gun, not obeying a police order) and is clearly no threat to the policeman (doesn't even have a weapon) and yet is shot to death, and conservatives immediately defend the police.

There have been a few incidences where I thought the cop should be prosecuted and other conservatives agree with me. However, I agree that we err on the side of the police, whereas you (collective) err on the side of society's downtrodden. It is funny that this is your point, for the point more often discussed is how often a black person gets stopped in a white neighborhood.

awm, on 2016-November-14, 17:28, said:

Checks and balances: I actually agree that some of Obama's executive orders overreached. Years before issuing the orders, Obama himself would agree that some of his immigration orders were overreach! On the other hand, I also believe that some of the Republican congress's actions have been overreach (for example refusing to even give Merrick Garland a hearing when the constitution requires them to "advise and consent" or putting the full faith and credit of the US at risk by threatening to not raise the debt ceiling). In general when there is an outcome that we think is really important for the country we are sometimes willing to forgive procedural overreach (i.e. I think it will be really good for the country if we allow "undocumented" people who have lived here since early childhood and have no criminal record a path to citizenship, and I am somewhat disgusted that Republicans who used to support this idea have moved in the opposite direction, so while I agree that Obama's decision to "defer action" is not strictly constitutional I'm not going to really condemn him for doing what I see as the right thing).

You are the first self-defined liberal that I'm aware of who has admitted to Obama overreaching. (Granted, I didn't read the first hundred pages of this thread.)

And I agree, the whole issue of undocumented people that have been here a long time is a cluster****. I am seriously torn about the right thing to do; breaking up families is bad, but letting someone "win" for not following proper channels is bad too.

awm, on 2016-November-14, 17:28, said:

Morality: There is a high correlation between being religious in the sense of church attendance, and being conservative. However, we on the left do not identify morality with church attendance. Rather, we identify morality with having empathy for other people and treating them as we would want to be treated, regardless of how different they might be than ourselves. Conservatives (especially the ones who regularly attend church) seem to us to have a problem with non-christians, with homosexuals, sometimes with people of different races... and while they "take Jesus as their savior" they do not seem to be trying particularly hard to live up to his example of love and forgiveness.

I don't disagree. If science is on the side of gays not having a choice, the 2016 Republican Platform which definitely has some anti-gay stuff in it is lacking in compassion, regardless of how religious its adherents are. I am Republican in spite of that (certainly not because of that) because the Democratic Platform reads like a horror show to me. But any LGBT person that voted Republican has not seen the platform (or sees the Democratic platform as even worse a horror than I do.)

awm, on 2016-November-14, 17:28, said:

Meritocracy: The liberal view on this is complex. One point is that peoples' views of "merit" are often actually discriminatory; if you ask managers to look at resumes of a white candidate and a black candidate with exactly the same qualifications, they will call in the white candidate (only) for an interview.

Of course. It's anti-discrimination laws that cause this. If you hire a white person, and later have to cut back or fire him for being antagonistic or incompetent, no problem. If you later have to fire a black person for the same reason, you can expect a YUUUUGE lawsuit. One scientist recently posted about that, their department had a black person that would have been fired a long time ago if she was white, but they keep her on despite significant downside because they fear a lawsuit.

So of course there is incentive to hire the white. Does this suck for blacks? You bet. How to fix it? Make it so that firms and small businesses can lay off or fire blacks without repercussions. Will it totally fix the problem? Hell, no - businesses will fear that another administration will come in and reverse those policies. They need to be permanent so businesses can hire blacks again without issue. The very laws and legal rulings that the blacks think are protecting them are causing them not to be hired.

awm, on 2016-November-14, 17:28, said:

We believe there's a problem with that. We also believe that people who had a lot of obstacles in their path sometimes deserve a break in part because their potential is likely higher -- for example, if you take a kid from a poor rural community who had to help out for long hours at the farm and went to a school with unqualified teachers, and ended up with an 1800 SAT (SAT is out of 2400 now)... and compare him against a wealthy kid from New York city who went to an elite magnet school and whose parents hired tutors and test-prep coaches for him, and ended up with a 2100 SAT... it seems eminently reasonable to us to accept the rural kid to a top college over the higher-scoring wealthy kid since he had to overcome so much more and probably has higher potential to succeed when placed in the same college environment. You can call this affirmative action if you want, we call it meritocracy. And we believe that minorities with a history of discrimination against them do face obstacles that the rest of us don't..

As you can see, I don't think this has anything to do with it. If you're in an HR office, your legal team is telling you that if you are going to hire a black, you'd better make damn sure they aren't likely to sue you if things go bad. How do you do that? I don't think you can.

awm, on 2016-November-14, 17:28, said:

I don't think I "hate America" -- but I do take a more nuanced view than many conservatives seem to. There are great things about our country both in our present and our past. But we have also done some terrible things in our past, and it is possible we might do so again. There are things we can improve. And we should.

Clearly I didn't think you hated America either. I left out some of your post simply because I didn't have anything to say.

[Kaitlyn S]

hrothgar, on 2016-November-14, 18:24, said:

Just when did this happen?

A speaker was telling us of talking to several journalists under the promise of anonymity because they didn't want bad things to happen to them like being fired or sued. They related that they were not allowed to print anything that could be construed as anti-Islam.

Of course, the speaker could have made it up. Radical Muslims aren't really nice people, if he did make it up, I don't think he'd be alive to tell us. A far more likely scenario is that the journalists did demand anonymity because they feared the worst.

[mikeh]

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-14, 19:55, said:

Of course. It's anti-discrimination laws that cause this. If you hire a white person, and later have to cut back or fire him for being antagonistic or incompetent, no problem. If you later have to fire a black person for the same reason, you can expect a YUUUUGE lawsuit. One scientist recently posted about that, their department had a black person that would have been fired a long time ago if she was white, but they keep her on despite significant downside because they fear a lawsuit.

So of course there is incentive to hire the white. Does this suck for blacks? You bet. How to fix it? Make it so that firms and small businesses can lay off or fire blacks without repercussions. Will it totally fix the problem? Hell, no - businesses will fear that another administration will come in and reverse those policies. They need to be permanent so businesses can hire blacks again without issue. The very laws and legal rulings that the blacks think are protecting them are causing them not to be hired.
As you can see, I don't think this has anything to do with it. If you're in an HR office, your legal team is telling you that if you are going to hire a black, you'd better make damn sure they aren't likely to sue you if things go bad. How do you do that? I don't think you can.

Your penchant for quoting and believing unsourced anecdotes is showing. No intelligent, informed person can argue your position in good faith. Check out the recent studies of Uber and Air BnB. Blacks are rejected as passengers by uber drivers far more than whites, and blacks seeking accommodation through Air BnB have far more problem getting accepted. As against this real-world, wide-based peer-reviewed research (accepted as correct by both organizations), you quote the views of one scientist, expressing his or her own personal view about a colleague. Did it occur to you that that poster might not be objectively honest...might in fact be as bigoted as you appear to be, while no doubt telling himself or herself that he or she is no racist?

Your problem is that you appear to lack any ability to examine your underlying biases, apparently because you believe yourself to be largely free of biases. You seem to think that just because you say that 'if science is correct' that sexual orientation is involuntary, then the Republican party platform is awful, and that so stating makes you oh so moderate.

There is no 'if', just as there is no 'if' about global warming or systemic bias in your police forces, racial bias in virtually all aspects of your society. The only reason to put an 'if' in any statement about these matters is to convey that you don't really think any of this is true.....but if it is, oh, how horrible that would be. There is no 'if' and it is exactly as horrible as you imagine it might be.

Btw, the question that ought to be posed to all those straight people who claim that being gay is a choice is: 'when did you decide to be straight?' I, for one, didn't realize that I had a choice to make...did you?

If being sexually attracted to someone of the same gender is a choice, surely being attracted to someone of the opposite gender must also be? If not, why not?

I sort of doubt that you have ever thought of it in those terms, and I doubt that you will now.

[mikeh]

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-14, 19:59, said:

A speaker was telling us of talking to several journalists under the promise of anonymity because they didn't want bad things to happen to them like being fired or sued. They related that they were not allowed to print anything that could be construed as anti-Islam.

Of course, the speaker could have made it up. Radical Muslims aren't really nice people, if he did make it up, I don't think he'd be alive to tell us. A far more likely scenario is that the journalists did demand anonymity because they feared the worst.

The same speaker who told you of the socialist professor?

Isn't it nice when all these people somehow tell you anecdotes that reinforce your bigotry? Almost justifies being a bigot, I guess.

[rmnka447]

hrothgar, on 2016-November-14, 05:22, said:

Once upon a time, she might have been a liberal, however, she had one of those road to Damascus type epiphanies and now self identifies as an evangelical Christian.

This was about the same time that she started associating with outlets like Regnery Publishing...

Wrong!

While still the house liberal at Fox, she announced she had become Catholic.

Anyhow, she was and still remains a very unabashed liberal.

[hrothgar]

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-14, 19:59, said:

A speaker was telling us of talking to several journalists under the promise of anonymity because they didn't want bad things to happen to them like being fired or sued. They related that they were not allowed to print anything that could be construed as anti-Islam.

Of course, the speaker could have made it up. Radical Muslims aren't really nice people, if he did make it up, I don't think he'd be alive to tell us. A far more likely scenario is that the journalists did demand anonymity because they feared the worst.

Kaitlyn, you made a specific claim

Quote

Most liberals agreed with me when I stated that journalists kowtowed to CAIR instead of reporting their honest findings for fear of being sued or fired by their employer who feared being sued.

And now you are describing an anecdote that someone else told to you.

Where is the evidence that "Most liberals agree with me about XYZ"?

[hrothgar]

rmnka447, on 2016-November-14, 22:41, said:

Wrong!

While still the house liberal at Fox, she announced she had become Catholic.

Anyhow, she was and still remains a very unabashed liberal.

"Of all people surprised that I became an evangelical Christian, I'm the most surprised."
Kristen Powers

http://www.christian...ten-powers.html

Care to try again?

[kenberg]

hrothgar, on 2016-November-15, 06:37, said:

"Of all people surprised that I became an evangelical Christian, I'm the most surprised."
Kristen Powers

http://www.christian...ten-powers.html

Care to try again?

As I often acknowledge, I learn things from BBF.. I had never heard of Kristen Powers. I read the article you linked to. I am prepared to make a deal based on this paragraph.

Quote

Then one night in 2006, on a trip to Taiwan, I woke up in what felt like a strange cross between a dream and reality. Jesus came to me and said, "Here I am." It felt so real. I didn't know what to make of it. I called my boyfriend, but before I had time to tell him about it, he told me he had been praying the night before and felt we were supposed to break up. So we did. Honestly, while I was upset, I was more traumatized by Jesus visiting me.

The offered deal? When Jesus visits me and says "Here I am" I will consider the possibility that there He is. I probably would talk this over with Becky, just as she talked it over with her boyfriend. Hopefully, unlike her boyfriend, Becky will stick around. So yes, when Jesus appears and says "Here I am" I will consider altering my views. But this hasn't happened yet. I'm an open minded guy, when it happens, I will deal with it.

So there is no problem. She has had this visit from Jesus, I haven't, we can all move on. As to whether she is a liberal, since I had never heard of her I don't know her political views. But then she probably doesn't know mine either, so it's all ok.

[y66]

For future reference, who can I pray to to get someone who can represent the conservative position here in the water cooler at a standard equal to what awm, kenberg, helene_t, cherdano, mikeh and others bring to the discussion? Right now it just feels like Lyoto Machida vs 4 five-year olds.

[cherdano]

y66, on 2016-November-15, 08:17, said:

For future reference, who can I pray to to get someone who can represent the conservative position here in the water cooler at a standard equal to what awm, kenberg, helene_t, cherdano, mikeh and others bring to the discussion? Right now it just feels like Lyoto Machida vs 4 five-year olds.

I've been wondering about that, too. I don't believe that BBF readers are ALL either completely anti-Trump, or living in the world of right-wing conspiracy theories and fake news (Kaitlyn) or the world of misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia and racism (Jon).

If there are BBF readers willing to make a thoughtful case for Trump, I promise I would listen, and I promise I wouldn't associate them with the vitriol or conspiracy mindset of the rest of the Trump supporters here. (Though I'd prefer to hear the part of the case not concerning Hillary's emails, there've been enough posts about that.)

[helene_t]

y66, on 2016-November-15, 08:17, said:

For future reference, who can I pray to to get someone who can represent the conservative position here in the water cooler at a standard equal to what awm, kenberg, helene_t, cherdano, mikeh and others bring to the discussion? Right now it just feels like Lyoto Machida vs 4 five-year olds.

It is probably difficult to find intellectual voices that defend anti-intellectualism. Even Francis Fukuyama, one of the most right-winged modern philosofers I can think of, is on "our" side: https://www.foreigna...political-decay

And LukeWarms hero, Plantinga, seems to be silent on this (to be fair he isn't into politics at all).

But I am sure you can find people with relevant expertise who defend republican viewpoints on specific issues, such as trade, state autonomy, taxes and litigation, probably even abortion, death penalty and gun control.

Relative to the US political spectrum, reality has a liberal bias. I don't think reality has much of a bias either way in mainstream, continental European politics, but then again that is not what we are discussing in this thread.