Swagnarok

Today, the gross turds with Yahoo wrote a piece complaining about the fact that people can't "opt out" of the emergency presidential alert system (which would instantly warn a hundred million Americans if, say, North Korea suddenly launched a nuclear attack) just because Trump's currently the president.

Article here:

Not me. Which is a shame.

I'm not a mod, but in this case I don't see why the purpose behind his content should make it objectionable. The actual nature of the content is more important. After all, just about everyone here would like to convince somebody else of a position on an issue that they have.

Some factors that should go into judging whether it's inappropriate:

I. Does he say the same thing so frequently that there's little distinction between him and a spammer?

2. Does he respond to feedback?

3. If so, does he attempt to use reason, or at least the semblance of reason, to convince the parties objecting to his message?

Here Ruth Bader Ginsburg, perhaps the most progressive justice on the Court, criticizes the hyperpartisan nature of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings:

So you're an American expatriate living in Ghana?

Trump has ordered another FBI probe of Kavanaugh, the man's seventh of its kind, which will last less than a week. Though it's very unlikely that they'll find anything (as they found nothing the first six times), it's a major concession to the Democrats, who'll likely just vote unanimously against Kavanaugh anyways, and, more importantly, to "moderate" Republicans like Jeff Flake.

The GOP controls 51 out of 100 seats in the Senate. If one Republican defects, then it'll be 50-50, and Kavanaugh will be confirmed by Vice-President Mike Pence's tie-breaking vote. If two Republicans defect, then Kavanaugh will not be getting his seat.

This was a time when the canon New Testament was being formulated and lots of preachers were going around trying to gain a following. In addition, many forgeries of supposed "extra Gospels" besides the four that we now recognize ".

Quite simply, if anybody in those early years (before they started writing stuff down) recounted the content of the Book of Revelation in such a way that they included stuff that wasn't actually included originally, it could accidentally end up in the official telling of the work for all time afterwards. Nobody would be able to tell the difference, after all. Such false passages might include incorrect teachings, which could lead the reader astray into sin or otherwise error.

To prevent this, the writer inserted a strong warning that to do such a thing would yield punishment.

Probably like "shell".

How about "Chaelle" for a girl?

Here's a piece/hagiography by The Guardian on Christine Blasey Ford, whose accusations are totally unproven. This article also makes mention of Anita Hill, whose allegations were also unproven, and casts her also as a hero. And for good measure it also throws in the possible repeal of Roe v. Wade as an evil act of misogyny cause, you know, those anti-abortion people obviously just do it for the kicks.

That's just who journalists are: they'll destroy a man's good name and them mock him afterwards, all because they disagree with his politics. Why? Because the people who we trust to tell us the news are Marxists. Nothing is sacred, nothing is too dirty, so long as they succeed in dismantling every aspect of this country that does not conform to their extremist agenda.

Never mind the fact that his reputation is in shambles on account of these totally unproven allegations, the fact that he would have that seat right now if not for those purported "victims" of his coming out of nowhere to slander him with no evidence whatsoever.

As I said in the OP, Kavanaugh was vetted by the FBI on six separate occasions. And every single time he was cleared by them.

Just so you know, I'm not gonna be able to participate at any time before this coming Monday.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh is, at the time of posting, testifying before the Senate. At the opening of such he issued a lengthy statement defending his reputation and repudiating the allegations levied by Mrs. Ford.

This statement can be read here:

Kavanaugh is extremely lucky in that he was able to provide extensive documentation of his day-to-day whereabouts in his high school years in the form of calendars, which served also as diaries. The calendars should be enough to prove that Kavanaugh was never at the party that is at the core of Mrs. Ford's accusation. He has been investigated by the FBI already on 6 different occasions, all of which were standard background checks. None turned up any dirt on the man Brett Kavanaugh.

I don't know how this is ultimately going to turn out. But I have a feeling that most Americans are skeptical of the allegations. In the comments section of a recent Yahoo article about Kavanaugh (this was yesterday), the comments were pro-Kavanaugh at least 10 to 1, even though normally the majority of commentators for this media outlet are rabidly anti-Trump.

So at this time I am *very cautiously* optimistic that justice will prevail and Mr. Kavanaugh will get his seat on the highest Court of this land that he so rightly deserves. Then again, only time will tell.

The vote on his confirmation is scheduled for tomorrow at 9:30 AM.

Unborn humans.

So you would've chosen Hitler winning the war?

I think we both know the answer to this question.

I'll phrase it another way:

If during WWII our only hope of defeating Hitler and stopping the Holocaust was to appoint to the position of Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces a man who had a history of sexual assault, would you object to such a decision?

That one or even several women might face the indignity of seeing their former assaulter appointed to the Supreme Court really wouldn't be bad enough to negate the positive benefit of seeing closed the extermin--*ahem* I mean abortion clinics in states where the majority of voters have exercised enough good moral judgment to recognize genocide when they see it.

Going with a "low" figure of 400,000+ abortions a year (though this figure is the result of a long decline, and it used to be as high as 1.5 million in the year 1983) that still amounts to more people than are killed in car accidents and gun violence combined.

The only way to move forward is to grill his initial accuser. If the Senate is able to poke enough holes in her testimony that hers seems implausible, then they can safely dismiss the charges from other people. Otherwise, they ought to consider just picking somebody else and getting it done really, really fast.

Liberals should keep in mind that the fact that more people have emerged to accuse Kavanaugh does NOT increase the likelihood that he is guilty.

BREAKING: She has agreed to testify. It will probably happen sometime next week.

That deadline is now 2:30 PM Saturday, presumably Washington time.

It is actually possible for a psychiatrist to trick his/her patients into remembering things that didn't actually happen. Usually it happens by accident, but I imagine somebody skilled at their craft could do it on purpose.

I was trying to sound like a Russian bot on the comments section of a Yahoo article (though, I guess they're no more likely to be bots than the people who say "Trumpanzees").

Yes comrade give me your personal information and social security number. I will not give to third party. I am not Russian bot working since 2013 to subvert Western democracies. #pizzagate #libtards #MAGA

The deadline's either tonight (already passed) or sometime tomorrow. If by this time Kavanaugh's accuser does not decide to testify then in all likelihood the Senate is just gonna begin with the confirmation vote.

It seems clear that a few "swing democrats" cannot be counted on this time, and in all likelihood you're gonna have a handful of "moderate" Republicans who're gonna break with their party. Given how slim the GOP's majority is, there is a very good chance that Kavanaugh's just not gonna make it.

Seeing as how Dems are already demanding an FBI investigation (which flat out isn't going to happen, unless they can get it done in one month's time), the GOP doesn't want to make it look like they're just rushing Kavanaugh's confirmation through, so I'm sure they're gonna give her some more time, while putting heavy emphasis on how patient they've been with her.

If you're not well-established on here socially, then PM me and provide me your name and a link to your Facebook profile (I may require that you accept a Facebook friend request from me). You'll be put on a "list", and if you stop posting for a long time then I'll check out your Facebook profile to see if you're still alive. If I observe by looking at your profile that you've died, then I will notify the DART community. If you stop posting but you appear to still be alive then from time to time I'll go back and check. Because I'm just some guy on the internet doing this, it may be the case that there's some delay in between when you die and when I find out about this and notify the DDO community. Also, you can be pretty much guaranteed no matter who you are that if your death occurs more than, say, 5-10 years from now then I won't bother to check for this, much less notify anyone.

If you've made virtually zero effort to participate here in any meaningful way (for example, your total count is 10 posts) then I'll be especially likely not to follow through on my obligations here towards you. But maybe. Who knows.

All such information disclosed to me in confidence will remain confident. If the Admin has a problem with this idea then he's free to just shut it down now and delete this thread. Otherwise, think of this as insurance of sorts that should you just suddenly die this fact won't go completely unnoticed by the DART community. I say "DART" community but this extends to whatever website this general bloc of people might one day migrate to, such as perhaps back to DDO or to some third party site.

What's a stat exam?

No. We all know that he probably had brown-ish skin, somewhere on a spectrum. Historically most visual depictions of Jesus have been made by Europeans, as most Christians until the modern era have been Europeans, so it makes sense that they would make him look like one of them (though to be fair most just try to imitate how He was depicted in certain mosaics from Antiquity, which had Him as being white-ish, rather than being overly fixated on the ideal of a specifically white Jesus). Go to Africa and you'd likely see artwork depicting a black Jesus. Is that historically accurate either? No, not as far as we can tell. Does it matter? No. Heck, I think there are even churches in China that have Jesus looking like Confucius or something, with the full Chinese look and everything. America is and always has been a predominantly white country, so it only makes sense that most artwork in this country would have Him being white.

Depicting Him with a high degree of historical accuracy could result a culture shock and give the impression that Jesus was this strange foreign "other", when all Christians need to be focused on is that He lived on earth as a human being, like any of us, that He died for all of us, and that He is freely available to all of us. Debate over His physical appearance or accusations of "whitewashing" would be an unwelcome distraction from things that matter. It would serve to divide people when what Jesus wanted was a strong, united church.

This question doesn't relate so much to your prophecy stuff but rather to your more general claim of having founded Anonymous:

Even if it's true, why is it important that people should acknowledge this? They are a group which by design has no leader, no top dog. To assume a higher than normal position within the organization as its "Founder" seems to go against this ideal. To me it would appear that your main motivation is egotism and vanity, negative qualities which in your videos you claimed were not things that defined or controlled you.

"You like to see women getting abortions in alleys, back of cars, and other non-clinical settings?"

 Yes, the same as I'd like to see serial killers have to act in secret and risk leaving evidence or otherwise getting caught than to live in a society where serial killers are allowed to openly practice their vile craft with impunity.

Abortion is probably the single most barbaric practice ever seen in human history. It puts female genital mutilation, slavery, segregation, child rape, cannibalism, etc. to shame, no question about it. It had no rightful place in the 20th or 19th centuries, much less the 21st. It's what we'd expect to see in the darkest, most backward parts of Africa, and yet people like you want to ensure that abortion continues in the United States of America, one of the world's most advanced and enlightened nations. It makes no sense why any "progressive" party would ever support abortion, but apparently they do, and they all have blood on their hands as a result.

That we might have for President a spoiled, billionaire playboy who has a troubled relationship with the truth is a small price to pay to liberate our land from this last vestige of the stone age.

"You like presidents who lie constantly every day after day after day?"

 I also have to dispute the degree to which it is alleged that Donald Trump tells lies. Most of the figures we have come from the "fact checking" done by journalists  employed by big media companies (90℅ of which are owned by 6 larger corporations), which clearly have a vested interest in making the President look as bad as possible. Their factchecking process takes place outside the watchful eye of the general public; we have no idea what goes into that, and there is virtually zero accountability to make them be entirely truthful. Especially if they don't allow dissenting media groups like Fox News to observe their process there's nobody to call them out on BS. We just have to trust that they are not lying to us. So I'd take the "Donald Trump lies constantly" narrative with a grain of salt.

"You like presients whose narcissim takes precdent over integrity of USA demoracy ex his placing Putins hacks above our claims of our security peoeples?"

Seeing as how from day one the Left has used the allegations of Russian collusion to question the very legitimacy of Trump's presidency, and that they'd use any open admission on his part as an excuse to impeach him, should anyone really be surprised by this? Would ANY President not deny the allegations under such circumstances?

"You prefer his support of white nationalist reacist bigoted violent nutcases?"

Besides the fact that they're not generally anymore violent than their Antifa counterparts, it's natural that the ascendancy of any President would embolden those with a more radical version of his views. I'm sure that there were a lot of communists celebrating in the wake of Obama's 2008 victory.

It really is quite simple:

1. Donald Trump, being a political outsider, lacking the key connections that many veteran congressmen have made over the course of decades, and running on a platform which was universally panned by the elites, had to rely upon fellow political outsiders to help him run his campaign, and then his government. These outsiders, of course, sometimes were outsiders for good reason, because they were people of suspect character. But Trump didn't know or care; he just went with whoever was willing to work with him, which was not an extensive list. Perhaps many of these people, seizing opportunity when it presented itself, took the initiative of approaching Trump first and offering to serve in X position/capacity, and he unwisely accepted.

2. Given that Trump has been accused of colluding with the Russians, and that there's a "special counsel" breathing down his neck and looking into every person closely connected to Trump, we know what the dirt on these people are, and this is also why some of them were prosecuted and convicted in the first place. On the other hand, the likes of Obama did not have to deal with an FBI investigation into their day to day activities. So if there was widespread corruption within the Obama Administration, we simply would not know. We have info on the former but not the latter, so to claim that one had a problem with systemic corruption whereas the other did not cannot rightfully be concluded.

3. Defining "the swamp" as the President's cabinet is a very narrow way of looking at it. When Trump said "drain the swamp", he did not mean "audit and investigate all the Obama era staffers". The Swamp as Trump used the term can be seen more as an overarching narrative of a massive web of connections between individuals employed in the public and private sectors, in Congress, the media, academia, lobbyist organizations, PACs, and big corporations, with corrupt and self-serving motives that drive them to collaborate (or "collude") for nefarious purposes. The most readily apparent form of this is the collusion between Democratic politicians and the people who for arbitrary reasons we blindly trust to tell us the news and what is/isn't factual, despite the fact that theirs is a private enterprise largely unregulated by the government, with no federal ethics committees to punish them should they print blatant falsehoods (that is, there is no moral distinction between them and the big scary oil giants who you think conspired with Dick Cheney to oppress those good ole' peace loving Iraqis).

It was stupid of Trump to insinuate that he could dismantle this network, but acknowledging its existence is a big first step towards diminishing its grip on our country.

I swear, American politics has become like a contest between two enraged, dumb gorillas looking to see who can shriek the loudest.

Yes, that's right. Let the paranoia and susceptibility to wild conspiracy theories flow within you. Because this is totally conducive to a healthy democracy.

Everyone here seems to be doing these extremely obscure pieces, so I almost feel bad for picking this, but:

Sore wa Chiisana Hikari no Youna by Sayuri:

I'm currently on what could be my last semester of college, provided that I don't fail or drop anything. If I fail a single class, I won't meet the requirements to graduate, and I'll have to take another full semester in Spring 2019.

If I'm not mistaken, I'm taking fewer hours this semester than ever before (12 a week). But as one class is the big capstone for history majors and another is apparently at the level of a law school course, that doesn't mean a whole lot. Of the remaining two, one is ridiculously easy, like freshman-level stuff.

And then there's the art class. Having to write case briefs and a 20 page senior thesis paper is quite annoying, but neither of these things have actually driven me to the point of rage as of yet. Art class, on the other hand, has.

I'm not lying or exaggerating: with the possible exception of one other guy in the class, I am the single worst student there. Everyone else just goes ahead and makes these amazing sketches of cow skulls (which is pretty much all we've drawn in the class so far) whereas I keep spewing out these sh*tty doodles of the same. I've done it over and over and over and over and over again, and I'm not getting a lick better, whereas everyone else apparently is. And apparently, it's even harder whenever you try it with a brush and ink, but for everyone else the change in tools just seems to raise the quality of what they're drawing.

Again, it I fail this class then I'll have to do another whole semester. But there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to keep from failing. Soon enough the teacher's inevitably going to lose his patience with my near-total lack of progress and then he's gonna start marking me up, until finally I'm gonna get awarded an F. It's not as though I'm not trying, but...

Albeit with a strict burden of proof, if it can be proven that a person levied a false sexual assault charge in court that person ought to be charged with a felony crime with a sentence of equal severity to that for sexual assault, and put on a sex offender blacklist upon release.

Whenever Oprah's finally got her two terms in, people've long forgotten the anti-Trump outrage incited by the leftist propaganda machine, and the Dems are scrambling to find somebody to fill her shoes, I'd gladly vote for this man as the GOP nominee in 2028.

It's pretty straightforward. Jesus is considered by Christians to be part of the Trinity, which is the triune manifestation of God. Thus, Jesus is God. As God created man, man owes God his allegiance, worship, adoration, and servitude. To describe this relationship, the old term "Lord" is used, a reference to the Medieval relationship between a large landholder and the serfs who worked, subsisted off of, and resided on his land, who were totally subject to the authority of that person, who was their Lord.

It should be noted that the first English translations of the Bible, derived from earlier Latin translations which for God used the term "Dominus" (trans. "Lord"), happened during a time when such feudal arrangements were commonplace.

I woke up in the middle of the night to what sounded like an archaic horned instrument...my first reaction was to check the bedrooms to make sure nobody had disappeared or whatnot, lol.

Alright, since "SupaDudz" is kind of a lame name for a character, and especially for a serious work, would you mind disclosing your real first name, or is that something you're not comfortable with?

I might be interested, but a few questions:

1. When does it start? I already got one idea for a short story but it'll definitely take me longer than 48 hours to write, so I'd have to begin early.

2. Can it just be about whatever I want? Or are we gonna be restricted to a particular topic or theme?

3. How many stories are we gonna have to write?

4. Would we be required to include users of this site as characters in the fics?

Well, if the average employee and small business owner suddenly had one million dollars, probably 2/3rds of them would just cease everything work-related and spend the next 5-10 years living off that sum. In the blink of an eye you'd have catastrophic shortages in almost every basic good and service required by human beings. The result would be utter chaos.

If you just give people a butt ton of money out of nowhere, they're gonna blow right through it, because they didn't earn it and thus have a lesser ability to appreciate its true value. And in the long term they'll be even worse off.

And as other people have pointed out, to print that much money would result in hyperinflation. The current GDP per capita is about $50,000. 50,000x20=1,000,000. So it stands to reason that from that point on the average good would be 20 times as expensive. Buying milk at the store would cost $50. After you used up your million bucks, you'd find it extremely difficult to afford anything on a normal salary (assuming all establishments where you might possibly find employment haven't already ceased to exist). A new car which might cost $10,000 today would be $500,000 under this scenario, or more expensive than a reasonably large and nice house (which can often take decades to pay off).

Libya was good for us, because Gaddhafi was a loose cannon who flirted with nuclear weapons. Syria was a failure because ultimately Assad didn't go anywhere, but at least it distracted Hezbollah from the matter of Israel and in turn helped to erode their reputation among Muslims (before, Muslims everywhere could get behind them simply because they're so anti-Israel; but now they're in the thick of a blatantly sectarian conflict, defending a Shi'ite government against Sunni rebels). Both were bad in that they sparked refugee crises, which lessened Europe's security and sparked a new wave of right-wing populism on the continent.

To be fair, this was right after we withdrew from Iraq. Obama was extremely reluctant to get the US involved in another war so soon, so of course it made sense to use ostensibly pro-democracy insurgents to do the dirty work for us.

By the end of Obama's term, oil prices were at their lowest in a long time (thanks in part to the increasingly prominent oil industry in the US) and employment was at its highest since the Great Recession. Economic growth was slow but steady. He wasn't hardline on immigration (for obvious reasons), but apparently he did help stymie and contain the rate of illegal immigration.

And also to be fair, even if you disagree with Obama's policies he had a lot of class. He was a good role model, and he was very presidential in his conduct throughout his presidency. There's no evidence to suggest that he was corrupt.

On the downside, his statements on BLM and the shooting of Trayvon Martin served to empower hooligans and other malcontents, shown by the crime spike starting c. 2014 after a decade and a half of declining crime (even if the goal for which these statements were made, ending disproportionate and supposedly unjust police brutality towards blacks, was a noble one). This opened old wounds in regards to race and paved the way for Donald Trump. When he left office, America was more divided than it was when he took office.

Likewise, his foreign policy gave the impression to our geopolitical adversaries that America was a power in decline, and especially starting in 2014 countries like Russia and China began to do all they could to undermine the international order. It could very well be argued that the 2016 Russian interference in the US election, as miniscule as it ultimately was, might not have happened did Obama take a harder line against Putin.

The "crown jewel" of the Obama Administration was probably the PPACA. There is no clear consensus at this point on how well this extensive healthcare reform package worked out, or whether it'll even get the chance to do so (thanks to Trump). Another was the Paris Agreement, which probably wouldn't have accomplished much and in any case is irrelevant now that Trump withdrew from it.

I think it's fair to say that the Obama administration was a mixed bag. He did some stuff right and some stuff wrong.

I'm just apathetic and irrelevant enough here to be considered a neutral party, and I can confirm that I've heard Zeichen on the Hangouts before. She's neither a man nor YYW, and it's 99℅ likely that she has never committed a felony crime in her life, much less murder.

The brain is a muscle. Like with actual muscles, some people got the genes for a more "athletic build" than others, while some people are predisposed to be less fit.

However, it is my belief that hard work can overcome any such barriers, within reasonable limits. I would go so far as to say that even a guy with Down Syndrome could eventually build himself up to the point of quickly performing advanced mathematical calculations or computer programming, should he/she be willing to put himself through the sheer hell needed to develop his or her mind to that fine point. That's to say, it's all about using what you've got as efficiently as possible.

That is to say, it's harder but not impossible. Of course, people don't really like to work extremely hard, so most, perhaps the overwhelming majority of people with lower IQs end up living like one would normally expect from dumb people. Oftentimes the only hope for these people (perhaps including myself) is that somebody comes along and makes them put in the work needed to perform highly.

*overrepresented

In regards to post #22, however, the Jews are not recorded as having committed idolatry since their return from the Babylonian Captivity. Likewise, they were not recorded as having slacked off significantly in regards to the Mosaic Law. Likewise, there were no new prophets who came along and condemned their practices; probably the only exception would be Jesus, who condemned them for rejecting Him. If anything, they remained faithful to G-d over the course of the nearly 1900 year diaspora, and of course throughout the Second Temple Period. So what did they do that G-d should punish them with the Holocaust? The Medieval and early modern pogroms? Or were these meant to try to spur them to return to Israel?

Likewise, Jews today are almost certainly less likely to be observant and more likely to, say, be promiscuous than the Jews who lived 200 years ago. Heck, a lot of ethnic and cultural Jews today are in fact atheists. And yet those Jews today enjoy political independence and sovereignty in Israel (or at least have the possible option of moving to Israel) whereas the Jews 200 years ago did not.

Finally, I would like to add that Jews today appear to be more prosperous on average in the West, where they're vastly underrepresented among lawyers, economists, artists, political theorists and philosophers, etc, than in Israel, where GDP per capita is only about $40,000, though this could be skewed by a large, poor Arab population.

Classical Polytheism assumed the existence of a number of finitely powerful "gods" who each served as a personification of some unexplained or imposing natural occurence or geographical feature. To these beings was attributed the power to shoot lightning bolts or whatnot, and the way that they were described suggested that there was a clear upper limit to what they could do and what they could withstand. They frequently exercised their wills in a manner contrary to those of other gods, so it could not be said that they were all different manifestations of the same otherwise unknowable monist Deity, since the end result would be a being which arbitrarily shot itself In the foot squabbling with itself over stupid crap.

In short, the classical understanding of polytheism simply makes no sense in the modern era. A polytheist seeking to advocate for his position would have to describe a feasible alternative way of understanding the concept.