Summations Only

I believe that the Religious Right defines that as secular humanism. At least that's what they defined "secular humanism" to be since the 1980's.

Somewhere today I saw someone quote somebody quoting the second half of the original Pledge of Allegiance which was later replaced by the current one written by a Socialist:

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We give our heads and hearts to God and our country; one country, one language, one flag!

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The gestures of the first half was to touch your forehead then your heart with your right hand. For the second half (" ... one country, one language, one flag!") the right arm was extended outwards in what we now consider a Nazi salute.Does not bode well for our country. Perhaps I'd better start brushing up on my heel-clicking.Edited by dwise1, : Added "... the second half of ... "

But seriously. Trump is a salesman first and foremost. He will sell you a pig in a poke without even thinking about it. Of course, there comes a point where you open that poke and look inside to see that there's no pig there, that you have been cheated, but by that time the guy who had sold you that pig in a poke is long gone with your money.Trump is still selling America a pig in a poke. Slowly but slowly America is going to open that poke and look inside to discover that he has lied to them and has cheated them.One word: Trump University. Did nobody learn from that?

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A family story in case you don't understand the expression.When my father was 8, his family moved to Texas. His mother sent him to the general store with a shopping list. The "old woman" behind the counter, about 18 years old, asked him "What's your'n?" which he misunderstood to be "urine" which led to her boxing his ears (in those days, the community's duty was to beat your child every time it dared to misbehave in any manner). As he was sitting outside crying, a man passing by asked him what was wrong, being a non-Texan understood the situation, and explained it to the poor kid. So now he had all the items on the shopping list and was trying in vain to carry them away in his arms. The "old woman" asked him if he wanted a poke. No! He had been hurt and traumatized enough, so he didn't need for her to poke him! But she insisted, saying that he needed a poke and she was going to give it to him.A poke was a sack to carry your goods in.

You forgot to include the part where, yes, she actually did win the popular vote. By about 3 million. Not the electoral vote in which low-population states are given more say than the high-population states, so she did not win the election. But she still did win the popular vote by a sizable margin.It shouldn't matter, except that it takes away any Trump Administration claim of having an overwhelming mandate. And it certainly does seem to matter to Trump and his fragile ego. It seems to matter far too much. It seemed that in just about every speech he gave since the Inauguration he would brag about his electoral win being the biggest (not by a long shot!) and the crowds at his inauguration being the biggest (again, not by a long shot!) and claim that Clinton's three million vote popular victory was due to voter fraud committed by three million illegal aliens.Sorry, but Trump is obviously mental. A President must be able to take all kinds of criticism and Trump has proven to be incapable. He makes an outrageously false statement or insults the leader of another country and his entire staff has to scramble to perform damage control. After effectively laying the ground for another war with Mexico (adding a few more lines to the Marine Corps Hymn), Tillerson and Kelly are down in Mexico trying to undo the damage that Trump had done. Mexico is concerned about how their people are being treated and that the military should not be involved and Tillerson and Kelly assured them that it is not a military operation. Just in time for Trump to boast that it's a military operation.If this kind of caca estupida had been written into a political satire, nobody would believe it because it's far too outlandish. But this stupid shit is real, far too real.marc9000, you won't understand this, but I'm including it for the others.There's a German comedian, Dieter Nuhr, who has a stand-up comedy special on Netflix, "Nuhr in Berlin" -- literally, it means "Nuhr in Berlin", but it also sounds like "Nur in Berlin" which means "Only in Berlin." It's all in German, but is sub-titled. Overall the subtitles work well, except for where he tries to make pedestrian signs more gender-neutral, but you need to understand German grammar (the "ausgedehntes Eigenschaftswort", "extended adjective"). Sehr komisch!At one point towards the end, he asks whether there are any neo-Nazis in the audience. Well, it's possible that one had wandered in not knowing what was going on. And now he's sitting there completely confused and not knowing what's going on. All he can think is, "Long sentences!!!!!" ("Lange Stze!") Yeah, they cannot handle long sentences. What's the longest sentence you can think of that Trump has used?

"Who, what, where, when, how, and why?" That is what we were taught in junior high journalism class. And that the very first paragraph of every article needed to answer or address each of those six questions. Then the rest of article explained those answers and filled in background information.Similarly, in English composition classes you should have been taught that the first paragraph of an essay must contain a synopsis, a statement of what the essay is about. An affliction of our times. Yes, headlines were always intended to grab the reader's attention to get them to start to read the article (then the who-what-where-when-how-why first paragraph would get them to continue reading). And the need for sensational headlines has always been known and exploited.But then the news stopped being a "loss leader" and became part of the ratings race. By now expecting one's news programming to bring in revenue instead of accepting that it will be a revenue loss (thus freeing journalists to do their work), the "news" has become little more than another form of entertainment. Thus, as everybody with any amount of depth cannot help but to have noticed, most "news" coverage is of that network's other TV shows, especially "reality" shows.But as "news" moved onto the Internet, other factors have come into play. It's called "click bait". You have sponsors who pay you for every time somebody clicks on your link, so you do whatever you can to motivate people to click on your link. In order to do that, they make the "headline" as sensational as they possibly can. Then others also do it, so you have to become even more sensational and it escalates from there. One example of that escalation is where you are offered a list, so you have to click on each and every item in that list, thus racking up larger numbers of clicks that get you paid. Another example are these "You cannot imagine how she looks now!" or what deceptively looks like "This celebrity just died" when no such thing has happened. Or other variations on that theme (eg, "why this celebrity had to disown their adult child...").That's the world we live in. It's economics. It's marketing. Just become smart about it.Or do you have something against capitalism? Are you some kind of filthy socialist?

Three times or even more I've tried to properly quote marc9000. Even I have no explanation why that had been rendered impossible. Shall we try yet again? Well, here are those "above responses to dwise1" Message 494.I'm sorry. I wanted to itemize those "above responses to DWise1". But they all turn out to be so pathetically idiotically wrong that it absolutely boggles the mind that any sentient being could ever possibly have considered it.Edited by Admin, : Fix message link.

Studying up on the traffic laws in Germany, I found that you are not allowed to let your car idle for more than 30 seconds. Somewhere I also read that many cars in Europe are designed to shut their engines off after idling for about 30 seconds.I believe that practice would also reduce CO₂

As far back as the 1980's when the Religious Right gained prominence, I could not at all understand their claims that the founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, were based on Christian doctrine.The Declaration of Independence is an unabashed denunciation of the Divine Right of Kings in which God had placed them in their office so opposing their rule is to oppose God Himself. Furthermore, the ideas that it advocates are the rights of the governed, that they may choose to create their own government to rule themselves for their own benefit. Religious Right propaganda described such ideas as "secular humanism".The Religious Right's political mentors were the Christian Reconstructionists whose goal was to replace the US Constitution with an Old Testament theocracy. Besides theological differences (premillennialism versus postmillennialism), Christian Reconstructionists wanted to use generations of educational efforts to bring the majority of Americans to the point of choosing an Old Testament theocracy -- the home-schooling movement was a major target of theirs to create that new generation. In contrast, the Religious Right wanted to achieve that goal immediately through force of law, whether the citizens wanted it or not.Back in their heyday, a 1980's Christianity Today article quoted prominent Christian Reconstructionists as declaring concepts of human rights as being the products of Satan and of explicitly advocating demanding their own religious liberty in order deprive everybody else of theirs.The Declaration of Independence very clearly advocates human rights. Christian Reconstructionists opposed human rights. Since Christian Reconstructionists were the Religious Right's political mentors, do we need to ask what their position on human rights are?The Christian Reconstructionist movement has been declared extinct, though much of their dream lives on in Dominionists (admittedly the term used by their detractors rather than by themselves), who include Ted Cruz' father and, arguably Ted Cruz himself ... and very likely VP Pence as well.So then, yes, I would think that the actual founding principles of the USA would be antithetical to conservative Christianity.

But somebody equally moronic is. No, I take that back. Somebody even more moronic. And unstable.I remember when Dubya Bush first got in. Next drill weekend a fellow chief, a Religious Programs CPO (RPC), expressed his excitement that a born-again Christian was in the White House. I pointed out that that would mean that we have a believer in the Apocalypse with the power to bring about the Apocalypse. Suddenly he was no longer as excited. He should have talked with a veteran first before launching into that fantasy. Yes, we do have some ordinance that is very accurate. For example, there's the B-52. Still servicing long after retirement age and it still hits its target 100% of the time, the ground. Now, does the asset that we want to destroy happen to be where the bombs fall? We don't know; that depends on intelligence, on knowing where the targeted asset actually happens to be.Add to that collateral damage. In every attack, especially in civilian environments, there is always collateral damage. How much collateral damage is acceptable in order to get that one single asset you are after? Take out an entire building that you think he's in? Take out an entire city that you think he's in? Blanket an entire country that you think he's in? And if he's hunkered down in a hardened shelter that can survive a blanket attack, how do you ensure that you still get him?Veterans are aware of those things. It's part of our training, a part of our way of life. Things that we think about a lot. All civilians know is what they see in the movies, the action flicks. It's like trying to learn about evolution by watching X-Men movies or learning about science by watching other really bad sci-fi B-movies. They just fill your head with bullshit. Comic book level mentality. Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos!Plus, in the real world actions have consequences. You nuke another country and then you have to deal with its allies. Have you ever heard of World War One? Entangling alliances all over the Continent and then some Serbian hot-head shoots an Austrian archduke. Blackadder sums it up rather nicely at Blackadder How did World War I Begin ... paraphrasing, but you can listen to the original at that link: "The idea was to have two vast opposing armies, each acting as the other's deterrent ensuring that there could never be a war. But there was a flaw in the plan. It was complete bollocks."So we nuke all of North Korea. What happens next? They had allies, so those allies attack us (not to mention what licks North Korea can get in during the initial action). So we attack them. Then their allies attack us. And so on and so forth. Where does that stop?Stupid civilians like marc9000 never get that far, but veterans do. We think about those things. It's part of our professional experience. Those stupid civilians seem to never understand that every scenario involves people dying, innocent people dying.Here's a little secret. Veterans want to survive. We are ready to serve and make the ultimate sacrifice, but we also want to live to tell the story. Send us into a necessary war and we will go because it is necessary. Send us into complete bullshit and we will still go because it is our duty, but it's going to play hell on our morale.But it seems that stupid civilians like marc9000 can never understand what's at stake. All they know are the action movies. We need to get them all to serve so that they can learn what's what.

Trump is a moron whose utterances are either lies or empty bluster. We know that all too well and the world knows that too. Including North Korea. That is part of the problem.

Actually, there is a very simple solution to this entire "North Korea problem" "fake news". Have North Korea allow Trump to build a hotel or golf course in North Korea. In an instant Trump will become best buds with Kim Jong Un and will not blink an eyelash at anything that ass-wipe says or does.If it lines Trump's pocket, it's good enough for Trump. Screw America.

Basically, this has gotten to the level of the two "alpha males" (please allow Trump this classification for argument's sake) making a big show over who has the larger penis.Sorry, but Trump loses both small hands down. Asian stereotypes notwithstanding.

marc9000, if you are such a fucking idiot, why do you even bother to post in public in order to demonstrate what a fucking idiot you are?Do please state a synopsis of your service record.Mine: USAF active duty, six years, Cold Warrior serving on a SAC base in the Northern Tier. US Navy Reserve (admittedly, the name did change part-way through my tenure), 29 years, retired CPO. In the heavy bombardment mode, that is precisely what the B-52 was designed to do. And it did so 100% of the time.Looking at other USA air-to-surface ordnance, the success rate is lower. 0.7, 0.1, 0.95, 0.15, 0.85, 0.75. Actually, there was one other with a 100% success rate: AS-3 Kangaroo. A nuke. As the old horseshoes adage goes, "close doesn't count except for hand grenades and nukes."B-52 heavy bombardment targeted the ground and all the ordnance released did in fact hit the ground. 100% success rate each and every time. Suck that up, butter-cup. As a matter of fact, yes I do have an idea of what had happened then.The scenario in question is the hunting down and elimination of the country's leader through military action.Japan 1945. The country's leader was not hunted down and eliminated by military action. In the face of our nuclear arsenal (the wad we had completely shot by the time we had reached Nagasaki), Japan surrendered. Just what the fuck does that have to do with North Korea who has a nuclear response of its own?Libya 1986. Yes, the Gulf of Sidra Yacht Club ... the US Navy has informal patches for that evolution. Was Gaddafi ever a target of that assault? No. So then just what the fuck does that have to do with your blatherings? Yes, I do. DO YOU???? Obviously not! From marc9000's linked source:

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Republican military veterans.

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I believe that we have already established that Republicans are brain-damaged.In contrast, what do all military veterans say? Why doesn't marc9000 quote them?

I remember very well one of Reagan's much-touted tax cuts. My taxes doubled! And the same thing happened to almost everybody else I talked to about it.Whenever a Republican starts talking about "tax cuts", I get very worried. The US Navy even has an acronym for it, BOHICA ("Bend over, here it comes again.")

The problem is that when you have two world leaders engaged in an intense and escalating penis-size contest (which Trump will naturally lose) with all weapons out and cocked, you only need a single accident, a single itchy trigger finger. Bedford Incident (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOll3v55Dmo):
Captain Widmark: "If he fires one, I'll fire one."
Ensign Danno: "Fire one!"Blackadder, WWI, on how WWI began (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGxAYeeyoIc -- from memory):
Capt. Blackadder: "So the idea was to have two massive opposing armies facing each other to ensure that war could never happen."
"So what went wrong?"
Capt. Blackadder: "The whole idea was complete bollacks."