Sunday, September 30, 2018
I just played chess with someone in Papua New Guinea.
Papua New Guinea, in the southwestern Pacific, encompasses the eastern half of New Guinea and its offshore islands. A country of immense cultural and biological diversity, it’s known for its beaches and coral reefs. Inland are active volcanoes, granite Mt. Wilhelm, dense rainforest and hiking routes like the Kokoda Trail. There are also traditional tribal villages, many with their own languages.
I answered this question: "What do you find most repulsive about Christianity?"
"What do you find most repulsive about Christianity?"
The brainwashing, the extreme stupidity, their love for sticking their nose into other people's private lives, the Christian war against teaching evolution, the dishonesty, the moronic fantasies.
They think a worthless dead decomposing preacher man magically "rose from the dead" as if zombies are real. They think this zombie is their free ticket to a magical paradise for dead people. The stupidity is overwhelming.
I never met a Christian who wasn't a stupid fucking asshole.
The brainwashing, the extreme stupidity, their love for sticking their nose into other people's private lives, the Christian war against teaching evolution, the dishonesty, the moronic fantasies.
They think a worthless dead decomposing preacher man magically "rose from the dead" as if zombies are real. They think this zombie is their free ticket to a magical paradise for dead people. The stupidity is overwhelming.
I never met a Christian who wasn't a stupid fucking asshole.
On this planet of millions of species this is my favorite creature.
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| The bald eagle is both the national bird and national animal of the United States of America. |
Human apes
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
-- Carl Sagan
Where I live lots of yapping assholes yap all day. Morons don't know much but they know how to yap. Screaming makes retards happy.
yap
yap/
verb
gerund or present participle: yapping
- give a sharp, shrill bark.
"the dachshunds yapped at his heels"
synonyms: bark, woof, yelp, yip
"the dogs yapped at his heels"- INFORMALtalk at length in an irritating manner.
My contempt for Christian morons grows everyday. What I wrote for a liar for Jeebus.
You people believe you will have a magical 2nd life in a magical paradise after you drop dead. It's the wishful thinking of cowards. The fantasy is impossible, childish, and ridiculous but you cowards can't exist without it.
A basic fact of reality: It's impossible for a dead person to go anywhere because the decomposing corpse is dead. Also, it's impossible to torture a dead person because it's dead.
Charles Darwin threw out your primitive disgusting anti-science Christian death cult. He called himself an agnostic. He certainly did not believe in your childish nonsense no matter what your favorite liars said about him.
Charles Darwin showed why the development of new species was a completely natural process, no fairies required. So there's no reason to pretend a fairy was necessary for anything else. A fairy who was never necessary is a fairy that doesn't exist. Same thing for the Easter Bunny which has more evidence than your fairy.
Let's see the evidence for your magic god fairy fantasy and your 2nd life fantasy. You need to provide your fairy's magic wand so scientists can test it. Of course you have nothing. You people believe in these childish fantasies because they make you feel good. You call it faith, a word invented to defend a childish magical fantasy world. Faith is a mental illness.
Growing up, educating yourself, and facing facts is a good thing. You will never understand because your disease is incurable. Reality makes bible thumpers cry.
A basic fact of reality: It's impossible for a dead person to go anywhere because the decomposing corpse is dead. Also, it's impossible to torture a dead person because it's dead.
Charles Darwin threw out your primitive disgusting anti-science Christian death cult. He called himself an agnostic. He certainly did not believe in your childish nonsense no matter what your favorite liars said about him.
Charles Darwin showed why the development of new species was a completely natural process, no fairies required. So there's no reason to pretend a fairy was necessary for anything else. A fairy who was never necessary is a fairy that doesn't exist. Same thing for the Easter Bunny which has more evidence than your fairy.
Let's see the evidence for your magic god fairy fantasy and your 2nd life fantasy. You need to provide your fairy's magic wand so scientists can test it. Of course you have nothing. You people believe in these childish fantasies because they make you feel good. You call it faith, a word invented to defend a childish magical fantasy world. Faith is a mental illness.
Growing up, educating yourself, and facing facts is a good thing. You will never understand because your disease is incurable. Reality makes bible thumpers cry.
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Not that anyone cares but this is my favorite quote about chess.
"Winning or losing is not the main idea of chess at all. A chess game is in fact a friendly exchange of intentions, hidden in individual moves. You always have the choice either of putting into action your planned move, or of first calmly preventing the intended move of the friend with whom you are playing chess in this brief, finite moment of your life."
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Some basic facts of reality
The magical heaven fantasy: Dead human apes don't go anywhere because they're fucking dead.
The magical hell fantasy: It's impossible to torture dead human apes because they're fucking dead.
The magical hell fantasy: It's impossible to torture dead human apes because they're fucking dead.
The magic god fairy of the gaps
Christian retards and Muslim scum invoke their god of the gaps every chance they get.
How did life get a foothold on Earth four billion years ago? God did it.
How did the universe begin? God did it.
Why are there millions of species on this planet? God did it.
All 3 of these hiding places for the god of the gaps have been explained by science. There will forever be research opportunities in every branch of science but we know god didn't do anything therefore the god thing is not real.
Why are religious fucktards unable to understand? Mostly it's an extreme stupidity problem. Also these morons for Jeebus and Allah are cowards. They can't exist without their childish and totally impossible magical 2nd life in a magical paradise for dead idiots. Dead human apes don't go anywhere because they're fucking dead.
Rational Wiki - God of the gaps
"If a philosopher or social scientist were to try to encapsulate a single principle that yoked together the intellectual process of civilization, it would be a gradual dismantling of presumptions of magic. Brick by brick, century by century, with occasional burps and hiccups, the wall of superstition has been coming down. Science and medicine and political philosophy have been on a relentless march in one direction only — sometimes slow, sometimes at a gallop, but never reversing course. Never has an empirical scientific discovery been deemed wrong and replaced by a more convincing mystical explanation. ('Holy cow, Dr. Pasteur! I've examined the pancreas of a diabetic dog, and darned if it's NOT an insulin deficiency, but a little evil goblin dwelling inside. And he seems really pissed!') Some magical presumptions have stubbornly persisted way longer than others, but have eventually, inexorably fallen to logic, reason and enlightenment, such as the assumption of the divine right of kings and the entitlement of aristocracy. That one took five millennia, but fall it did."
— Gene Weingarten
How did life get a foothold on Earth four billion years ago? God did it.
How did the universe begin? God did it.
Why are there millions of species on this planet? God did it.
All 3 of these hiding places for the god of the gaps have been explained by science. There will forever be research opportunities in every branch of science but we know god didn't do anything therefore the god thing is not real.
Why are religious fucktards unable to understand? Mostly it's an extreme stupidity problem. Also these morons for Jeebus and Allah are cowards. They can't exist without their childish and totally impossible magical 2nd life in a magical paradise for dead idiots. Dead human apes don't go anywhere because they're fucking dead.
Rational Wiki - God of the gaps
"If a philosopher or social scientist were to try to encapsulate a single principle that yoked together the intellectual process of civilization, it would be a gradual dismantling of presumptions of magic. Brick by brick, century by century, with occasional burps and hiccups, the wall of superstition has been coming down. Science and medicine and political philosophy have been on a relentless march in one direction only — sometimes slow, sometimes at a gallop, but never reversing course. Never has an empirical scientific discovery been deemed wrong and replaced by a more convincing mystical explanation. ('Holy cow, Dr. Pasteur! I've examined the pancreas of a diabetic dog, and darned if it's NOT an insulin deficiency, but a little evil goblin dwelling inside. And he seems really pissed!') Some magical presumptions have stubbornly persisted way longer than others, but have eventually, inexorably fallen to logic, reason and enlightenment, such as the assumption of the divine right of kings and the entitlement of aristocracy. That one took five millennia, but fall it did."
— Gene Weingarten
The thing is not real.
"Why didn't the almighty god lift his lazy finger to help the 6 year old autistic boy that went missing and was just found dead?"
The magical master of the entire universe, if the thing is real, would probably not be very interested in this tiny planet in the middle of nowhere.
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
-- Carl Sagan
The magical master of the entire universe, if the thing is real, would probably not be very interested in this tiny planet in the middle of nowhere.
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."
-- Carl Sagan
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Google Chrome is a wonderful thing.
I have a very powerful Apple desktop computer, a huge screen, and extremely fast internet. Apple has a web browser called Safari. It's very nice but for some things it doesn't work.
Google Chrome always works. Chrome recently made it much easier to add shortcuts to links I use frequently.
I noticed my memory isn't what it used to be. I forget how to spell words and I frequently forget what the word is. To fix this problem I use "Google search by voice". The female voice has learned how to understand me and she virtually always gives me exactly what I'm looking for. I don't need to remember anything. Google is my friend.
I use Google for everything including this blog, my checking account spreadsheet which by the way is a beautiful thing, google documents, google search, google maps, google images, google gmail, google news, google alerts, google youtube, and a few other things but I forgot what they are.
I use google search several times every hour. If there is an all knowing god thing it's Google Search.
I have lots of curiosity. Looking things up is a wonderful thing.
UPDATE:
Because of a dumb mistake I made the "Google search by voice" thing is not working. Despite numerous attempts to fix it I can't get it working again.
UPDATE:
The problem was not my fault. For only $369 I found out Google Search By Voice is a problem Chrome has and if I wait long enough Chrome will work for Search By Voice. What a fucking waste of money.
I used only one hour. I have 3 hours left of more help for any problem which the $369 paid for. I will probably never need it.
They are called "Geeks On Site". The young black lady who was here is a genius.
UPDATE MAY 17, 2020
I got the problem fixed. I accidentally found the solution in my Apple computer at system preferences. Now Google Search By Voice works perfectly. I should have got help from Apple. They would have fixed the problem in less than a minute and charged me nothing or just charge a little bit.
Google Chrome always works. Chrome recently made it much easier to add shortcuts to links I use frequently.
I noticed my memory isn't what it used to be. I forget how to spell words and I frequently forget what the word is. To fix this problem I use "Google search by voice". The female voice has learned how to understand me and she virtually always gives me exactly what I'm looking for. I don't need to remember anything. Google is my friend.
I use Google for everything including this blog, my checking account spreadsheet which by the way is a beautiful thing, google documents, google search, google maps, google images, google gmail, google news, google alerts, google youtube, and a few other things but I forgot what they are.
I use google search several times every hour. If there is an all knowing god thing it's Google Search.
I have lots of curiosity. Looking things up is a wonderful thing.
UPDATE:
Because of a dumb mistake I made the "Google search by voice" thing is not working. Despite numerous attempts to fix it I can't get it working again.
UPDATE:
The problem was not my fault. For only $369 I found out Google Search By Voice is a problem Chrome has and if I wait long enough Chrome will work for Search By Voice. What a fucking waste of money.
I used only one hour. I have 3 hours left of more help for any problem which the $369 paid for. I will probably never need it.
They are called "Geeks On Site". The young black lady who was here is a genius.
UPDATE MAY 17, 2020
I got the problem fixed. I accidentally found the solution in my Apple computer at system preferences. Now Google Search By Voice works perfectly. I should have got help from Apple. They would have fixed the problem in less than a minute and charged me nothing or just charge a little bit.
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Mullah: a Muslim learned in Islamic theology and sacred law. In other words a mullah is a stupid fucking asshole.
I can't imagine anything more worthless than "Islamic theology and sacred law" which is bullshit invented by morons.
Many or maybe most Iranians would like to kill the mullah assholes.
President Fucktard Trump is a fucking idiot but I agree with what he said recently.
"Iran's leaders sow chaos, death and destruction across the Middle East."
"They do not respect their neighbors or borders or the sovereign rights of nations. Instead, Iran's leaders plunder the nation's resources to enrich themselves and spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond."
••••••••••••••••••••••
BBC News - US-Iran: John Bolton warns Iran of 'hell to pay' if crossed
What did the US say about Iran?
Mr Bolton said the "murderous regime" of "mullahs in Tehran" would face significant consequences if they continued to "lie, cheat and deceive".
The former US envoy to the UN was speaking at an anti-Iran conference in New York on Tuesday.
"If you cross us, our allies, or our partners; if you harm our citizens," he said, "there will indeed be hell to pay."
Many or maybe most Iranians would like to kill the mullah assholes.
President Fucktard Trump is a fucking idiot but I agree with what he said recently.
"Iran's leaders sow chaos, death and destruction across the Middle East."
"They do not respect their neighbors or borders or the sovereign rights of nations. Instead, Iran's leaders plunder the nation's resources to enrich themselves and spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond."
••••••••••••••••••••••
BBC News - US-Iran: John Bolton warns Iran of 'hell to pay' if crossed
What did the US say about Iran?
Mr Bolton said the "murderous regime" of "mullahs in Tehran" would face significant consequences if they continued to "lie, cheat and deceive".
The former US envoy to the UN was speaking at an anti-Iran conference in New York on Tuesday.
"If you cross us, our allies, or our partners; if you harm our citizens," he said, "there will indeed be hell to pay."
The bald eagle is both the national bird and national animal of the United States of America. The bald eagle appears on its seal.
Wikipedia - Bald eagle
The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus, from Greek ἅλς, hals "sea", αἰετός aietos "eagle", λευκός, leukos"white", κεφαλή, kephalē "head") is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla). Its range includes most of Canada and Alaska, all of the contiguous United States, and northern Mexico. It is found near large bodies of open water with an abundant food supply and old-growth trees for nesting.
The bald eagle is an opportunistic feeder which subsists mainly on fish, which it swoops down and snatches from the water with its talons. It builds the largest nest of any North American bird and the largest tree nests ever recorded for any animal species, up to 4 m (13 ft) deep, 2.5 m (8.2 ft) wide, and 1 metric ton (1.1 short tons) in weight.[2] Sexual maturity is attained at the age of four to five years.
Bald eagles are not actually bald; the name derives from an older meaning of the word, "white headed". The adult is mainly brown with a white head and tail. The sexes are identical in plumage, but females are about 25 percent larger than males. The beak is large and hooked. The plumage of the immature is brown.
The bald eagle is both the national bird and national animal of the United States of America. The bald eagle appears on its seal. In the late 20th century it was on the brink of extirpation in the contiguous United States. Populations have since recovered and the species was removed from the U.S. government's list of endangered species on July 12, 1995 and transferred to the list of threatened species. It was removed from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife in the Lower 48 States on June 28, 2007.
The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus, from Greek ἅλς, hals "sea", αἰετός aietos "eagle", λευκός, leukos"white", κεφαλή, kephalē "head") is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla). Its range includes most of Canada and Alaska, all of the contiguous United States, and northern Mexico. It is found near large bodies of open water with an abundant food supply and old-growth trees for nesting.
The bald eagle is an opportunistic feeder which subsists mainly on fish, which it swoops down and snatches from the water with its talons. It builds the largest nest of any North American bird and the largest tree nests ever recorded for any animal species, up to 4 m (13 ft) deep, 2.5 m (8.2 ft) wide, and 1 metric ton (1.1 short tons) in weight.[2] Sexual maturity is attained at the age of four to five years.
Bald eagles are not actually bald; the name derives from an older meaning of the word, "white headed". The adult is mainly brown with a white head and tail. The sexes are identical in plumage, but females are about 25 percent larger than males. The beak is large and hooked. The plumage of the immature is brown.
The bald eagle is both the national bird and national animal of the United States of America. The bald eagle appears on its seal. In the late 20th century it was on the brink of extirpation in the contiguous United States. Populations have since recovered and the species was removed from the U.S. government's list of endangered species on July 12, 1995 and transferred to the list of threatened species. It was removed from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife in the Lower 48 States on June 28, 2007.
Retired U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. John Canley is what I call a REAL American.
Marine who fought in brutal Vietnam Battle of Hue will receive Medal of Honor next month
By COREY DICKSTEIN STARS AND STRIPES
By COREY DICKSTEIN STARS AND STRIPES
Published: September 25, 2018
WASHINGTON — A retired Marine sergeant major who twice scaled a concrete wall unprotected and in full view of enemy fighters so he could move wounded troops to safety in the midst of the Battle of Hue during the Vietnam War will receive the Medal of Honor next month, the White House announced Tuesday.
John L. Canley, who was a gunnery sergeant when he led Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines into Vietnam’s Hue City on Jan. 31, 1968 and fought for six more days, will be awarded the nation’s highest military honor by President Donald Trump on Oct. 17 at the White House. The Medal of Honor will upgrade the Navy Cross that Canley received in 1970.
Stars and Stripes reported in July that Canley, 80, of Oxnard, Calif., would receive the Medal of Honor.
Following a prolonged effort by friends and lawmakers to see Canley’s medal upgraded, he will become the seventh individual to receive the Medal of Honor from Trump. Former Army Staff Sgt. Ronald J. Shurer II will receive the award Oct. 1 for his actions as a Special Forces medic in Afghanistan in 2008, an upgrade of his Silver Star. All of the Medals of Honor that Trump has presented during his presidency have been award upgrades.
Canley and his company fought off several attacks as their convoy moved toward Hue at the end of January following the surprise Tet Offensive that left the lightly defended city in the north of then-South Vietnam inundated with North Vietnamese troops and Vietcong fighters, according to a description of his actions.
After his company’s commander was seriously wounded, Canley took control of the unit. During the course of the weeklong siege, Canley successfully neutralized enemy combatants and repeatedly brought injured Marines to safety, despite sustaining several shrapnel injuries.
“Gunnery Sergeant Canley lent words of encouragement to his men,” the citation for his Navy Cross reads. “And [he] exhorted them to greater efforts as they drove the enemy from its fortified emplacement.”
Canley commanded the company for three days, exposing himself repeatedly to enemy fire as he helped drag injured Marines to safety. On Feb. 6, at Hue’s hospital compound, the site of some of the battles fiercest fighting, he twice scaled 10-foot-high walls, exposing himself to enemy fire, to help wounded Marines escape to safety.
John Ligato, one of the Marines who fought alongside Canley in Vietnam, called him “totally fearless” in an interview with Military.com. “You followed him because he was a true leader — something you need in life-and-death situations.”
Ligato credited Canley with saving countless lives.
“Then-Gunnery Sergeant Canley’s heroic actions saved the lives of his teammates,” the White House statement announcing his award reads.
In addition to the Medal of Honor that Canley will receive, he also received the Bronze Star with “V” device for Valor, the Purple Heart and the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with “V” device for Valor for his service in Vietnam, according to his Marine biography.
He retired from the Marine Corps in October 1981 as a sergeant major, according the biography.
In an interview with the Ventura Country Star newspaper in July, Canley gave credit for his actions in Hue to the Marines who he served alongside.
“It’s more about them than me,” he told the local newspaper. “This is about the young Marines that sacrificed so much. I just happened to be their leader.”
dickstein.corey@stripes.com
Twitter: @CDicksteinDC
WASHINGTON — A retired Marine sergeant major who twice scaled a concrete wall unprotected and in full view of enemy fighters so he could move wounded troops to safety in the midst of the Battle of Hue during the Vietnam War will receive the Medal of Honor next month, the White House announced Tuesday.
John L. Canley, who was a gunnery sergeant when he led Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines into Vietnam’s Hue City on Jan. 31, 1968 and fought for six more days, will be awarded the nation’s highest military honor by President Donald Trump on Oct. 17 at the White House. The Medal of Honor will upgrade the Navy Cross that Canley received in 1970.
Stars and Stripes reported in July that Canley, 80, of Oxnard, Calif., would receive the Medal of Honor.
Following a prolonged effort by friends and lawmakers to see Canley’s medal upgraded, he will become the seventh individual to receive the Medal of Honor from Trump. Former Army Staff Sgt. Ronald J. Shurer II will receive the award Oct. 1 for his actions as a Special Forces medic in Afghanistan in 2008, an upgrade of his Silver Star. All of the Medals of Honor that Trump has presented during his presidency have been award upgrades.
Canley and his company fought off several attacks as their convoy moved toward Hue at the end of January following the surprise Tet Offensive that left the lightly defended city in the north of then-South Vietnam inundated with North Vietnamese troops and Vietcong fighters, according to a description of his actions.
After his company’s commander was seriously wounded, Canley took control of the unit. During the course of the weeklong siege, Canley successfully neutralized enemy combatants and repeatedly brought injured Marines to safety, despite sustaining several shrapnel injuries.
“Gunnery Sergeant Canley lent words of encouragement to his men,” the citation for his Navy Cross reads. “And [he] exhorted them to greater efforts as they drove the enemy from its fortified emplacement.”
Canley commanded the company for three days, exposing himself repeatedly to enemy fire as he helped drag injured Marines to safety. On Feb. 6, at Hue’s hospital compound, the site of some of the battles fiercest fighting, he twice scaled 10-foot-high walls, exposing himself to enemy fire, to help wounded Marines escape to safety.
John Ligato, one of the Marines who fought alongside Canley in Vietnam, called him “totally fearless” in an interview with Military.com. “You followed him because he was a true leader — something you need in life-and-death situations.”
Ligato credited Canley with saving countless lives.
“Then-Gunnery Sergeant Canley’s heroic actions saved the lives of his teammates,” the White House statement announcing his award reads.
In addition to the Medal of Honor that Canley will receive, he also received the Bronze Star with “V” device for Valor, the Purple Heart and the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with “V” device for Valor for his service in Vietnam, according to his Marine biography.
He retired from the Marine Corps in October 1981 as a sergeant major, according the biography.
In an interview with the Ventura Country Star newspaper in July, Canley gave credit for his actions in Hue to the Marines who he served alongside.
“It’s more about them than me,” he told the local newspaper. “This is about the young Marines that sacrificed so much. I just happened to be their leader.”
dickstein.corey@stripes.com
Twitter: @CDicksteinDC
 |
| Retired U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. John Canley poses for a photo after a physical training session during Marine Week in Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 7 2018. |
"Always On My Mind" - Willie Nelson recorded and released the song in early 1982.
Maybe I didn't love you
Quite as often as I could have
Maybe I didn't treat you
Quite as good as I should have
If I made you feel second best
Girl I'm sorry I was blind
Quite as often as I could have
Maybe I didn't treat you
Quite as good as I should have
If I made you feel second best
Girl I'm sorry I was blind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
And maybe I didn't hold you
All those lonely, lonely times
I guess I never told you
I'm so happy that you're mine
All those lonely, lonely times
I guess I never told you
I'm so happy that you're mine
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
But you were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
I just never took the time
But you were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Tell me, tell me that your sweet love hasn't died
Give me, give me one more chance
To keep you satisfied
I'll keep you satisfied
Give me, give me one more chance
To keep you satisfied
I'll keep you satisfied
BBC News - Test your knowledge of evolution.
Thanks to Jerry Coyne's website I found a quiz about evolution at BBC News.
Quiz: Test your knowledge of evolution
By Helen Briggs BBC News
25 September 2018
I answered all 7 questions correctly (correct according to BBC News).
The 7th question, are evolution and religion incompatible, I was dishonest and said false because I knew that's the answer they wanted.
After Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 it became impossible for an intelligent person to believe in the god thing.
Quiz: Test your knowledge of evolution
By Helen Briggs BBC News
25 September 2018
I answered all 7 questions correctly (correct according to BBC News).
The 7th question, are evolution and religion incompatible, I was dishonest and said false because I knew that's the answer they wanted.
After Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 it became impossible for an intelligent person to believe in the god thing.
Monday, September 24, 2018
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Trump was a terrible mistake. Michael Bloomberg would be the best president this country ever had. I predict Bloomberg will win the Democratic nomination and then defeat the uneducated moron who has the job now.
I wrote this comment at the New York Times:
I'm almost done reading "Fear, Trump in the White House" by Bob Woodward. This priceless book repeatedly explains why Trump is not qualified to president. I can't imagine anything more important than getting rid of this terrible mistake.
I am convinced Michael Bloomberg is the best person for the job and I'm voting for him. If the Democrats nominate anti-business liberal extremists like Senator Elizabeth Warren or Senator Bernie Sanders then Trump would be president for 4 more years.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Somebody else wrote this comment:
Of course Bloomberg would make a better president than Trump. The neighbor's cat would make a better president than Trump.
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Mayor Bloomberg Stands Up for Atheists
Monday, 08/01/2011
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did something on Friday that few mainstream American politicians ever take the opportunity to do: he publicly acknowledged nontheistic Americans and their equal rights before the law.
Responding to criticisms of the recent lawsuit filed by American Atheists, an SCA member organization, to prevent a pair of cross-shaped steel beams found in the World Trade Center ruins from being included in the government-funded National September 11 Memorial and Museum because of its treatment as a religious symbol of Christianity, Bloomberg said the following:
"You've got to be careful in criticizing people. No. 1, they [American Atheists] have a right to sue, and we'll see what the judge says. This group of atheists, they're free in our country to not believe and not practice, and we should defend their right to do that, just as we should defend individuals' rights to practice and to believe."
This is exactly the kind of thing SCA hopes more officials will stand up and say about nontheistic Americans. Notice how Bloomberg isn't saying he agrees with the lawsuit. He's simply making the point that atheists are Americans, too. We are part of the cultural fabric, we have equal rights before the law, and our fellow citizens should not only respect but defendthose rights -- as we will theirs.
Sadly, not all Americans have followed Bloomberg's example. Some people have even taken to posting violent wishes and death threats targeted at American Atheists on Facebook. How Christian of them.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Washington Post: Bloomberg takes stand on church v. state
I'm almost done reading "Fear, Trump in the White House" by Bob Woodward. This priceless book repeatedly explains why Trump is not qualified to president. I can't imagine anything more important than getting rid of this terrible mistake.
I am convinced Michael Bloomberg is the best person for the job and I'm voting for him. If the Democrats nominate anti-business liberal extremists like Senator Elizabeth Warren or Senator Bernie Sanders then Trump would be president for 4 more years.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Somebody else wrote this comment:
Of course Bloomberg would make a better president than Trump. The neighbor's cat would make a better president than Trump.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Mayor Bloomberg Stands Up for Atheists
Monday, 08/01/2011
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did something on Friday that few mainstream American politicians ever take the opportunity to do: he publicly acknowledged nontheistic Americans and their equal rights before the law.
Responding to criticisms of the recent lawsuit filed by American Atheists, an SCA member organization, to prevent a pair of cross-shaped steel beams found in the World Trade Center ruins from being included in the government-funded National September 11 Memorial and Museum because of its treatment as a religious symbol of Christianity, Bloomberg said the following:
"You've got to be careful in criticizing people. No. 1, they [American Atheists] have a right to sue, and we'll see what the judge says. This group of atheists, they're free in our country to not believe and not practice, and we should defend their right to do that, just as we should defend individuals' rights to practice and to believe."
This is exactly the kind of thing SCA hopes more officials will stand up and say about nontheistic Americans. Notice how Bloomberg isn't saying he agrees with the lawsuit. He's simply making the point that atheists are Americans, too. We are part of the cultural fabric, we have equal rights before the law, and our fellow citizens should not only respect but defendthose rights -- as we will theirs.
Sadly, not all Americans have followed Bloomberg's example. Some people have even taken to posting violent wishes and death threats targeted at American Atheists on Facebook. How Christian of them.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Washington Post: Bloomberg takes stand on church v. state
Saturday, September 22, 2018
"Aging, ailing and threatened with torture by the Inquisition, Galileo recanted on April 30, 1633."
Letter shows Galileo lightly edited his original words to appease Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church had had enough, and Galileo found himself facing the Inquisition, forced to his knees to officially renounce his “belief” in the Copernican worldview. He was convicted of “vehement suspicion of heresy” anyway, and lived his last nine years under house arrest. He wasn’t officially pardoned by the Vatican until 1992.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
New York Times - After 350 Years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves
By ALAN COWELL OCTOBER 31, 1992
More than 350 years after the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo, Pope John Paul II is poised to rectify one of the Church's most infamous wrongs -- the persecution of the Italian astronomer and physicist for proving the Earth moves around the Sun.
With a formal statement at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Saturday, Vatican officials said the Pope will formally close a 13-year investigation into the Church's condemnation of Galileo in 1633. The condemnation, which forced the astronomer and physicist to recant his discoveries, led to Galileo's house arrest for eight years before his death in 1642 at the age of 77.
The dispute between the Church and Galileo has long stood as one of history's great emblems of conflict between reason and dogma, science and faith. The Vatican's formal acknowledgement of an error, moreover, is a rarity in an institution built over centuries on the belief that the Church is the final arbiter in matters of faith.
At the time of his condemnation, Galileo had won fame and the patronage of leading Italian powers like the Medicis and Barberinis for discoveries he had made with the astronomical telescope he had built. But when his observations led him to proof of the Copernican theory of the solar system, in which the sun and not the earth is the center, and which the Church regarded as heresy, Galileo was summoned to Rome by the Inquisition. Forced to Recant
By the end of his trial, Galileo was forced to recant his own scientific findings as "abjured, cursed and detested," a renunciation that caused him great personal anguish but which saved him from being burned at the stake.
Since then, the Church has taken various steps to reverse its opposition to Galileo's conclusions. In 1757, Galileo's "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems" was removed from the Index, a former list of publications banned by the Church. When the latest investigation, conducted by a panel of scientists, theologians and historians, made a preliminary report in 1984, it said that Galileo had been wrongfully condemned. More recently, Pope John Paul II himself has said that the scientist was "imprudently opposed."
"We today know that Galileo was right in adopting the Copernican astronomical theory," Paul Cardinal Poupard, the head of the current investigation, said in an interview published this week.
This theory had been presented in a book published in 1543 by the Polish scientist Nicolaus Copernicus in opposition to the prevailing theory, advanced by the second-century astronomer Ptolemy, that the Sun and the rest of the cosmos orbited the Earth. But the contest between the two models was purely on theoretic and theological grounds until Galileo made the first observations of the four largest moons of Jupiter, exploding the Ptolemaic notion that all heavenly bodies must orbit the Earth.
In 1616, the Copernican view was declared heretical because it refuted a strict biblical interpreation of the Creation that "God fixed the Earth upon its foundation, not to be moved forever." But Galileo obtained the permission of Pope Urban VIII, a Barberini and a friend, to continue research into both the Ptolemaic and the Copernican views of the world, provided that his findings drew no definitive conclusions and acknowledged divine omnipotence.
But when, in 1632, Galileo published his findings in "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems," the work was a compelling endorsement of the Copernican system.
Summoned to Rome for trial by the Inquisition one year later, Galileo defended himself by saying that scientific research and the Christian faith were not mutually exclusive and that study of the natural world would promote understanding and interpretation of the scriptures. But his views were judged "false and erroneous." Aging, ailing and threatened with torture by the Inquisition, Galileo recanted on April 30, 1633.
Because of his advanced years, he was permitted house arrest in Siena. Legend has it that as Galileo rose from kneeling before his inquisitors, he murmured, "e pur, si muove" -- "even so, it does move."
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A version of this article appears in print on October 31, 1992, on Page 1001001 of the National edition with the headline: After 350 Years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves.
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The Catholic Church had had enough, and Galileo found himself facing the Inquisition, forced to his knees to officially renounce his “belief” in the Copernican worldview. He was convicted of “vehement suspicion of heresy” anyway, and lived his last nine years under house arrest. He wasn’t officially pardoned by the Vatican until 1992.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
New York Times - After 350 Years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves
By ALAN COWELL OCTOBER 31, 1992
More than 350 years after the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo, Pope John Paul II is poised to rectify one of the Church's most infamous wrongs -- the persecution of the Italian astronomer and physicist for proving the Earth moves around the Sun.
With a formal statement at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Saturday, Vatican officials said the Pope will formally close a 13-year investigation into the Church's condemnation of Galileo in 1633. The condemnation, which forced the astronomer and physicist to recant his discoveries, led to Galileo's house arrest for eight years before his death in 1642 at the age of 77.
The dispute between the Church and Galileo has long stood as one of history's great emblems of conflict between reason and dogma, science and faith. The Vatican's formal acknowledgement of an error, moreover, is a rarity in an institution built over centuries on the belief that the Church is the final arbiter in matters of faith.
At the time of his condemnation, Galileo had won fame and the patronage of leading Italian powers like the Medicis and Barberinis for discoveries he had made with the astronomical telescope he had built. But when his observations led him to proof of the Copernican theory of the solar system, in which the sun and not the earth is the center, and which the Church regarded as heresy, Galileo was summoned to Rome by the Inquisition. Forced to Recant
By the end of his trial, Galileo was forced to recant his own scientific findings as "abjured, cursed and detested," a renunciation that caused him great personal anguish but which saved him from being burned at the stake.
Since then, the Church has taken various steps to reverse its opposition to Galileo's conclusions. In 1757, Galileo's "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems" was removed from the Index, a former list of publications banned by the Church. When the latest investigation, conducted by a panel of scientists, theologians and historians, made a preliminary report in 1984, it said that Galileo had been wrongfully condemned. More recently, Pope John Paul II himself has said that the scientist was "imprudently opposed."
"We today know that Galileo was right in adopting the Copernican astronomical theory," Paul Cardinal Poupard, the head of the current investigation, said in an interview published this week.
This theory had been presented in a book published in 1543 by the Polish scientist Nicolaus Copernicus in opposition to the prevailing theory, advanced by the second-century astronomer Ptolemy, that the Sun and the rest of the cosmos orbited the Earth. But the contest between the two models was purely on theoretic and theological grounds until Galileo made the first observations of the four largest moons of Jupiter, exploding the Ptolemaic notion that all heavenly bodies must orbit the Earth.
In 1616, the Copernican view was declared heretical because it refuted a strict biblical interpreation of the Creation that "God fixed the Earth upon its foundation, not to be moved forever." But Galileo obtained the permission of Pope Urban VIII, a Barberini and a friend, to continue research into both the Ptolemaic and the Copernican views of the world, provided that his findings drew no definitive conclusions and acknowledged divine omnipotence.
But when, in 1632, Galileo published his findings in "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems," the work was a compelling endorsement of the Copernican system.
Summoned to Rome for trial by the Inquisition one year later, Galileo defended himself by saying that scientific research and the Christian faith were not mutually exclusive and that study of the natural world would promote understanding and interpretation of the scriptures. But his views were judged "false and erroneous." Aging, ailing and threatened with torture by the Inquisition, Galileo recanted on April 30, 1633.
Because of his advanced years, he was permitted house arrest in Siena. Legend has it that as Galileo rose from kneeling before his inquisitors, he murmured, "e pur, si muove" -- "even so, it does move."
VIEW IN TIMESMACHINE
The TimesMachine article viewer is included with your New York Times subscription.
We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.
A version of this article appears in print on October 31, 1992, on Page 1001001 of the National edition with the headline: After 350 Years, Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves.
Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Idiot America is infested with millions of idiots.
Wikipedia - Evangelicalism
The United States has the largest concentration of evangelicals in the world.[5] American evangelicals are a quarter of the nation's population and its single largest religious group.[6][7]
The United States has the largest concentration of evangelicals in the world.[5] American evangelicals are a quarter of the nation's population and its single largest religious group.[6][7]
Something from nothing. How the universe began. The Magic Man did not do it. The magic god fairy of the gaps has run out hiding places.
A Mathematical Proof That The Universe Could Have Formed Spontaneously From Nothing
Cosmologists assume that natural quantum fluctuations allowed the Big Bang to happen spontaneously. Now they have a mathematical proof.
One of the great theories of modern cosmology is that the universe began in a Big Bang. This is not just an idea but a scientific theory backed up by numerous lines of evidence.
For a start, there is the cosmic microwave background, which is a kind of echo of the big bang; then there is the ongoing expansion of the cosmos, which when imagined backwards, hints at a Big Bang-type origin; and the abundance of the primordial elements, such as helium-4, helium-3, deuterium and so on, can all be calculated using the theory.
But that still leaves a huge puzzle. What caused the Big Bang itself? For many years, cosmologists have relied on the idea that the universe formed spontaneously, that the Big Bang was the result of quantum fluctuations in which the Universe came into existence from nothing.
That’s plausible, given what we know about quantum mechanics. But physicists really need more — a mathematical proof to give the idea flesh.
Today they get their wish thanks to the work of Dongshan He and buddies at the Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics in China. These guys have come up with the first rigorous proof that the Big Bang could indeed have occurred spontaneously because of quantum fluctuations.
The new proof is based on a special set of solutions to a mathematical entity known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. In the first half of the 20th century, cosmologists struggled to combine the two pillars of modern physics— quantum mechanics and general relativity—in a way that reasonably described the universe. As far as they could tell, these theories were entirely at odds with each other.
The breakthrough came in the 1960s when the physicists John Wheeler and Bryce DeWitt combined these previously incompatible ideas in a mathematical framework now known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. The new work of Dongshan and co explores some new solutions to this equation.
At the heart of their thinking is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. This allows a small empty space to come into existence probabilistically due to fluctuations in what physicists call the metastable false vacuum.
When this happens, there are two possibilities. If this bubble of space does not expand rapidly, it disappears again almost instantly. But if the bubble can expand to a large enough size, then a universe is created in a way that is irreversible.
The question is: does the Wheeler-DeWitt equation allow this? “We prove that once a small true vacuum bubble is created, it has the chance to expand exponentially,” say Dongshan and co.
Their approach is to consider a spherical bubble that is entirely described by its radius. They then derive the equation that describes the rate at which this radius can expand. They then consider three scenarios for the geometry of the bubble — whether closed, open or flat.
In each of these cases, they find a solution in which the bubble can expand exponentially and thereby reach a size in which a universe can form—a Big Bang.
That’s a result that cosmologists should be able to build on. It also has an interesting corollary.
One important factor in today’s models of the universe is called the cosmological constant. This is a term that describes the energy density of the vacuum of space. It was originally introduced by Einstein in his 1917 general theory of relativity and later abandoned by him after Hubble’s discovery that the universe was expanding.
Until the 1990s, most cosmologists assumed that the cosmological constant was zero. But more recently, cosmologists have found evidence that something is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate, implying that the cosmological constant cannot be zero. So any new theory of the universe must allow for a non-zero value of the cosmological constant.
What plays the role of the cosmological constant in Dongshan and co’s new theory? Interestingly, these guys say a quantity known as the quantum potential plays the role of cosmological constant in the new solutions.
This potential comes from an idea called pilot-wave theory developed in the mid-20th century by the physicist David Bohm. This theory reproduces all of the conventional predictions of quantum mechanics but at the price of accepting an additional term known as the quantum potential.
The theory has the effect of making quantum mechanics entirely deterministic since the quantum potential can be used to work out things like the actual position of the particle.
However, mainstream physicists have never taken to Bohm’s idea because its predictions are identical to the conventional version of the theory so there is no experimental way of telling them apart. However, it forces physicists to accept a probabilistic explanation for the nature of reality, something they are generally happy to accept.
The fact that the quantum potential is a necessary part of this new mathematical derivation of the origin of the universe is fascinating. Perhaps it’s time to give Bohm’s ideas another spin round the block.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1404.1207 : Spontaneous Creation Of The Universe From Nothing
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I don't know who wrote this. It makes sense.
The universe from nothing or created?
It is known by physicists that the total energy output of the entire universe is exactly 0. what is significant about that? that means that it could have only begun from nothing, or the math wouldn't work out. also, the geometric shape of the universe also indicates that it has to be 0, because if it weren't, the universe would be very different, and the laws of physics would be VERY different.
Also, let's say you take empty space. you remove any particles or radiation... it's literally NOTHING. it turns out that the "nothing" is very random and allows virtual particles to literally pop in and out of existence if you apply gravity and quantum physics correctly. the quantum fluctuations are what allowed a universe today, because if you wait long enough, things will come into existence without the need of a god. keep in mind that the universe maintains an incredibly inefficient and stupid design...
There is proof that it came from nothing.
This does not mean that something will magically appear like a god. KEEP IN MIND THAT THE UNIVERSE 13.7 BILLION YEARS AGO WAS UNDER EXTREMELY DIFFERENT CONDITIONS THAT THERE ARE NOW. the nutrients we are made of didn't even exist at the beginning... they had to "evolve" in some sense from the stars.
Cosmologists assume that natural quantum fluctuations allowed the Big Bang to happen spontaneously. Now they have a mathematical proof.
One of the great theories of modern cosmology is that the universe began in a Big Bang. This is not just an idea but a scientific theory backed up by numerous lines of evidence.
For a start, there is the cosmic microwave background, which is a kind of echo of the big bang; then there is the ongoing expansion of the cosmos, which when imagined backwards, hints at a Big Bang-type origin; and the abundance of the primordial elements, such as helium-4, helium-3, deuterium and so on, can all be calculated using the theory.
But that still leaves a huge puzzle. What caused the Big Bang itself? For many years, cosmologists have relied on the idea that the universe formed spontaneously, that the Big Bang was the result of quantum fluctuations in which the Universe came into existence from nothing.
That’s plausible, given what we know about quantum mechanics. But physicists really need more — a mathematical proof to give the idea flesh.
Today they get their wish thanks to the work of Dongshan He and buddies at the Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics in China. These guys have come up with the first rigorous proof that the Big Bang could indeed have occurred spontaneously because of quantum fluctuations.
The new proof is based on a special set of solutions to a mathematical entity known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. In the first half of the 20th century, cosmologists struggled to combine the two pillars of modern physics— quantum mechanics and general relativity—in a way that reasonably described the universe. As far as they could tell, these theories were entirely at odds with each other.
The breakthrough came in the 1960s when the physicists John Wheeler and Bryce DeWitt combined these previously incompatible ideas in a mathematical framework now known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. The new work of Dongshan and co explores some new solutions to this equation.
At the heart of their thinking is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. This allows a small empty space to come into existence probabilistically due to fluctuations in what physicists call the metastable false vacuum.
When this happens, there are two possibilities. If this bubble of space does not expand rapidly, it disappears again almost instantly. But if the bubble can expand to a large enough size, then a universe is created in a way that is irreversible.
The question is: does the Wheeler-DeWitt equation allow this? “We prove that once a small true vacuum bubble is created, it has the chance to expand exponentially,” say Dongshan and co.
Their approach is to consider a spherical bubble that is entirely described by its radius. They then derive the equation that describes the rate at which this radius can expand. They then consider three scenarios for the geometry of the bubble — whether closed, open or flat.
In each of these cases, they find a solution in which the bubble can expand exponentially and thereby reach a size in which a universe can form—a Big Bang.
That’s a result that cosmologists should be able to build on. It also has an interesting corollary.
One important factor in today’s models of the universe is called the cosmological constant. This is a term that describes the energy density of the vacuum of space. It was originally introduced by Einstein in his 1917 general theory of relativity and later abandoned by him after Hubble’s discovery that the universe was expanding.
Until the 1990s, most cosmologists assumed that the cosmological constant was zero. But more recently, cosmologists have found evidence that something is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate, implying that the cosmological constant cannot be zero. So any new theory of the universe must allow for a non-zero value of the cosmological constant.
What plays the role of the cosmological constant in Dongshan and co’s new theory? Interestingly, these guys say a quantity known as the quantum potential plays the role of cosmological constant in the new solutions.
This potential comes from an idea called pilot-wave theory developed in the mid-20th century by the physicist David Bohm. This theory reproduces all of the conventional predictions of quantum mechanics but at the price of accepting an additional term known as the quantum potential.
The theory has the effect of making quantum mechanics entirely deterministic since the quantum potential can be used to work out things like the actual position of the particle.
However, mainstream physicists have never taken to Bohm’s idea because its predictions are identical to the conventional version of the theory so there is no experimental way of telling them apart. However, it forces physicists to accept a probabilistic explanation for the nature of reality, something they are generally happy to accept.
The fact that the quantum potential is a necessary part of this new mathematical derivation of the origin of the universe is fascinating. Perhaps it’s time to give Bohm’s ideas another spin round the block.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1404.1207 : Spontaneous Creation Of The Universe From Nothing
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I don't know who wrote this. It makes sense.
The universe from nothing or created?
It is known by physicists that the total energy output of the entire universe is exactly 0. what is significant about that? that means that it could have only begun from nothing, or the math wouldn't work out. also, the geometric shape of the universe also indicates that it has to be 0, because if it weren't, the universe would be very different, and the laws of physics would be VERY different.
Also, let's say you take empty space. you remove any particles or radiation... it's literally NOTHING. it turns out that the "nothing" is very random and allows virtual particles to literally pop in and out of existence if you apply gravity and quantum physics correctly. the quantum fluctuations are what allowed a universe today, because if you wait long enough, things will come into existence without the need of a god. keep in mind that the universe maintains an incredibly inefficient and stupid design...
There is proof that it came from nothing.
This does not mean that something will magically appear like a god. KEEP IN MIND THAT THE UNIVERSE 13.7 BILLION YEARS AGO WAS UNDER EXTREMELY DIFFERENT CONDITIONS THAT THERE ARE NOW. the nutrients we are made of didn't even exist at the beginning... they had to "evolve" in some sense from the stars.
Thursday, September 20, 2018
The owner of this blog, that would be me, is too lazy to write stuff these days.
This blog has 5,777 posts. If I write nothing there's tons of old stuff people can read. Most of it is boring but I think sometimes I wrote things that might be interesting, especially if they're copy & paste jobs.
To explore this blog there are numerous links in the right column and also at the end of each post there are what's called "Labels" which people could click to find lots of stuff.
To explore this blog there are numerous links in the right column and also at the end of each post there are what's called "Labels" which people could click to find lots of stuff.
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Quotes from Christopher Hitchens
A virgin can conceive. A dead body can walk again. Your leprosy can be cured. The blind can see. Nonsense. It’s not moral to lie to children. It’s not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people and tell them that if they only would believe nonsense, they can be saved. It’s immoral.
Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.
If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.
Religion attacks us in our deepest integrity - the core of our self-respect. Religion says that we would not know right from wrong, we would not know an evil, wicked act from a decent human act without divine permission, without divine authority or without, even worse, either the fear of a divine punishment or the hope of a divine reward. It strips us of the right to make our own determination, as all humans always have, about what is and what is not a right human action.
Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.
I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.
Islamophobia: a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.
Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things... one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.
Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.
I am absolutely convinced that religion is the main source of hatred in this world.
Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.
We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.
Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.
Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.
Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things because to demystify supposedly 'holy text dictated by god' and show that they are man made and what you have to show [is] there internal inconsistencies and absurdities. One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority... it is an indispensable thing people can call it blasphemy if they like, but if they call it that they have to assume there is something to be blasphemed - some divine work, well I don't accept the premise.
To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation - is that good for the world?
One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human pre-history where nobody - not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms - had the smallest idea what was going on.
If I could do just one thing, it would be to dissociate faith from virtue, now and for good, and to expose it for what it is, a servile weakness, a refuge in cowardice, and a willingness to follow, with credulity, people who are in the highest degree unscrupulous.
We have lived in a world where the discoveries of physics and genetics are far more awe-inspiring, as well as infinitely more liberating, than the claims of any religion.
I'm an atheist. I'm not neutral about religion, I'm hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself.
Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet - who was only another male mammal - is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent.
The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.
The gods that we've made are exactly the gods you'd expect to be made by a species that's about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee.
Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.
If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.
Religion attacks us in our deepest integrity - the core of our self-respect. Religion says that we would not know right from wrong, we would not know an evil, wicked act from a decent human act without divine permission, without divine authority or without, even worse, either the fear of a divine punishment or the hope of a divine reward. It strips us of the right to make our own determination, as all humans always have, about what is and what is not a right human action.
Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.
I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.
Islamophobia: a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.
Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things... one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.
Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.
I am absolutely convinced that religion is the main source of hatred in this world.
Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.
We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.
Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.
Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.
Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things because to demystify supposedly 'holy text dictated by god' and show that they are man made and what you have to show [is] there internal inconsistencies and absurdities. One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority... it is an indispensable thing people can call it blasphemy if they like, but if they call it that they have to assume there is something to be blasphemed - some divine work, well I don't accept the premise.
To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation - is that good for the world?
One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human pre-history where nobody - not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms - had the smallest idea what was going on.
If I could do just one thing, it would be to dissociate faith from virtue, now and for good, and to expose it for what it is, a servile weakness, a refuge in cowardice, and a willingness to follow, with credulity, people who are in the highest degree unscrupulous.
We have lived in a world where the discoveries of physics and genetics are far more awe-inspiring, as well as infinitely more liberating, than the claims of any religion.
I'm an atheist. I'm not neutral about religion, I'm hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself.
Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet - who was only another male mammal - is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent.
The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.
The gods that we've made are exactly the gods you'd expect to be made by a species that's about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee.
Banana slug
 |
| Banana slugs are North American terrestrial slug. These slugs are often yellow in color and are sometimes spotted with brown, like a ripe (or overripe) banana which is the source of their common name, although they can come in other colors. |
In 2020 Michael Bloomberg (former New York City mayor) might win the Democratic nomination for president. He is a rare example of a Democrat who has a brain. He would easily defeat President Fucktard Trump.
This is a good thing and it's why I would vote for him: "Michael Bloomberg criticized liberal Democrats’ attitude toward big business, endorsing certain financial regulations but singling out a proposal by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to break up Wall Street banks as wrongheaded."
New York Times - Bloomberg Weighs 2020 Run Cast as a Discordant Democrat.
By Alexander Burns and Sydney Ember
September 17, 2018
SEATTLE — Michael R. Bloomberg is actively considering a campaign for president as a Democrat in 2020, concluding that it would be his only path to the White House even as he voices stark disagreements with progressives on defining issues including bank regulation, stop-and-frisk police tactics and the #MeToo movement.
Mr. Bloomberg, 76, a billionaire media executive and former New York City mayor, has already aligned himself with Democrats in the midterm elections, approving a plan to spend $80 million to flip control of the House of Representatives. A political group he controls will soon begin spending heavily in three Republican-held districts in Southern California, attacking conservative candidates for their stances on abortion, guns and the environment.
At events across the West Coast and Nevada in recent days, Mr. Bloomberg, who was elected mayor as a Republican and an independent, denounced his former party in sharp terms. He urged audiences in Seattle and San Francisco to punish Republicans who oppose gun control or reject climate science. And in Las Vegas on Sunday he called on Democrats to seize command of the political center and win over Americans “who voted Republican in 2016.”
But Mr. Bloomberg’s aspirations appear to run well beyond dismantling Republicans’ House majority, and he is taking steps that advisers acknowledge are aimed in part at testing his options for 2020.
After a gun control-themed event in a Seattle community center Friday, Mr. Bloomberg, who has repeatedly explored running for president as an independent in the past, said in an interview that he now firmly believes only a major-party nominee can win the White House. If he were to run, Mr. Bloomberg said it would be as a Democrat, and he left open the door to changing his party registration in the coming months.
“It’s impossible to conceive that I could run as a Republican — things like choice, so many of the issues, I’m just way away from where the Republican Party is today,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “That’s not to say I’m with the Democratic Party on everything, but I don’t see how you could possibly run as a Republican. So if you ran, yeah, you’d have to run as a Democrat.”
Mr. Bloomberg said he had no specific timeline for deciding on a presidential run: “I’m working on this Nov. 6 election, and after that I’ll take a look at it.”
There is considerable skepticism among Democratic leaders, and even some of Mr. Bloomberg’s close allies, that he will actually pursue the presidency, because he has entertained the idea fruitlessly several times before, and shown little appetite for the rough-and-tumble tactics of traditional partisan politics. A campaign would require him to yield his imperial stature as a donor and philanthropist, and enter a tumultuous political and cultural climate that could make him a highly incongruous candidate for the Democratic nomination.
Though he has received a hero’s welcome from Democrats for his role in the midterms, Mr. Bloomberg is plainly an uncomfortable match for a progressive coalition passionately animated by concern for economic inequality and the civil rights of women and minorities.
In the interview Friday — his first extended comments on his thinking about a 2020 presidential run — Mr. Bloomberg expressed stubbornly contrary views on those fronts. He criticized liberal Democrats’ attitude toward big business, endorsing certain financial regulations but singling out a proposal by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to break up Wall Street banks as wrongheaded. He also defended his mayoral administration’s policy of stopping people on the street to search them for guns, a police tactic that predominantly affected black and Latino men, as a necessary expedient against crime.
And while Mr. Bloomberg expressed concern about allegations of sexual misconduct that have arisen in the last year, he also voiced doubt about some of them and said only a court could determine their veracity. He gave as an example Charlie Rose, the disgraced television anchor who for years broadcast his eponymous talk show from the offices of Mr. Bloomberg’s company.
“The stuff I read about is disgraceful — I don’t know how true all of it is,” Mr. Bloomberg said of the #MeToo movement. Raising Mr. Rose unprompted, he said: “We never had a complaint, whatsoever, and when I read some of the stuff, I was surprised, I will say. But I never saw anything and we have no record, we’ve checked very carefully.”
Mr. Bloomberg said the media industry was guilty of not “standing up” against sexual misconduct sooner, but declined to say whether he believed the allegations against Mr. Rose. “Let the court system decide,” he said, while acknowledging that the claims involving Mr. Rose might never be adjudicated in a legal proceeding.
Mr. Rose, 76, has been accused by numerous women of unwanted and coercive sexual behavior, including claims that he groped female subordinates and exposed himself to them. He was fired by both CBS, where he hosted a morning show, and PBS, which broadcast the program “Charlie Rose,” which Mr. Rose recorded in the Bloomberg office. Bloomberg TV also terminated an arrangement that allowed it to rebroadcast Mr. Rose’s show.
“You know, is it true?” Mr. Bloomberg said of the allegations. “You look at people that say it is, but we have a system where you have — presumption of innocence is the basis of it.”
A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.
On policing, Mr. Bloomberg said that there had been “outrageous” cases of police abuse and unjustified shootings around the country. But he said stop-and-frisk searches had helped lower New York’s murder rate and insisted that the policy had not violated anyone’s civil rights.
He dismissed a court ruling to the contrary as the opinion of a single judge that could have been overturned on appeal. Mr. Bloomberg suggested many Democrats would agree with him on policing.
“I think people, the voters, want low crime,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “They don’t want kids to kill each other.”
Asked whether, in retrospect, he saw any civil rights problems with stop-and-frisk tactics, Mr. Bloomberg replied: “The courts found that there were not. That’s the definition.”
In 2013, a federal district judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled that the stop-and-frisk policy had been carried out in an unconstitutional way. Mr. Bloomberg’s administration assailed the decision and vowed to appeal it, but his successor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, declined to do so.
Despite his obvious divergence from the Democratic Party on some key issues, advisers to Mr. Bloomberg believe he would have a plausible route to its presidential nomination if he stood out as a lonely moderate in a field of conventional liberals challenging President Trump.
Mr. Bloomberg has mapped an energetic travel schedule for the midterms that will also take him to battleground states that would be crucial in a presidential race. He will make stops in Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania and address influential liberal groups, including the League of Conservation Voters and Emily’s List, aides said. And he is weighing a visit to the early primary state of South Carolina.
Mr. Bloomberg is also preparing to reissue a revised edition of his autobiography, “Bloomberg by Bloomberg,” aides confirmed.
Democratic leaders have so far embraced Mr. Bloomberg, giving him a regal reception aimed at ushering him securely into the party. At a climate conference in San Francisco, he stood beside Gov. Jerry Brown of California, a popular Democrat, to show support for the Paris climate agreement. And in an embrace laden with political symbolism, Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, introduced Mr. Bloomberg at two events as a herculean champion of the environment and a master of business and government.
“His name is synonymous with excellence,” Ms. Pelosi said, at a dinner atop the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “And he knows how to get the job done.”
In a private conversation at the dinner, Mr. Bloomberg pressed Ms. Pelosi to govern the House in a bipartisan way if Democrats take power, he said — a message he also trumpeted publicly in Las Vegas as he pleaded with Democrats to pursue the center. “Candidates who listen to voters in the middle are more likely to reach across the aisle and to get things done,” Mr. Bloomberg argued there.
Beyond the most rarefied political precincts, however, Mr. Bloomberg and his White House hopes have stirred a mixture of curiosity and consternation. In Nevada, Barbara Buckley, a former speaker of the State Assembly, expressed surprise at the notion of a presidential campaign.
“He’s still a Republican, isn’t he?” Ms. Buckley said at a fund-raising dinner hosted by the Women’s Democratic Club of Clark County. Of Mr. Bloomberg running as a Democrat, she said, “I think people would question why he’s changing at this point in his career.”
Tick Segerblom, a progressive lawmaker in Nevada, said he appreciated Mr. Bloomberg as an ally of the Democratic Party and would keep an open mind about him as a candidate. Mr. Segerblom, who hosted Ms. Warren at an event over the summer, volunteered to welcome Mr. Bloomberg at his home.
“He’s been so fantastic on the environment and so fantastic on guns,” Mr. Segerblom said. “I don’t know, when you get into some of the economic issues, how progressive he is.”
Mr. Bloomberg’s advertising for House Democrats is expected to begin in the coming days, with his spending trained on a few clusters of races in expensive television markets, including in California and Pennsylvania. His first three targets are Los Angeles-area seats held by Representatives Steve Knight and Dana Rohrabacher, Republicans running for re-election, and an open seat near San Diego held by Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican who is retiring.
The advertising blitz includes $4 million in the final 10 days of the election in the Los Angeles media market alone, aides said. But underscoring Mr. Bloomberg’s discomfort with important elements of the Democratic Party, it is not expected to include California’s 45th Congressional District, where Katie Porter, a liberal law professor who is a protégée of Ms. Warren, is challenging Representative Mimi Walters, a conservative Republican.
Close allies of Mr. Bloomberg are divided as to whether it would be wise for him to run for president in 2020, and at least one longtime associate has predicted that he will never seek the White House. Bradley Tusk, Mr. Bloomberg’s former campaign manager who helped him explore an independent candidacy in 2016, declared at a recent dinner in Washington, D.C., that he expected Mr. Bloomberg to toy with running before opting out yet again, multiple people who attended the event confirmed.
Asked about that prediction, Mr. Tusk said in a text message, “No one is better suited to be president than Mike Bloomberg.”
“Running for president and being president aren’t always the same thing,” Mr. Tusk continued. “So we’ll see what he decides, but he’s the best option by far.”
Alexander Burns reported from Seattle and Sydney Ember from Las Vegas.
Follow Alexander Burns and Sydney Ember on Twitter: @alexburnsNYT and @melbournecoal.
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 18, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Bloomberg Weighs 2020 Run Cast as a Discordant Democrat.
Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
New York Times - Bloomberg Weighs 2020 Run Cast as a Discordant Democrat.
By Alexander Burns and Sydney Ember
September 17, 2018
SEATTLE — Michael R. Bloomberg is actively considering a campaign for president as a Democrat in 2020, concluding that it would be his only path to the White House even as he voices stark disagreements with progressives on defining issues including bank regulation, stop-and-frisk police tactics and the #MeToo movement.
Mr. Bloomberg, 76, a billionaire media executive and former New York City mayor, has already aligned himself with Democrats in the midterm elections, approving a plan to spend $80 million to flip control of the House of Representatives. A political group he controls will soon begin spending heavily in three Republican-held districts in Southern California, attacking conservative candidates for their stances on abortion, guns and the environment.
At events across the West Coast and Nevada in recent days, Mr. Bloomberg, who was elected mayor as a Republican and an independent, denounced his former party in sharp terms. He urged audiences in Seattle and San Francisco to punish Republicans who oppose gun control or reject climate science. And in Las Vegas on Sunday he called on Democrats to seize command of the political center and win over Americans “who voted Republican in 2016.”
But Mr. Bloomberg’s aspirations appear to run well beyond dismantling Republicans’ House majority, and he is taking steps that advisers acknowledge are aimed in part at testing his options for 2020.
After a gun control-themed event in a Seattle community center Friday, Mr. Bloomberg, who has repeatedly explored running for president as an independent in the past, said in an interview that he now firmly believes only a major-party nominee can win the White House. If he were to run, Mr. Bloomberg said it would be as a Democrat, and he left open the door to changing his party registration in the coming months.
“It’s impossible to conceive that I could run as a Republican — things like choice, so many of the issues, I’m just way away from where the Republican Party is today,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “That’s not to say I’m with the Democratic Party on everything, but I don’t see how you could possibly run as a Republican. So if you ran, yeah, you’d have to run as a Democrat.”
Mr. Bloomberg said he had no specific timeline for deciding on a presidential run: “I’m working on this Nov. 6 election, and after that I’ll take a look at it.”
There is considerable skepticism among Democratic leaders, and even some of Mr. Bloomberg’s close allies, that he will actually pursue the presidency, because he has entertained the idea fruitlessly several times before, and shown little appetite for the rough-and-tumble tactics of traditional partisan politics. A campaign would require him to yield his imperial stature as a donor and philanthropist, and enter a tumultuous political and cultural climate that could make him a highly incongruous candidate for the Democratic nomination.
Though he has received a hero’s welcome from Democrats for his role in the midterms, Mr. Bloomberg is plainly an uncomfortable match for a progressive coalition passionately animated by concern for economic inequality and the civil rights of women and minorities.
In the interview Friday — his first extended comments on his thinking about a 2020 presidential run — Mr. Bloomberg expressed stubbornly contrary views on those fronts. He criticized liberal Democrats’ attitude toward big business, endorsing certain financial regulations but singling out a proposal by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to break up Wall Street banks as wrongheaded. He also defended his mayoral administration’s policy of stopping people on the street to search them for guns, a police tactic that predominantly affected black and Latino men, as a necessary expedient against crime.
And while Mr. Bloomberg expressed concern about allegations of sexual misconduct that have arisen in the last year, he also voiced doubt about some of them and said only a court could determine their veracity. He gave as an example Charlie Rose, the disgraced television anchor who for years broadcast his eponymous talk show from the offices of Mr. Bloomberg’s company.
“The stuff I read about is disgraceful — I don’t know how true all of it is,” Mr. Bloomberg said of the #MeToo movement. Raising Mr. Rose unprompted, he said: “We never had a complaint, whatsoever, and when I read some of the stuff, I was surprised, I will say. But I never saw anything and we have no record, we’ve checked very carefully.”
Mr. Bloomberg said the media industry was guilty of not “standing up” against sexual misconduct sooner, but declined to say whether he believed the allegations against Mr. Rose. “Let the court system decide,” he said, while acknowledging that the claims involving Mr. Rose might never be adjudicated in a legal proceeding.
Mr. Rose, 76, has been accused by numerous women of unwanted and coercive sexual behavior, including claims that he groped female subordinates and exposed himself to them. He was fired by both CBS, where he hosted a morning show, and PBS, which broadcast the program “Charlie Rose,” which Mr. Rose recorded in the Bloomberg office. Bloomberg TV also terminated an arrangement that allowed it to rebroadcast Mr. Rose’s show.
“You know, is it true?” Mr. Bloomberg said of the allegations. “You look at people that say it is, but we have a system where you have — presumption of innocence is the basis of it.”
A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.
On policing, Mr. Bloomberg said that there had been “outrageous” cases of police abuse and unjustified shootings around the country. But he said stop-and-frisk searches had helped lower New York’s murder rate and insisted that the policy had not violated anyone’s civil rights.
He dismissed a court ruling to the contrary as the opinion of a single judge that could have been overturned on appeal. Mr. Bloomberg suggested many Democrats would agree with him on policing.
“I think people, the voters, want low crime,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “They don’t want kids to kill each other.”
Asked whether, in retrospect, he saw any civil rights problems with stop-and-frisk tactics, Mr. Bloomberg replied: “The courts found that there were not. That’s the definition.”
In 2013, a federal district judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled that the stop-and-frisk policy had been carried out in an unconstitutional way. Mr. Bloomberg’s administration assailed the decision and vowed to appeal it, but his successor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, declined to do so.
Despite his obvious divergence from the Democratic Party on some key issues, advisers to Mr. Bloomberg believe he would have a plausible route to its presidential nomination if he stood out as a lonely moderate in a field of conventional liberals challenging President Trump.
Mr. Bloomberg has mapped an energetic travel schedule for the midterms that will also take him to battleground states that would be crucial in a presidential race. He will make stops in Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania and address influential liberal groups, including the League of Conservation Voters and Emily’s List, aides said. And he is weighing a visit to the early primary state of South Carolina.
Mr. Bloomberg is also preparing to reissue a revised edition of his autobiography, “Bloomberg by Bloomberg,” aides confirmed.
Democratic leaders have so far embraced Mr. Bloomberg, giving him a regal reception aimed at ushering him securely into the party. At a climate conference in San Francisco, he stood beside Gov. Jerry Brown of California, a popular Democrat, to show support for the Paris climate agreement. And in an embrace laden with political symbolism, Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, introduced Mr. Bloomberg at two events as a herculean champion of the environment and a master of business and government.
“His name is synonymous with excellence,” Ms. Pelosi said, at a dinner atop the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “And he knows how to get the job done.”
In a private conversation at the dinner, Mr. Bloomberg pressed Ms. Pelosi to govern the House in a bipartisan way if Democrats take power, he said — a message he also trumpeted publicly in Las Vegas as he pleaded with Democrats to pursue the center. “Candidates who listen to voters in the middle are more likely to reach across the aisle and to get things done,” Mr. Bloomberg argued there.
Beyond the most rarefied political precincts, however, Mr. Bloomberg and his White House hopes have stirred a mixture of curiosity and consternation. In Nevada, Barbara Buckley, a former speaker of the State Assembly, expressed surprise at the notion of a presidential campaign.
“He’s still a Republican, isn’t he?” Ms. Buckley said at a fund-raising dinner hosted by the Women’s Democratic Club of Clark County. Of Mr. Bloomberg running as a Democrat, she said, “I think people would question why he’s changing at this point in his career.”
Tick Segerblom, a progressive lawmaker in Nevada, said he appreciated Mr. Bloomberg as an ally of the Democratic Party and would keep an open mind about him as a candidate. Mr. Segerblom, who hosted Ms. Warren at an event over the summer, volunteered to welcome Mr. Bloomberg at his home.
“He’s been so fantastic on the environment and so fantastic on guns,” Mr. Segerblom said. “I don’t know, when you get into some of the economic issues, how progressive he is.”
Mr. Bloomberg’s advertising for House Democrats is expected to begin in the coming days, with his spending trained on a few clusters of races in expensive television markets, including in California and Pennsylvania. His first three targets are Los Angeles-area seats held by Representatives Steve Knight and Dana Rohrabacher, Republicans running for re-election, and an open seat near San Diego held by Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican who is retiring.
The advertising blitz includes $4 million in the final 10 days of the election in the Los Angeles media market alone, aides said. But underscoring Mr. Bloomberg’s discomfort with important elements of the Democratic Party, it is not expected to include California’s 45th Congressional District, where Katie Porter, a liberal law professor who is a protégée of Ms. Warren, is challenging Representative Mimi Walters, a conservative Republican.
Close allies of Mr. Bloomberg are divided as to whether it would be wise for him to run for president in 2020, and at least one longtime associate has predicted that he will never seek the White House. Bradley Tusk, Mr. Bloomberg’s former campaign manager who helped him explore an independent candidacy in 2016, declared at a recent dinner in Washington, D.C., that he expected Mr. Bloomberg to toy with running before opting out yet again, multiple people who attended the event confirmed.
Asked about that prediction, Mr. Tusk said in a text message, “No one is better suited to be president than Mike Bloomberg.”
“Running for president and being president aren’t always the same thing,” Mr. Tusk continued. “So we’ll see what he decides, but he’s the best option by far.”
Alexander Burns reported from Seattle and Sydney Ember from Las Vegas.
Follow Alexander Burns and Sydney Ember on Twitter: @alexburnsNYT and @melbournecoal.
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 18, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Bloomberg Weighs 2020 Run Cast as a Discordant Democrat.
Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
The breathtaking stupidity of bible-thumping science deniers. Here in Idiot America we have millions of these know-nothing fucktards.
What a stupid fucking Christian asshole wrote about his everything-is-magic fantasy world and what I wrote:
"Creationists don't need secular explanations about origins. That doesn't justify a refusal to consider them - any more than the existence of secular explanations justifies a refusal to consider creationist explanations."
Biologists ignore your childish magical creationism fantasy because it's fucking stupid.
"Creationists don't need secular explanations about origins. That doesn't justify a refusal to consider them - any more than the existence of secular explanations justifies a refusal to consider creationist explanations."
Biologists ignore your childish magical creationism fantasy because it's fucking stupid.
America's liberal crybabies for some strange reason refuse to admit tax reform and getting rid of unnecessary regulations on businesses has been working. Their favorite complaint is people are not making very much which is bullshit. If the Democrats don't grow up and face facts the celebrity clown president will win again in 2020.
By SCHWAB NEWSROOM
SEPTEMBER 18, 2018
With the economy continuing to chug along nicely and unemployment remaining at record lows, it has been somewhat surprising that wages have remained relatively flat. But as August’s jobs report indicated, that may be changing.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that nonfarm payrolls were up 201,000 for the month, leaving the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.9%. The bigger news was that average hourly earnings were up 0.4% from the previous month and 2.9% from a year earlier (the latter is up from 2.5% on average last year).
SEPTEMBER 18, 2018
With the economy continuing to chug along nicely and unemployment remaining at record lows, it has been somewhat surprising that wages have remained relatively flat. But as August’s jobs report indicated, that may be changing.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that nonfarm payrolls were up 201,000 for the month, leaving the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.9%. The bigger news was that average hourly earnings were up 0.4% from the previous month and 2.9% from a year earlier (the latter is up from 2.5% on average last year).
Monday, September 17, 2018
In the book I started reading today, "Fear, Trump In The White House", I found something very interesting about Vice President Fucktard Pence.
Everyone except brain-dead Trump knows Pence wrote the anonymous anti-Trump editorial in the New York Times.
In the book "Fear" I found something equally interesting about Pence. This happened a few weeks before the 2016 election for President of the United States. Here it is. I'm betting it's true.
"Stories circulated that Pence had given Bannon a sealed letter urging Trump to drop off the ticket."
Pence's idea was he could be the candidate for President instead of Trump. Pence always sucks up to Trump and he always agrees with everything Trump says no matter how ridiculous it is. He is trying to hide the obvious fact Pence wants to get rid of Trump so he can have the job.
"Fear, Trump In The White House" by Bob Woodward was well done. I recommend it.
In the book "Fear" I found something equally interesting about Pence. This happened a few weeks before the 2016 election for President of the United States. Here it is. I'm betting it's true.
"Stories circulated that Pence had given Bannon a sealed letter urging Trump to drop off the ticket."
Pence's idea was he could be the candidate for President instead of Trump. Pence always sucks up to Trump and he always agrees with everything Trump says no matter how ridiculous it is. He is trying to hide the obvious fact Pence wants to get rid of Trump so he can have the job.
"Fear, Trump In The White House" by Bob Woodward was well done. I recommend it.
I wrote something for the liberal crybabies at the New York Times.
New York Times:
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, and the woman who has accused him of sexual assault said on Monday they are willing to talk to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the accusations, setting up a potentially explosive public showdown just weeks before the midterm elections.
A comment I wrote at the New York Times which will probably not be published:
If Kavanaugh really did these things back when he was a dumb teenager who got drunk then I'm concerned he might do something inappropriate with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
One more thing:
After reading the New York Times article and the comments it looks like Kavanaugh really did something very wrong. He is denying the whole thing. Not good. He should have admitted his mistake and apologized for it.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
UPDATE:
This is from the September 20, 2018 New York Times. It's about Republican assholes:
“As you are aware, she has been receiving death threats, which have been reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and she and her family have been forced out of their home,” the email said. “She wishes to testify, provided that we can agree on terms that are fair and which ensure her safety.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, and the woman who has accused him of sexual assault said on Monday they are willing to talk to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the accusations, setting up a potentially explosive public showdown just weeks before the midterm elections.
A comment I wrote at the New York Times which will probably not be published:
If Kavanaugh really did these things back when he was a dumb teenager who got drunk then I'm concerned he might do something inappropriate with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
One more thing:
After reading the New York Times article and the comments it looks like Kavanaugh really did something very wrong. He is denying the whole thing. Not good. He should have admitted his mistake and apologized for it.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
UPDATE:
This is from the September 20, 2018 New York Times. It's about Republican assholes:
“As you are aware, she has been receiving death threats, which have been reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and she and her family have been forced out of their home,” the email said. “She wishes to testify, provided that we can agree on terms that are fair and which ensure her safety.”
Fear, Trump In The White House by Bob Woodward
I recently finished reading The Shadow President, The Truth About Mike Pence
This morning, Monday September 17, 2018, UPS delivered "Fear, Trump In The White House" by Bob Woodward.
President Fucktard Trump probably will not read it. He doesn't like to read. He just likes to watch TV all day.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
This is one of the Amazon customer reviews:
4.0 out of 5 stars"Fear" Displays Why Pres. Trump FRIGHTENS Many of Us...
September 14, 2018
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
No president has been written of by more writers during his first two years as President than has the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Neither has any topped Donald Trump in his ability to polarize a nation. I, myself, find Mr. Trump a repugnant specimen of human nature. Yet, even as I curse him for his apparent lack of empathy for other human beings, I do occasionally find his approach to politics refreshing. Why?
In search of an answer for that last question, I have read most every book about the guy. Woodward’s “Fear” is probably the greatest insight we ever shall have into the psyche of America’s closest approximation to Adolph Hitler.
Because of “Fear,” I understand better as to why Donald J. Trump is the greatest threat to our republic. It is not because the man is evil or due to his radical conservative politics. It is because the man runs his operation in a manner most similar to how Jeff Bezos seems to run Amazon, I said ‘seems’ to. The difference is, Amazon is run as a controlled dynamic response to the demands of the marketplace. At any given moment, decisions are made according to a logical algorithm, at Amazon. In Trumplandia, it is according to the instinct of Donald Trump — only.
BLUSH FACTOR: There are profanities of most every sort. Still, since this is nonfiction, I hope every American reads “Fear.”
And please remember to vote in November. Whether or not you support Trump, our country needs to deal with the emotions now being stirred.
The writing in “Fear” is thought-provoking and uneven. Because of Woodward’s dependence on Deep Background, I cannot rate it five stars. I WANT to know who said what, precisely.
Still, this is the one great insight into Donald J. Trump that history will most appreciate, provided the world does survive.
Woodward has done immense research and, with greater or less success, has crammed that research into a readable narrative to help us understand the mindset of the people working closest with President Trump.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I just finished reading the Prologue. I always thought Trump is a moron but now I realize his stupidity problem is much worse than I imagined possible. He is extremely dense. He can't understand simple things. He's definitely not qualified to be president.
This morning, Monday September 17, 2018, UPS delivered "Fear, Trump In The White House" by Bob Woodward.
President Fucktard Trump probably will not read it. He doesn't like to read. He just likes to watch TV all day.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
This is one of the Amazon customer reviews:
4.0 out of 5 stars"Fear" Displays Why Pres. Trump FRIGHTENS Many of Us...
September 14, 2018
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
No president has been written of by more writers during his first two years as President than has the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Neither has any topped Donald Trump in his ability to polarize a nation. I, myself, find Mr. Trump a repugnant specimen of human nature. Yet, even as I curse him for his apparent lack of empathy for other human beings, I do occasionally find his approach to politics refreshing. Why?
In search of an answer for that last question, I have read most every book about the guy. Woodward’s “Fear” is probably the greatest insight we ever shall have into the psyche of America’s closest approximation to Adolph Hitler.
Because of “Fear,” I understand better as to why Donald J. Trump is the greatest threat to our republic. It is not because the man is evil or due to his radical conservative politics. It is because the man runs his operation in a manner most similar to how Jeff Bezos seems to run Amazon, I said ‘seems’ to. The difference is, Amazon is run as a controlled dynamic response to the demands of the marketplace. At any given moment, decisions are made according to a logical algorithm, at Amazon. In Trumplandia, it is according to the instinct of Donald Trump — only.
BLUSH FACTOR: There are profanities of most every sort. Still, since this is nonfiction, I hope every American reads “Fear.”
And please remember to vote in November. Whether or not you support Trump, our country needs to deal with the emotions now being stirred.
The writing in “Fear” is thought-provoking and uneven. Because of Woodward’s dependence on Deep Background, I cannot rate it five stars. I WANT to know who said what, precisely.
Still, this is the one great insight into Donald J. Trump that history will most appreciate, provided the world does survive.
Woodward has done immense research and, with greater or less success, has crammed that research into a readable narrative to help us understand the mindset of the people working closest with President Trump.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I just finished reading the Prologue. I always thought Trump is a moron but now I realize his stupidity problem is much worse than I imagined possible. He is extremely dense. He can't understand simple things. He's definitely not qualified to be president.
Who are we?
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
-- Carl Sagan
Who are we? We are just an upright, walking. big-brain, superintelligent big ape. We belong to the family called Hominidi. We are the species called Homo Sapiens Sapiens. We are one species of about 5500 mammalian species that exist on Earth today, one of probably 16 upright-walking apes that have existed, and the only one (except for the bonobos) that exist on Earth today. We evolved from common ancestors with the gorilla, the chimpanzees and the bonobos. We have a common past and we have a common future, and it’s important to remember that all of these great apes have come from an interesting evolutionary journey as we have. It is this journey that has been the focus of the past three generations of my family searching for fossils in Africa. When we find a fossil, we mark it with GPS coordinates, take digital pictures, then begin to excavate it slowly using picks and brushes. Let me take you back to Africa 2 million years ago, to the Rift Valley (If you want to become a fossil, you want to die in a place like the Rift Valley, where flows bring sediments that bury you fast, and later move the terrain so that your bones resurface for people like me to find them). Two million years ago, one of our ancestors lived along Lake Turkana. Homo Erectus (she shows a skull) lived alongside three other species there (picture above). Members of his species later started moving north and east, leaving Africa (90’000 generations ago) and beginning his spread across the globe. Until 30’000 years ago at least three species of hominids lived on Earth.
Who are we today? We are certainly a polluting, wasteful, nasty species, with a few nice things thrown in perhaps. We have a much larger brain than our ape ancestors. Is this a good evolution, or will it lead us to be one of the shortest-living species on Earth? What makes us different is our collective intelligence. We have reached an extraordinary number of people on this planet. We are certainly the only animal that makes conscious decisions that are bad for our species. It’s important to remember that we all have an African origin. We have a common past and share a common future. Evolutionarily speaking we are just a blip, sitting on the edge of a precipice. But we have the tools and the technology to communicate what needs to be done to hold it together. Will we do that?
-- Louise Leakey
Louise Leakey asks, "Who are we?" The question takes her to the Rift Valley in Eastern Africa, where she digs for the evolutionary origins of humankind -- and suggests a stunning new vision of our competing ancestors.
-- Carl Sagan
Who are we? We are just an upright, walking. big-brain, superintelligent big ape. We belong to the family called Hominidi. We are the species called Homo Sapiens Sapiens. We are one species of about 5500 mammalian species that exist on Earth today, one of probably 16 upright-walking apes that have existed, and the only one (except for the bonobos) that exist on Earth today. We evolved from common ancestors with the gorilla, the chimpanzees and the bonobos. We have a common past and we have a common future, and it’s important to remember that all of these great apes have come from an interesting evolutionary journey as we have. It is this journey that has been the focus of the past three generations of my family searching for fossils in Africa. When we find a fossil, we mark it with GPS coordinates, take digital pictures, then begin to excavate it slowly using picks and brushes. Let me take you back to Africa 2 million years ago, to the Rift Valley (If you want to become a fossil, you want to die in a place like the Rift Valley, where flows bring sediments that bury you fast, and later move the terrain so that your bones resurface for people like me to find them). Two million years ago, one of our ancestors lived along Lake Turkana. Homo Erectus (she shows a skull) lived alongside three other species there (picture above). Members of his species later started moving north and east, leaving Africa (90’000 generations ago) and beginning his spread across the globe. Until 30’000 years ago at least three species of hominids lived on Earth.
Who are we today? We are certainly a polluting, wasteful, nasty species, with a few nice things thrown in perhaps. We have a much larger brain than our ape ancestors. Is this a good evolution, or will it lead us to be one of the shortest-living species on Earth? What makes us different is our collective intelligence. We have reached an extraordinary number of people on this planet. We are certainly the only animal that makes conscious decisions that are bad for our species. It’s important to remember that we all have an African origin. We have a common past and share a common future. Evolutionarily speaking we are just a blip, sitting on the edge of a precipice. But we have the tools and the technology to communicate what needs to be done to hold it together. Will we do that?
-- Louise Leakey
Louise Leakey asks, "Who are we?" The question takes her to the Rift Valley in Eastern Africa, where she digs for the evolutionary origins of humankind -- and suggests a stunning new vision of our competing ancestors.
Chicago's classical radio station, WFMT. I listen to it here in Florida.
https://www.wfmt.com/listen/live-stream/
I miss Chicago, the cold winters, the gun fire, the free Lincoln Park Zoo with my favorite gorillas, and the beautiful Lake Michigan which is warm enough to swim in two months a year.
I miss Chicago, the cold winters, the gun fire, the free Lincoln Park Zoo with my favorite gorillas, and the beautiful Lake Michigan which is warm enough to swim in two months a year.
Sunday, September 16, 2018
"I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable."
This blog has about 100 Charles Darwin quotes at Charles Darwin quotes and at Some more Charles Darwin quotes.
"Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."
-- Charles Darwin
"Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."
-- Charles Darwin
The Shadow President, The Truth About Mike Pence
Yesterday I finished reading "The Shadow President, The Truth About Mike Pence" which was excellent. I recommend it.
Unfortunately the book was published before the "lodestar" thing. See the post I wrote about it at Vice President Pence is a coward, a liar, and a traitor.
Fucktard Pence is an uneducated moron. He's a science denier. Global warming makes him cry. Evolution makes him cry. When he was a congressman he gave a speech about his childish love for magical creationism. I'm not making this up. I have a post about it if people want to listen to an idiot show off his total ignorance of evolution at Vice President Fucktard Pence doesn't know what a scientific theory is. The fucktard doesn't know what science is. He knows nothing about the evidence for evolution. He was dishonest about Charles Darwin. This god-soaked anti-science know-nothing moron could be the next President of United States.
Vice President Pence has been pretending to be President Pence and that's OK with Fucktard Trump because Trump is not interested in his job. Pence visits other countries and does everything else a president would usually do. He really is a "Shadow President". Trump was not interested in selecting most of the members of his cabinet so Pence got that job which is why virtually everyone in the Trump administration is a science denier.
Pence is very good at sucking up to Trump. Pence always says nice things about Trump. No matter what ridiculous thing Trump does, Pence always agrees with him.
Pence has this idea and it might work: He is using Trump to get the president job. He is waiting for Trump to get impeached and thrown out the window. Then Pence would automatically become president without earning it.
That's what the lodestar thing was about. He wrote an anonymous editorial for the New York Times that explains how Trump's cabinet is doing what it can to prevent Trump from destroying this country. The article was an obvious attempt to help get Trump impeached. Trump is so fucking stupid he will probably never realize Pence is his enemy.
Pence is a Christian extremist. He believes all the Christian bullshit including the childish Noah's Ark genocide myth and including the totally insane end times bullshit.
Pence, after he gets the President job, will try to make America a Christian theocracy. I'm not making this up.
The Shadow President, The Truth About Mike Pence explains Pence's entire life including when he was governor of Indiana. He fucked up that job numerous times. He probably would not have been reelected if he didn't get the Vice President job.
Pence thinks his Magic Man is using Trump to help Pence become president. I'm not making this up.
Unfortunately the book was published before the "lodestar" thing. See the post I wrote about it at Vice President Pence is a coward, a liar, and a traitor.
Fucktard Pence is an uneducated moron. He's a science denier. Global warming makes him cry. Evolution makes him cry. When he was a congressman he gave a speech about his childish love for magical creationism. I'm not making this up. I have a post about it if people want to listen to an idiot show off his total ignorance of evolution at Vice President Fucktard Pence doesn't know what a scientific theory is. The fucktard doesn't know what science is. He knows nothing about the evidence for evolution. He was dishonest about Charles Darwin. This god-soaked anti-science know-nothing moron could be the next President of United States.
Vice President Pence has been pretending to be President Pence and that's OK with Fucktard Trump because Trump is not interested in his job. Pence visits other countries and does everything else a president would usually do. He really is a "Shadow President". Trump was not interested in selecting most of the members of his cabinet so Pence got that job which is why virtually everyone in the Trump administration is a science denier.
Pence is very good at sucking up to Trump. Pence always says nice things about Trump. No matter what ridiculous thing Trump does, Pence always agrees with him.
Pence has this idea and it might work: He is using Trump to get the president job. He is waiting for Trump to get impeached and thrown out the window. Then Pence would automatically become president without earning it.
That's what the lodestar thing was about. He wrote an anonymous editorial for the New York Times that explains how Trump's cabinet is doing what it can to prevent Trump from destroying this country. The article was an obvious attempt to help get Trump impeached. Trump is so fucking stupid he will probably never realize Pence is his enemy.
Pence is a Christian extremist. He believes all the Christian bullshit including the childish Noah's Ark genocide myth and including the totally insane end times bullshit.
Pence, after he gets the President job, will try to make America a Christian theocracy. I'm not making this up.
The Shadow President, The Truth About Mike Pence explains Pence's entire life including when he was governor of Indiana. He fucked up that job numerous times. He probably would not have been reelected if he didn't get the Vice President job.
Pence thinks his Magic Man is using Trump to help Pence become president. I'm not making this up.
IN MAGIC MAN WE TRUST
Here in Idiot America where I live we have these four words on our paper money and coins: IN GOD WE TRUST
We have a coin called a "dime" that's worth 10 cents. I think it's the smallest coin on this planet. Using a magnifying glass I was able to see "IN GOD WE TRUST".
On the back of a dollar bill:
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
IN GOD WE TRUST
ONE DOLLAR
This is an obvious violation of the Establishment Clause of our Bill of Rights, also known as our wall of separation between church and state. This bullshit exists because our Supreme Court refused to get rid of it.
It gets worse. Here in Idiot Florida where I live the state motto is "In God We Trust".
Also in Idiot Florida all public schools are required to display "In God We Trust" in a conspicuous place. My vocabulary sucks so I frequently have to look things up. Conspicuous: standing out so as to be clearly visible.
This bullshit, beside violating the Establishment Clause, is child abuse. Children see the god bullshit and they think it's normal. It's not normal. It's insanity.
I noticed countries like Norway and Denmark don't have any god bullshit on their currency. They also don't have any religious scum. Virtually everyone is normal, aka atheist.
IN GOD WE TRUST means there is a magical being hiding somewhere in the universe and the thing is honest. We can trust it.
The thing has never given us any evidence it is real. It has never tried to communicate with us. And of course it's not real for the same reason the Easter Bunny is not real. It's fucking impossible.
Somebody might say the in-god-we-trust is not a big fucking deal. But it is a big deal because if we let assholes for Jeebus get away with this bullshit then they will think they can force biology teachers to give magical creationism equal time with evolution in our public schools. That's why there should be zero tolerance for anything that doesn't respect our wall of separation.
We have a coin called a "dime" that's worth 10 cents. I think it's the smallest coin on this planet. Using a magnifying glass I was able to see "IN GOD WE TRUST".
On the back of a dollar bill:
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
IN GOD WE TRUST
ONE DOLLAR
This is an obvious violation of the Establishment Clause of our Bill of Rights, also known as our wall of separation between church and state. This bullshit exists because our Supreme Court refused to get rid of it.
It gets worse. Here in Idiot Florida where I live the state motto is "In God We Trust".
Also in Idiot Florida all public schools are required to display "In God We Trust" in a conspicuous place. My vocabulary sucks so I frequently have to look things up. Conspicuous: standing out so as to be clearly visible.
This bullshit, beside violating the Establishment Clause, is child abuse. Children see the god bullshit and they think it's normal. It's not normal. It's insanity.
I noticed countries like Norway and Denmark don't have any god bullshit on their currency. They also don't have any religious scum. Virtually everyone is normal, aka atheist.
IN GOD WE TRUST means there is a magical being hiding somewhere in the universe and the thing is honest. We can trust it.
The thing has never given us any evidence it is real. It has never tried to communicate with us. And of course it's not real for the same reason the Easter Bunny is not real. It's fucking impossible.
Somebody might say the in-god-we-trust is not a big fucking deal. But it is a big deal because if we let assholes for Jeebus get away with this bullshit then they will think they can force biology teachers to give magical creationism equal time with evolution in our public schools. That's why there should be zero tolerance for anything that doesn't respect our wall of separation.
"Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different after September 11th. Let's stop being so damned respectful!"
Richard Dawkins wrote this after 3,000 Americans were murdered for Allah on September 11, 2001: "Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different after September 11th. Let's stop being so damned respectful!"
I recently wrote this comment at New York Times article about the Catholic Church's out of control child abuse problem: "The Catholic Church doesn't need to be fixed. The Catholic Church needs to be completely destroyed."
My comment was not published, probably because what I wrote might offend the stupid fucking assholes who belong to the world's largest child abuse organization.
If I wrote "Islam must be completely destroyed" the New York Times would probably not publish it because I might offend terrorists.
There is a stupid idea that says it's OK to criticize anything and anyone but it's not OK to criticize the extreme stupidity of the fucktards who think a Magic Man is real. In other words it's wrong to hurt the sentiments of god soaked morons. This is suppressing freedom of speech to defend bullshit.
Fortunately at this blog I can write anything I want, for example "We should nuke Mecca."
Should we nuke Mecca? Probably not because crybabies would call it genocide. So while I'm against the idea I think it would be fun to watch.
I recently wrote this comment at New York Times article about the Catholic Church's out of control child abuse problem: "The Catholic Church doesn't need to be fixed. The Catholic Church needs to be completely destroyed."
My comment was not published, probably because what I wrote might offend the stupid fucking assholes who belong to the world's largest child abuse organization.
If I wrote "Islam must be completely destroyed" the New York Times would probably not publish it because I might offend terrorists.
There is a stupid idea that says it's OK to criticize anything and anyone but it's not OK to criticize the extreme stupidity of the fucktards who think a Magic Man is real. In other words it's wrong to hurt the sentiments of god soaked morons. This is suppressing freedom of speech to defend bullshit.
Fortunately at this blog I can write anything I want, for example "We should nuke Mecca."
Should we nuke Mecca? Probably not because crybabies would call it genocide. So while I'm against the idea I think it would be fun to watch.
This New York Times editorial was written by a Democrat who actually has a brain.
This New York Times editorial was written by a Democrat who actually has a brain. He explains why Trump could win the 2020 election because virtually all Democrats are just plain fucking stupid.
I looked at the comments. Every comment I read was written by a liberal moron who complained about the article.
"The strong economy became strong under President Obama but to deny Trump credit for it is not going to wash with most Americans. They feel a new confidence. They see it in more clients at the hardware store, more people eating out, more business start-ups."
America has the best economy in the world because of the tax reform bill which makes liberal fucktards cry. This is why we could be stuck with a moron president for 8 years. The Democrats are more dense than he is.
Here it is. Well done Mr. Roger Cohen.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
This Is Not the End of Trump
Chaos in the White House has not diminished the chances of a two-term presidency.
By Roger Cohen
Opinion Columnist
September 14, 2018
David Halberstam, in “The Best and the Brightest,” listed the “virtues Americans have always respected” as “hard work, self-sacrifice, decency, loyalty.” I don’t believe that’s changed since 1972. President Trump, in his sublime indecency, fails the test on all these qualities except perhaps hard work, yet tens of millions of Americans still admire him.
It’s tempting to dismiss this reality. It’s tempting to focus instead on the pressure building on Trump from multiple sources: the Mueller investigation, Paul Manafort’s cooperating with Robert Mueller, Michael Cohen’s guilty plea, the wins of progressive Democratic candidates, falling poll numbers. It’s tempting to think Trump’s finished, even if he’s already been pronounced politically dead countless times.
This would be a mistake. That the Democratic Party will take the House in the midterm November elections and start impeachment proceedings against Trump is plausible, even likely. It’s unlikely, however, that the Democrats will have the numbers in the Senate to convict him. This may be a positive scenario for Trump. As the victim president, or acquitted president, he’d fire up support going into 2020.
The chances of a two-term Trump presidency remain significant. I came away from a recent stay in purple-state Colorado more persuaded of this than ever. The strong economy became strong under President Obama but to deny Trump credit for it is not going to wash with most Americans. They feel a new confidence. They see it in more clients at the hardware store, more people eating out, more business start-ups.
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, is right to tell Democrats to stop “pounding away at business.” The Democratic Party is long on anger but short still of a winning message. It’s a big mistake for Democrats to have allowed founding American myths of can-do optimism and self-reliance to become the exclusive preserve of Republicans. A unifying Democratic candidate from the heartland could claw them back.
In small-town America, now synonymous with Republican-majority America, any Democratic voter gets asked why Democrats are intent on taking away American guns, jobs and individualism, and replacing them with handouts to every peeved interest group. Regular mass shootings answer the gun question easily enough (even if not persuasively to most gun owners). The other questions are more problematic.
Don Colcord, a pharmacist in southwestern Colorado and a lifelong Democrat, told me: “The Democratic Party has lost the ability to communicate with people who live in small towns. It seems to have no way of understanding their issues: how to pay bills, how to have a retirement, how to feed their families, what to do about bad schools, how to get health care, how to do better at creating new jobs when environmental concerns take them away.”
Saving the planet is important work. But an exclusive focus on environmentalism that ignores working people’s immediate needs can easily look like elitist indifference. Colcord, whose father worked in the mines, has watched in recent years as a coal-fired power plant in his region gets regulated out of existence — “and when all those jobs go and your tax base with it, the party just doesn’t care.”
In rural Colorado, Obamacare is a disaster. Insurance companies have pulled out, and when there’s only one left, premiums go way up. Few people can afford health insurance at that price. It’s perhaps the No. 1 concern of voters outside big cities. Some Coloradans worry that they will lose Medicaid if they take a job. The system is an anxiety-generating labyrinth.
Sure, if the Republican Party had not set out to destroy the Affordable Care Act, the legislation might have been amended to address its shortcomings. But on this signature issue, the Democratic Party is widely seen as the author of a policy that failed low-wage Americans. Again, this looks like elitist indifference.
Colorado has some of the worst funded schools in the country. Some have gone to four-day weeks because there’s no tax money to support them and it costs too much to run the school buses. Imagine telling the parents of kids in affluent metropolitan Democratic strongholds, sorry, we have to skip a day a week of school. But I don’t see the Democratic Party owning the education issue.
Colcord calls himself an “ultraconservative Democrat.” He supported Trump’s tax cuts for businesses but hated the tax cuts for the wealthiest, and he says the biggest reason he’s a Democrat is growing income inequality, an issue Republicans dismiss. He believes strongly in Roe v. Wade, having witnessed a 13-year-old giving birth when he was an intern in a hospital (“That really set my feelings”). He can’t stand Trump’s lies. He thinks that the country desperately needs immigration — some Colorado farms can’t find workers, thanks to Trump — and that Trump’s proposed wall is a crazy waste of money.
At the same time, he’s disillusioned with a party that can’t find a political idiom comprehensible to Americans around him. To take back the White House in 2020, Democrats would be better advised to keep their eye on Colcord than on Manafort.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
Roger Cohen has been a columnist for The Times since 2009. His columns appear Wednesday and Saturday. He joined The Times in 1990, and has served as a foreign correspondent and foreign editor. @NYTimesCohen
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 15, 2018, on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: This Is Not the End of Trump.
Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
I looked at the comments. Every comment I read was written by a liberal moron who complained about the article.
"The strong economy became strong under President Obama but to deny Trump credit for it is not going to wash with most Americans. They feel a new confidence. They see it in more clients at the hardware store, more people eating out, more business start-ups."
America has the best economy in the world because of the tax reform bill which makes liberal fucktards cry. This is why we could be stuck with a moron president for 8 years. The Democrats are more dense than he is.
Here it is. Well done Mr. Roger Cohen.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
This Is Not the End of Trump
Chaos in the White House has not diminished the chances of a two-term presidency.
By Roger Cohen
Opinion Columnist
September 14, 2018
David Halberstam, in “The Best and the Brightest,” listed the “virtues Americans have always respected” as “hard work, self-sacrifice, decency, loyalty.” I don’t believe that’s changed since 1972. President Trump, in his sublime indecency, fails the test on all these qualities except perhaps hard work, yet tens of millions of Americans still admire him.
It’s tempting to dismiss this reality. It’s tempting to focus instead on the pressure building on Trump from multiple sources: the Mueller investigation, Paul Manafort’s cooperating with Robert Mueller, Michael Cohen’s guilty plea, the wins of progressive Democratic candidates, falling poll numbers. It’s tempting to think Trump’s finished, even if he’s already been pronounced politically dead countless times.
This would be a mistake. That the Democratic Party will take the House in the midterm November elections and start impeachment proceedings against Trump is plausible, even likely. It’s unlikely, however, that the Democrats will have the numbers in the Senate to convict him. This may be a positive scenario for Trump. As the victim president, or acquitted president, he’d fire up support going into 2020.
The chances of a two-term Trump presidency remain significant. I came away from a recent stay in purple-state Colorado more persuaded of this than ever. The strong economy became strong under President Obama but to deny Trump credit for it is not going to wash with most Americans. They feel a new confidence. They see it in more clients at the hardware store, more people eating out, more business start-ups.
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, is right to tell Democrats to stop “pounding away at business.” The Democratic Party is long on anger but short still of a winning message. It’s a big mistake for Democrats to have allowed founding American myths of can-do optimism and self-reliance to become the exclusive preserve of Republicans. A unifying Democratic candidate from the heartland could claw them back.
In small-town America, now synonymous with Republican-majority America, any Democratic voter gets asked why Democrats are intent on taking away American guns, jobs and individualism, and replacing them with handouts to every peeved interest group. Regular mass shootings answer the gun question easily enough (even if not persuasively to most gun owners). The other questions are more problematic.
Don Colcord, a pharmacist in southwestern Colorado and a lifelong Democrat, told me: “The Democratic Party has lost the ability to communicate with people who live in small towns. It seems to have no way of understanding their issues: how to pay bills, how to have a retirement, how to feed their families, what to do about bad schools, how to get health care, how to do better at creating new jobs when environmental concerns take them away.”
Saving the planet is important work. But an exclusive focus on environmentalism that ignores working people’s immediate needs can easily look like elitist indifference. Colcord, whose father worked in the mines, has watched in recent years as a coal-fired power plant in his region gets regulated out of existence — “and when all those jobs go and your tax base with it, the party just doesn’t care.”
In rural Colorado, Obamacare is a disaster. Insurance companies have pulled out, and when there’s only one left, premiums go way up. Few people can afford health insurance at that price. It’s perhaps the No. 1 concern of voters outside big cities. Some Coloradans worry that they will lose Medicaid if they take a job. The system is an anxiety-generating labyrinth.
Sure, if the Republican Party had not set out to destroy the Affordable Care Act, the legislation might have been amended to address its shortcomings. But on this signature issue, the Democratic Party is widely seen as the author of a policy that failed low-wage Americans. Again, this looks like elitist indifference.
Colorado has some of the worst funded schools in the country. Some have gone to four-day weeks because there’s no tax money to support them and it costs too much to run the school buses. Imagine telling the parents of kids in affluent metropolitan Democratic strongholds, sorry, we have to skip a day a week of school. But I don’t see the Democratic Party owning the education issue.
Colcord calls himself an “ultraconservative Democrat.” He supported Trump’s tax cuts for businesses but hated the tax cuts for the wealthiest, and he says the biggest reason he’s a Democrat is growing income inequality, an issue Republicans dismiss. He believes strongly in Roe v. Wade, having witnessed a 13-year-old giving birth when he was an intern in a hospital (“That really set my feelings”). He can’t stand Trump’s lies. He thinks that the country desperately needs immigration — some Colorado farms can’t find workers, thanks to Trump — and that Trump’s proposed wall is a crazy waste of money.
At the same time, he’s disillusioned with a party that can’t find a political idiom comprehensible to Americans around him. To take back the White House in 2020, Democrats would be better advised to keep their eye on Colcord than on Manafort.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
Roger Cohen has been a columnist for The Times since 2009. His columns appear Wednesday and Saturday. He joined The Times in 1990, and has served as a foreign correspondent and foreign editor. @NYTimesCohen
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 15, 2018, on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: This Is Not the End of Trump.
Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe