President Trump

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Argumemnon said:
I didn't ignore it. Your further response was about the armed forces, which was NOT what we were discussing, as you now admit above ("in the hands of citizens"). Your response quoted above didn't answer my question, which wasn't about their belief but yours. I'm asking you if you think armed citizens would make a difference against a dictatorship.
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I already answered that - Yes, I think they would. I've answered that repeatedly. I don't follow what you're looking for that I'm not answering :(
 
Emily's Cat said:
I already answered that - Yes, I think they would. I've answered that repeatedly.
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Repeatedly?

Emily's Cat said:
Yes.

His supporters are exactly the cohort of people who deeply believe that we have the second amendment in order to defend ourselves from usurpers and tyrants. They firmly believe that it is the duty and obligation of the citizenry to protect themselves from a government that overreaches.
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This is your first response, and it answers that his supporters are the sort of people who believe this. This is not the answer you now give. Nor was it the question I asked. When I pressed you for an answer, you said this:

Emily's Cat said:
Yes - the military are citizens too, and a large number of active duty take their oath to defend the constitution pretty seriously. To disarm the populace, Trump would have to use the military... and the military isn't going to follow that order.
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Again, this isn't what we were discussing. And when I said you were moving the goalposts, you said this:

Emily's Cat said:
:confused: How am I moving the goalposts? I thought I did answer your question. The answer was "Yes". Then I went on to provide at least some of my reasoning for that answer of "Yes".
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This refers to the first answer, which as we've seen answers a different question. Then we quibbled about who read who's post and I made another attempt to explain it, after which you now say "yes", without further qualification, which presumably means that YOU think it would make a difference.

This is the FIRST time you answer the question, Cat. You can go back and read the posts yourself.



Now, why do you think it would make a difference?
 
dudalb said:
A lot of people would say that your equating Athiesm with "Science, Logic an Rational Thought" is wrong.
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Science, logic, and rational thought are the opposite of Faith and the essence of Atheism.
 
Minoosh said:
Well, responding in kind probably isn't going to work. How about responding with reason?
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Reason has already been tried.

Honestly, this whole claim is patently ridiculous. On one side, we've had well paid, famous right wing commentators who have mocked and ridiculed anyone they disagreed with for decades (Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, etc, etc, etc) and on the other side, a few posters on an obscure forum. Claiming that this atmosphere of insults and mockery can be blamed on people responding to the loggers and Coulters requires partisan blinders.
 
Emily's Cat said:
Anyone who doesn't live in a big city is a racist? Solid logic there.
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No just trump voters. Trump voters were either too uniformed to know he was racist, racist enough to view it as a positive or just didn't care.

So what is the least offensive view of them, being dumb or tacitly condoning racism? Those are your two best options. Which is it?
 
Emily's Cat said:
Enough, ponderingturtle. Stop demonizing me. I did not vote for Trump. I didn't vote for Clinton either, but please stop acting as if my failure to vote for the person you liked best gives you the moral authority to crap all over me.
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You didn't care about his threats to the constitution enough to do anything about them. I don't expect that to change, you have demonstrated what you care about.
 
acbytesla said:
I think that is the narrative pushed on right wing radio stations, but has little basis in truth.
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I've sen it time and again on this website. Does ISF represent a microcosm of extremely non-standard liberals?

acbytesla said:
I'm an atheist Emily. The least electable demographic there is. I've spread the word that science logic and rational thought is best. Yet I'm more vilified for my stance than I would dream of doing to Christians. Supposedly it is us liberals that are waging a war against Christmas when nothing could be further from the truth.

Yes, I am guilty of mocking the baker who refuses to make a gay couple a wedding cake or issuing a license as if that is exercising their freedom of religion. I got news for you, it ain't.

It's a phony excuse to try and discriminate against others. I dont tell you who you can marry or what you can do with your body, what right does Middle Americans have to tell my neighbors who and what they can do?

I want EVERYONE to prosper and live their own lives to the fullest how they best see fit. It ain't us liberals telling rural America that they can't. We're just saying you have no rights to tell the rest of us we can't.
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I am also an atheist, and I'm fairly liberal. I'm not a democrat though, nor am I republican. I tend to be fiscally conservative and highly suspect of government expenditures, but massively supportive of social liberalism.

I have no objection to you mocking the baker who refused to bake a gay cake. Nor do I have any objection to people deriding the clerk who refuses to do her job and issue licenses. I do, however, have a problem with people over-generalizing the actions of those people, and proceeding to scorn and ridicule *all republicans* or *all people who voted for Trump* or any other faceless collection of people. The baker is a singular person, being judged for his specific actions. The clerk is a singular person being judged for her specific actions. The random guy who lives in a state whose electoral votes went to Trump hasn't necessarily done anything to merit scorn.

Perhaps I am a bit tetchy at the moment. I've spent a few years here on ISF, arguing for women's and minority's rights, speaking against privilege, and supporting LGBTQ rights. And yet, in this thread, I've had scorn directed at me. I've been told that I don't care about gay people, I don't care about minorities, that I am accepting of and tacitly supportive of racism, sexism, and general bigotry. This has been heaped on me, not because I voted for Trump - I didn't. I've been the target of this ire only because I did not vote for Clinton.
 
Emily's Cat said:
With firearms? No. With voice, with petition, with protest, with appeals to my local and state legislature yes.
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And if the justices he appoints sides with him you will go along with it. Just invalidating your own argument for guns along the way.
 
wareyin said:
Ah, my mistake. Responding in kind to someone's insults and mockery is going to prevent that person from seeing my point of view. Letting that person insult and mock the experts is the best way for that person to come around to the view that the experts just might know what they are talking about. How could I have missed such a simple concept?
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Nobody in this thread has insulted of mocked you - you are NOT responding in kind. Furthermore, who cares if they mock the experts? You are not the target of their mockery, and responding to them with more derision isn't going to change their minds. All it does is guarantee that they will not listen to you, or anyone like you.
 
Emily's Cat said:
Sorry, ponderingturtle, it's not immediately clear to me what "that" refers to in the highlighted above. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious, but I'm having trouble interpreting your post :)
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Private email servers. Next you will be expecting the executive to not punish the spouses by blowing their cover as NOC CIA agents.
 
The Atheist said:
I confidently predict it won't be either.
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Careful out on that limb there.

wareyin said:
Reason has already been tried.

Honestly, this whole claim is patently ridiculous. On one side, we've had well paid, famous right wing commentators who have mocked and ridiculed anyone they disagreed with for decades (Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, etc, etc, etc) and on the other side, a few posters on an obscure forum. Claiming that this atmosphere of insults and mockery can be blamed on people responding to the loggers and Coulters requires partisan blinders.
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There's insults and mockery, then there's claiming everyone who disagrees with you are racists, sexists, homophobes, etc.
 
CNN headline just now; Trump wants Top Secret Clearances for his children.

No, just... no. There are laws and rules and regulations surrounding who gets security clearances, and your adult children who (theoretically) will have nothing whatsoever to do with your administration because they will be running your company are not on the list for access, and for good reason.

Say it happens; say they get TS clearances. They then are able to theoretically turn around and turn a staggering profit with Trump's business solely because they have access to strategic intelligence that tells them in advance who is a good country to invest in and do business with and who is not. This is nepotism at its worst, IMO, not to mention illegally (I think) profiting off of information that no other business would have access to.

I sincerely hope someone explains this to Trump, using the smallest possible words, that this is a violation of multiple laws, rules, and regulations and it is (hopefully) not going to happen. Hell, technically speaking the President himself doesn't exactly get granted a security clearance, as far as I'm aware; yes he gets the intel, but it's pared down to the smallest possible chunks of only the most important information he needs in order to make a decision, so the Office of Personnel Management doesn't exactly give the President a security clearance in the same way they do the hundreds of thousands of workers in the government agencies and military. By law, persons with a security clearance are prohibited from having dealings with foreign businesses and governments; none of Donald Trump's children fit that bill since they will be running an international business that deals with multiple countries businesses and governments.

If they actually get those clearances, I will come as close as I have ever come to actually quitting my job and renouncing my security clearance as I have EVER come in nearly fifteen years of having one. This is an utter travesty and completely unfair to the multiple hard-working government personnel who had to get their clearances the hard way.
 
Emily's Cat said:
The liberal platform has always preached tolerance, respect for human dignity, equal treatment, etc. It has always spoken out against disenfranchisement, disparate treatment, etc.

Within recent years, however, it seems that there's been a huge increase in the amount of intellectual arrogance, derision, and insult directed at their political opponents. This smacks of hypocrisy to most people. If you want to further an agenda of equality for all and respect for all, then you don't do that by actively seeking disenfranchisement of half the country. You don't do that by actively insulting, mocking, and deriding half the country. You don't do that by insisting that half the country should be ignored.
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And that excuses voting for a racist how?

Edited by jsfisher: 
<snip> Edited for compliance with Rules 0 and 12 of the Membership Agreement.
 
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Craig B said:
Will he really build a wall to keep out the Latino rapists? He better! Will he expel three million illegal immigrants? He better! Will he impose restrictions on terrorist Muslim visitors to the USA? He better! Is he going to lock up Crooked Hillary? Cos if he don't the rednecks are going to write him off as yet another traitor to the cause. A Commie Liberal. And they're will look like complete dupes and fools, voting for this lying wimp, which is going to make them plenty mad!
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You left out time. Even if Trump starts to wimp out, his staff will spin it somehow. And remember, his fans are, to a large extent, low-information voters. It will take at least a year before the cumulative failures start to pile up to be noticeable. A LOT of damage will have been done before the general populace notices.
 
phiwum said:
There are very few who would support wishing that half the country be ignored.

That said, respect for others does not include respect for ill-informed opinions. Liberal values need not include giving face to those who doubt the moon landings are real or those who deny the validity of Cantor's theorem or those who happily claim that Trump tells it like it is and also, don't worry, he doesn't really mean what he says.

Sorry, respect for others doesn't mean treating ignorance as if it's just as good as informed reason. And if that comes off as elitist, well, then I'm an elitist, because I value methods that tend to lead to truth. Indeed, this value is the entire basis of this forum.
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No, it doesn't mean treating ignorance as if it's just as good as informed reason.

But it needn't come off as elitist.

Allow me to toot my own trumpet for a bit. Pretty much none of you on this forum know anything at all about the insurance industry, actuarial science, or how insurance and pricing actually works. Not a thing. You are all woefully ignorant. The amount of completely bass-ackwards quackery that gets spouted with respect to insurance is shocking. If I took your approach, I wouldn't bother trying to explain and educate. I wouldn't lend some information when it's relevant. I wouldn't provide useful new data to the conversation. I would simply sit back and criticize you all, mock you for being so ignorant, and tell you that your opinions on ACA are so completely idiotic and divorced from reality that it's just not even worth my time to engage with you. I could confidently suggest that you should all keep your ignorant mouths shut and let your betters discuss these things that you clearly don't understand.

Somehow I think that approach would have been less successful that the path I chose.

My additional knowledge of a topic makes me exactly that - more knowledgeable on that topic. It does not make me a better person. It does not give me license to mock those who don't have my knowledge - even if those people refuse to believe what I tell them, even if they insist on sticking to their incorrect information.
 
Sabrina said:
CNN headline just now; Trump wants Top Secret Clearances for his children.

No, just... no. There are laws and rules and regulations surrounding who gets security clearances, and your adult children who (theoretically) will have nothing whatsoever to do with your administration because they will be running your company are not on the list for access, and for good reason.

Say it happens; say they get TS clearances. They then are able to theoretically turn around and turn a staggering profit with Trump's business solely because they have access to strategic intelligence that tells them in advance who is a good country to invest in and do business with and who is not. This is nepotism at its worst, IMO, not to mention illegally (I think) profiting off of information that no other business would have access to.

I sincerely hope someone explains this to Trump, using the smallest possible words, that this is a violation of multiple laws, rules, and regulations and it is (hopefully) not going to happen. Hell, technically speaking the President himself doesn't exactly get granted a security clearance, as far as I'm aware; yes he gets the intel, but it's pared down to the smallest possible chunks of only the most important information he needs in order to make a decision, so the Office of Personnel Management doesn't exactly give the President a security clearance in the same way they do the hundreds of thousands of workers in the government agencies and military. By law, persons with a security clearance are prohibited from having dealings with foreign businesses and governments; none of Donald Trump's children fit that bill since they will be running an international business that deals with multiple countries businesses and governments.

If they actually get those clearances, I will come as close as I have ever come to actually quitting my job and renouncing my security clearance as I have EVER come in nearly fifteen years of having one. This is an utter travesty and completely unfair to the multiple hard-working government personnel who had to get their clearances the hard way.
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Somehow I think Donald will walk this one back quick.
That sound you hear is GOP experts telling Donald it is not going to happen.
 
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