Swagnarok

You don't know who Donald Keller is?

Is Belarus about to be annexed by Russia?

I think we can generally agree that there's something of a dilemma when it comes to this kind of thing (not speaking of the claims made in this particular case but in general):

MTF transitioning has the best cosmetic outcome when puberty is blocked. That requires for the process to begin before a certain age. Conversely, that gives the patient less time to decide, "Do I really want to go through with this procedure which is in some respects irreversible?". For that, they ought to have plenty of time. Going through puberty as normal helps them establish their sense of self and gender identity. To force the process without the benefit of this could very well ruin their lives.

As for children below surgical age, the approach towards "gender neutral parenting" would ideally mean simply that both kinds of toys and whatnot are available. A normal boy will gravitate towards masculine toys more, because the girl toys are not as interesting, though it shouldn't be considered unusual if he dallies with the girl toys somewhat. Unfortunately, these results can be skewed depending on whether he has a sibling of a similar age, and what gender that sibling is.

When I was maybe 4 or 5 years old I did a little bit of playing with girl stuff because the only sibling who wanted to spend time with me was the sister immediately closest to me in age, and I followed her lead on most things. I grew out of it, though some nudging was needed.

The approach of explicitly or implicitly nudging towards toys, clothes, and styles of play appropriate for that gender is what gender-neutral parenting seeks to avoid. But then he will surely be nudged by his male peers. Either they will explicitly pressure him to reform, through cruel taunts or more physical means, or refuse to associate with him until he does. There is no guarantee that the girls will want to associate with him, or him with them, since they are not like him. So in most cases truly gender-neutral parenting will result in boys who are boyish overall, as the school of hard knocks will set him straight eventually. It's a level of temporary misery that could've been avoided by raising him as a boy as is normal.

Unfortunately, in practice what most examples of "gender neutral parenting" mean is "enforced equal exposure", rather than equal opportunity of exposure. Explicitly encouraging boys to play with girl toys, which skews the results as he's not likewise praised for playing with the boy toys. Him wanting to receive more praise from his parents, a perverse feedback loop ensues, until finally they've got him anesthetized in an operating room in Thailand with the doctor preparing to chop his 12 year old dong off.

Ah. Okay.

Trump won't even be alive in 12 years, much less a dictator (the man's like 240 pounds, 70 something years old, has arguably the most stressful job in the world, and I could go on). I hope you're just being facetious, because you've built up a lot of credibility for yourself as a voice of reason that could stand to go flying out the window with inane conspiracy theory talk like this.

The illusion of existence is still existence in the abstract, and thus immaterial existence. Even if immaterial, its practical effect is the same as that of material existence, so the distinction is meaningless. 

It's probably impossible. Trump's the only real person in a position of power at this time who has a credible interest in stopping it. So here's to his success.

As has been said before, a national emergency has been declared by various presidents several dozen times since the 1970s. All or most of these cases entailed unilateral action by the President, and most of the time they got away with it just fine. The fact that the amount comes up to 8 billion instead of 20/25 billion suggests that's the money his administration will be able to derive from various sources, meaning he will not require Congress to supply the money.

The Democrats act as though the reason they're opposed to the Wall is because it would (supposedly) be ineffective. If there was any truth to that, then they would work together with Republicans to draft legislation that provided full funding for measures that are effective towards the goal of drastically curbing the illegal flow of people into the United States. Instead, they've dragged their feet at every turn and finally agreed only to barebones funding (and only after a monthlong government shutdown), in a bill filled with poison pill provisions designed to kill whatever minimal level of effectiveness this might've otherwise had. The very air that Democrats breathe reeks of bad faith, and the Republicans have shown themselves little better. This emergency declaration was two years in the making, and I hope the SCOTUS doesn't do something so treasonous and detrimental to the interests of this country as to rule the measure unconstitutional.

(In politics it's relatively difficult to defend the reputation of somebody who's been accused of something, since our natural instinct as Americans is to distrust everyone in positions of power. It's way easier to stickle some absurd claim onto the opposition and pull a tu quoque, since what worked against your guy will work against theirs too for the exact same reason, and so that will have the effect of "balancing itself out". But this also has the side effect of eroding faith in the system all around, along with making it easier for politicians to get away with actual corrupt dealings, which might've been the whole point from the beginning.)

Yeah. The Nelson Mandela effect is something that probably all kinds of people are equally susceptible to. But in the context I've described it relies heavily upon confirmation basis (i.e. prejudice), and it leads to exaggeration of the faults of your political opponents, which justifies sticking with the slick bast*rds who claim to represent you no matter what they've done.

It's where, for one reason or another, a large number of people swear on their great aunt's grave that they saw X happen on the news one time a while back, when in fact the event they're referencing never happened.

For example, it's been alleged that Trump once said "I love low information voters". Whatever context he meant that in, it seems close enough to the "Republicans are stupid" thing attributed to him, especially in the eyes of liberals who already assume that Republicans are stupid and low information voters. So let's say somebody posts some fake news thingamajig on Facebook with the caption "Remember the time Trump said X", and the target left and left-leaning audience would then trick their brains into somehow remembering Trump having said that on a TV interview back in the 90s or whatnot.

I'd ask the patients what they wanted, and it'd be put up to a majority vote. If they went with the "only some people survive" route then they'd cast lots to figure out who those survivors would be. After that, I'd simply be the person administering the treatment so I'd go home at night with a clear conscience.

Have you ever heard of the Nelson Mandela effect?

He's definitely not Skepsikyma. I don't know why anybody would think that. No way, no how. Nope. Just nope. The fact that they're exactly the same in every conceivable respect is but a mere technicality.

You're a highly opinionated man, it would appear.

So the difference between Liam Neeson and the people who the media burns for the racially charged things they say is the intent, with this being meant to confess wrongdoing rather than to express current attitude?

Liam Neeson, the famous "tough guy" actor, recently admitted in a public interview that there was once an incident in his life where, after a friend of his was raped by a black man, he waited outside a bar for a week hoping that he'd get heckled by a black man (any would do) so that he'd have an excuse to murder that person.

For the record, this goes far, far beyond anything that President Trump, Roseanne Barr, heck, even Richard Spencer, Strom Thurmond, or George Wallace had ever said. If this guy gets a relative pass (that is, if he faces consequences that are comparatively light and his career survives), then that's it. Anybody on the Right will be deserving of a pass for virtually anything they say from that point on.

So, uh, we'll see how this plays out.

Oh man, you've got me so worried about that upcoming recession in 2010. Clearly I've made the wrong decision retroactively supporting Trump after his win.

Running for the highest office of this nation you have three options:

First, you can run as a Democrat. The media will fawn over you and everything you do, unless you're so far left as to credibly harm the interests of the big donors of the party and the media that gets their people elected.

Second, you can run as a RINO. The media will treat you the same way that it did GWB. They'll hate you, but there will be some upper limit on how much they hate you. Make no mistake: they will still ensure that when you leave office your approval rating will be in the gutter, and "presidential historians" (re: communists with PhDs) will look down on you as "among the worst presidents in history", but they won't falsely accuse you of treason, launch a giant phony investigation, arbitrarily arrest and detain your present and former associates, pressure them into confessing all kinds of nonsense about you in exchange for lighter prison sentences (none of which was deserved in the first place), and ultimately try to remove you from office and throw you and your family in jail. They'll simply tarnish your reputation in the normal sense. This compromise (being a Republican, and so you'll pursue some worthwhile policies, while at the same time not doing nearly enough of what could be done) is what most GOP politicians go for, because it's the most they're willing to endure. And they know that eventually their reputations will make a recovery, as happened with Bush. Ultimately they consider it a worthwhile price to pay for the chance to be President.

Third, you can be Donald J. Trump. He is a man who, after a lifetime of chasing after success in the business world and enjoying his riches, decided to devote his final years to a worthwhile cause: to take back the levers of power from an establishment which has used such for its own gain, power, and prestige at the expense of the best interests of the American people. He is the greatest man of our generation, while paradoxically also a spoiled billionaire playboy who initially had little idea of how a country is ran (and is still learning).

I don't know what's going to happen to Trump. Will he finish two terms as president? Will he lose re-election? Will he be impeached and removed from office? Nobody knows, because the future's yet to be written. But this is his story. The story of either his triumph or defeat. He's willing to brave defeat and total character assassination for a chance at triumph for himself and for the nation. This is his service to the American people, perhaps to make up for his non-participation in the Vietnam War (then again, with the way that liberals treated returning soldiers from such, do they have any right whatsoever to criticize him for that?).

In short, Mike Pence is unworthy because he is not Donald Trump. He falls comfortably within the second category. He's surely better than the first category, and it looks like personally he's an upstanding Christian, but so long as Donald Trump lives and is still eligible to be President nobody else ought to hold that office.

Re: To the mods, yes I am using a different device to access this Site right now. My laptop broke so I had to buy a new one.

You're welcome.

Substandard? You believe that only substandard women would choose to be part of a rich man's harem?

Wanting millions of men to not have to spend their whole adult lives alone and then die alone is sexist...how, exactly?

That in theory a group of women might be able to congregate together to enter into a permanent polyamorous relationship with a rich man, without legal sanction or prohibition, has not yet manifested itself into reality. But for the government to provide such legal sanction to such an arrangement, combined with the thousands upon thousands of media pundits who you and I both know would flock in an instant to show their support for the men and women who were a party to this, would have the effect of making this exponentially more common within a few short years.

Showing concern for the wellbeing of men does not equate to hatred of women. Wanting to prevent social unrest does not equate to hatred of women.

Sure thing, let's spawn a generation of tens of millions of military-age men who can't find a mate because all the women are being hogged by a few rich guys. I'm sure that won't come with any sort of violent or genocidal backlash.

It probably didn't happen. The boy's barely got a scratch on him and yet the parents set up a gofundme page in the aftermath. There's a good chance they fabricated the whole thing to garner sympathy so they could milk it for every cent. In this weather I don't believe that a kid that young could survive for two days and two nights, even if a furry animal snuggled with him.

But in case I'm wrong, some people have suggested he might've mistaken a large dog for a bear, since dogs are much more likely to try to help a person in need than a bear. One guy suggested it might've been a Newfoundland (breed of dog), which in some ways resembles a bear.

1. Yes

2. No

3. No

"For example, in my homeland of Australia, looking someone in the eyes as you pass them and say "g'day" is normally done amongst white people, but is seriously offensive for Aboriginal people. It's also offensive for any Koreans over here, but it's polite to English people. "Common courtesy" is not a fixed term, as you assume here."

Wait, what? Why would an aboriginal or Korean person be offended by that?

I've been contemplating the "navy instead of law school" route especially since last night (when I discovered that JAG is extremely difficult to get into and that law school is basically hell where half the students shoot up amphetamines just to keep up with the 40 hours a week worth of homework), and then just out of nowhere a few minutes ago my dad sat down and told me, a lifelong wimp who displayed no prior interest in such, "maybe you ought to try to pursue a career in the navy or air force instead of going to law school".

I mean, what the frick, I didn't breathe a dang word to them. This convo just happened out of nowhere. Maybe they were viewing my browsing history or something, but otherwise this is one freaky coincidence.

The Texan government has discovered 95,000 persons registered to vote in that state who might not be citizens. Of these, roughly 58,000 have voted in at least one election from 1996 to 2018.

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/texas-finds-95000-non-citizens-registered-vote-encourages-local-election-1306592

Well, looks like Trump gave up on getting Congress to fund the wall. But he's reportedly found up to 7 billion in federal money that could be allocated towards such, and with the Republicans controlling the Senate it doesn't look like the Dems could stop him.

Don't get me wrong, The press serves a useful purpose in reporting what's happening in the world. I'm not discounting that. I myself probably read more news than most people here (and the vast majority of it is actually from centrist, left-leaning, or hard-left sources, despite what some people might think).

What I see is that they're painting a nigh-apocalyptic view of the world, in which all problems facing the human race are scapegoated onto straight, white, Christian males. I'm afraid because there are tens of millions of people who, like me, voraciously consume whatever these outlets churn out but who, unlike me, actually believe it.

There are, thus, tens of millions of people in this country who are constantly in a state of anger directed towards people like me, more or less because people like me exist. That some idiot in a Trump hat might occasionally come along and say something not-so-nice towards somebody is something that they get angry about and then project those emotions onto people like me. Obviously I can't help what some random idiot in a Trump hat somewhere might say or do, so likewise I can't help that those certain people hate me. I believe what I do and I'm not keen to change that, but I don't go out of my way to mistreat strangers who are different from me. The same can be said for the vast majority of the 60 million people who voted for Donald Trump, or who are Evangelical Christians, or whatever else.

If they hate me, and if they're in a nigh-constant state of hatred towards me, then I have ample reason to believe that those people will one day be incited to commit violence against people like me.

(If I'm not mistaken, it was something like a broadcast coming from a single radio tower in Rwanda which incited the Hutus to murder about a million of their Tutsi neighbors.)

The media is stirring up these emotions in these people, and therefore the media increases the risks to my life, on a personal level to some small degree at least.

Whatever might've happened, it certainly did not warrant the sheer level of national outrage that it generated. People issuing death threats to these kids, trying to doxx them, celebrities publicly wishing ill upon these kids, etc.

I will not be surprised at all if in the near future the press's atrocity propaganda against whites results in actual violence against them. That's historically been what atrocity propaganda leads to.

The actions of the press are increasingly a threat to our lives, for which any and all means by which we might defend ourselves are now justified.

Is there anything the Orthodox church can do to make itself less...ethnically exclusive? Is the larger church taking concrete action now to give itself a broader appeal? If not, why not?

Assuming that "SWB POE" refers to manned checkpoints on the US-Mexican border, it would appear that you're right. Sneaking it in by means of motor vehicles mixed in with seemingly lawful medication seems to be a more efficient way of doing business than a few mules carrying the stuff on their persons across rough terrain (assuming that I'm not misreading the data). I suspect that more funding for existing checkpoint screening procedures (such as to individually check, in DEA laboratories, all pill bottles or whatnot coming across the border, and thoroughly searching all vehicles), would help ameliorate this problem, though of course I'm just speculating.

But even if that were solved, there'd still be some people sneaking it in through illegal pathways of entry. We need to address every means by which fentanyl and similar synthetic opioids might be brought into the United States. The fact that many people can enter, with their dates of entry, the fact of  their entry, their identities, and what they brought with them, being unknown to the government wholeheartedly undermines this goal.

Citation?

You do realize, I hope, that some of the stuff that's being smuggled across and then sold on our streets is addressed as a banned substance in chemical weapons treaties. Even in wartime, where lead bullets are being slugged into people's flesh left and right, these certain drugs are off-limits for use against your enemy. And you're okay with this stuff being administered to ordinary people, perhaps even teenagers?

Yes, let's make fentanyl legal. Because 42,000 deaths a year from such is far too little.

Yes, securing our borders to keep unauthorized crossings to a bare minimum is impossible. Because we live in the 16th century, and the long border is patrolled by guys on horseback with polearms and muskets. Communication from one outpost to another takes a fortnight, and then many moons to report to the capital in the event of an armed invasion.

It's not as though there've been other countries which've successfully limited illegal immigration, and emigration, through physical barriers and the use of modern technology. It's not as though we have any reason to try, since it's not as though tens of thousands of Americans overdose and die each year on powerful narcotics smuggled into this country, several times greater than the annual number of gun homicides.

Because more anchor baby voters for the Democratic Party is more important to you treasonous snakes than the wellbeing of our country.

Just as a slight and unimportant nitpick, your claim that Orthodox Christians have never persecuted non-Orthodox is inaccurate: see Catholic Croat victims of the Bosnian genocide, committed by Orthodox Serbs (it should be noted that Serbs and Croats speak the same language and are divided instead along denominational lines).

(I have paid very little attention to the Trump-Russia allegations/investigations, and as a consequence I know very little about such. This is just me speculating with whatever knowledge I have or at least think I have.)

You claimed that the Trump towers are themselves laundered assets of Russian oligarchs. Even if this is true:

Most of these are located in the United States, correct? And though they might be sold, the buildings themselves, along with the land they're sitting on, cannot simply be withdrawn from the United States and put in Russia. Since the US government could in theory just confiscate ownership over all of these buildings, wouldn't Trump's cooperation with the oligarchs in this respect have the long-term benefit of giving the US government significant leverage over them (say, to keep Putin in check and keep him from doing anything really stupid or else forfeit all of these assets)? Would this not serve to advance the cause of peace in Eastern Europe and the world, since Putin has to answer to the oligarchs? If this is the case, isn't it even possible that all this time Trump might've been a double agent for the FBI or the CIA?

1. Does not Luke 9:49-50 suggest that parties independent of the line of apostolic succession which are favorable to the gospel of Christ might still be a part of His church?

2. If there was a pagan village in the middle of nowhere, and then a Bible translation in their language happened to wash up on the beach, and through it the whole village became Christian, but they were unaware of the existence of the Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic Church, and as a consequence never joined such, would they be eternally d*mned? If not, then it would appear that a church can exist outside of the line of apostolic succession, or am I wrong?

3. If apostolic succession is not necessary for salvation (even if desirable), then the only thing that really matters is correct doctrine and faithful practice, no?

So many conservatives wrong about California...

The state, back in maybe the 1930s, tapped into something that made it a magnet for intellectual capital and entrepreneurs. That is to say, the state managed to thrive like no other despite a lack of many vital natural resources (*cough* water *cough*). California is nowhere close to a "sh*thole". Historically it's had both democratic and republican governors; while very socially liberal, it's done much to uphold its business-friendly atmosphere these past 80-90 years.

Unfortunately, the fact that so much business is happening in California has driven up the cost of living for the average citizen, so that California is more expensive than most states. THAT is why many middle-class people are leaving, most probably. They want to find somewhere cheaper to live, and of course also somewhere that hasn't been suffering from drought this past decade.

From what I heard, the main accusation against Trump was that he helped a large number of Russian oligarchs launder their money. If so:

1. Did this involve helping them evade US sanctions (presumably from 2014 and beyond)?

2. How has this harmed the interests of the United States?

3. Has the damage to the United States caused by Trump (supposedly, at this point) colluding with Russia exceeded the damage caused by the erosion in the public's faith in the government caused by these long, drawn out, and very public investigations into a sitting president commenced by the Democratic party and senate Republicans?

"You've said that the US has more power than several of our most viable rivals combined. Can you justify this claim, considering that China's GDP is now considerably larger than ours (and the gap is growing)?"

 ^In particular, I'd appreciate an answer to this question.

Eckhart Tolle: Intellectual or quack?

Alright, it's been a while but here's one:

Not sure how you managed a 4.375. Does it go up to 5, the way you measure it?

Word of advice: do not argue with your bosses to their face. They may very well take it as a sign of disrespect. This applies to anywhere that you might work.

He probably got it from Bsh, who used to do it as President of DDO.