Trump

[gravy]

Stop trying to pin everything on religion, it's really tedious.

They spent most of that interview talking about the Catholic Church's position on abortion.

KlaxonCow: "Look, bloody religion again."
gravy: "Stop unfairly trying to pin it on religion!"

Let's be clear then:

It is in the end about punishing women for their lack of morals.

More precisely, it's about punishing women for disagreeing with God.

Let's not downplay that this is basically a form of theocracy and that it's very, very much debatable that these so-called "morals" are actually, in fact, genuinely moral.

I'm replying to this nonsense.

Having a pro-life stance isn't coupled to a religious belief and a religious belief in a pro-life stance isn't coupled to a lack of morals. An idiot was an idiot is the issue here. A fuckwit using a calculator badly doesn't mean the calculator is a fuckwit.

You seem utterly incapable of parsing any position that has any nuance.

Sorry if I am breaking the orthodoxy that religion is the ideology that's magically above all criticism, but they are openly talking about punishing women

Is that -really- what you're doing?

Are you criticising the Catholic Church for saying women should be punished by secular law if they have an abortion? Because they don't say that.

Trump is an idiot taking an idiots position which your extending to the Catholic church. There's LOTS to criticize Catholicism for but Trump having a brain fart isn't their fault. Man, he's even disowned this bullshit since. Does that mean he's not a Catholic now and in more trouble with the pope?

To be clear (because your above BLAH BLAH BLAH is rife assumptions about what I'm saying that are idiotically incorrect) my position is:

* I'm an atheist
* I'm not pro life
* I very much do not think RELIGION == IDIOTS == LACK OF MORALS == ANTI SCIENCE
* Rubbishing religion is rubbishing an integral part of the human experience. Like rubbishing all emotional response

And it's the last bit is the reason I'm taking exception to your dogmatic knee jerk Dawkinisms.

Hopefully that'll help your next 1,000 words at least start from a base that has some basis in reality. Amazing that you don't like what you see as a lack of objective reality in spiritual belief but you're more than willing to write a shitload of text on the basis of a point of view that bear's no relation to trivially observable reality.

As for the rest of it, I accept your point that your comment only makes sense with the context of watching the video and then jigsawing a less didactic statement between out of the two. Which again is amazing as it seems you've written too little this time.

[gumboot]

I used to assume that religion isn't anti-science, but now I'm in the U.S. I'm not so confident. The question of sending an atheist child to a catholic school came up, and while anywhere else in the world I might be happy with the quality of the education that would come from that, in the U.S. I fear it could be an anti-science education.

I've no idea how I can test that prejudice.

[gumboot]

Stop trying to pin everything on religion, it's really tedious.

They spent most of that interview talking about the Catholic Church's position on abortion.

Trump is using religion as a shield and to distance himself from his own stupid words, and you see that and you think that religion is to blame.

So basically Trump's bullshit actually works on you.

[gravy]

Putting Trump's behaviour down to Catholicism is like blaming Islam for 9/11

[gumboot]

Worse, really, because at least Islamic radicals show some sign off being devout in their own deluded way. Trump is pretty clearly not entrenched in Catholicism in any way at all.

[Darkflame]

Trump is using religion as a shield and to distance himself from his own stupid words,

Trump probably see's himself as infallible all the time. Even the Pope only thinks that in certain situations.

[gumboot]

[gravy]

Worse, really, because at least Islamic radicals show some sign off being devout in their own deluded way. Trump is pretty clearly not entrenched in Catholicism in any way at all.

And after doing the scantest of research (I HAD A LOOK AT WIKIPEDIA) he's a Presbyterian. lolz

So I amed my original statement to: Putting Trump's behaviour down to Catholicism is like blaming bumblebees for wobbly shopping trolleys.

[pogo]

Elizabeth Warren on Trump. She is the person many people wanted to run for president as a Democrat. Some were worried she would be too left wing but Sanders is even more so and seems to be doing OK. Warren would have been a better candidate than Clinton or Sanders, IMHO, and is always very watchable.

She makes the point which I’ve read a few times now that Trump is only rich because he inherited a fortune. If he had not become a property mogul and just stuck it in the stock market he would be as rich or richer. So all his business activities, the bankruptcies, the cons, the losses borne by other businesses, individuals and taxpayers were for nothing. Just a big money wasting ego trip.

But she also has a plausible motive for him running. After all he is not a natural Republican, is not a front for some other billionaire donor. Warren says Trump is doing it as he can see all the laws coming to clamp down on Wall Street (Elizabeth Warren’s area of expertise) and wants to stop them. What better way to do so than as the CEO of the USA? No wonder he seems to be making so much of it up as he goes along, he really does not care about foreign policy, abortion, immigration.

[Darkflame]

She also has a few nice answers on Quora;
www.quora.com/profile/Elizabeth-Warren

She has a sort of "intelligent fury" to some of her responses that I like.

[pogo]

Warren is a one off. She became a national figure while in academia for her expertise and activism on the problems of Wall Street. It helped that she was around when shit hit the fan in 2008 and people were looking for answers from others than the Captains of Industry. Soon after she was persuaded to run for the Senate, and has continued her crusade within the Senate, having an impact far greater than she should as a new and junior Senator.

She was seriously talked about as a Democratic candidate for president. But she did not run or even really investigate it. Of course everyone expected Clinton to run and win, and Warren may have thought she would have no chance. Sanders though has shown how vulnerable Clinton is from the left. Maybe Warren just did not want it; she is a very effective Senator. A shame, as I think though they should beat Trump neither Clinton or Sanders is a strong candidate.

[gumboot]

And after doing the scantest of research (I HAD A LOOK AT WIKIPEDIA) he's a Presbyterian. lolz

So I amed my original statement to: Putting Trump's behaviour down to Catholicism is like blaming bumblebees for wobbly shopping trolleys.

I hate wobbly shopping trollies so much. Fucking bumblebees. There should be a wall!

[PFVA]

He's ranting against NATO countries now.

He wants NATO countries to pay more for the defense and if they don't want to they can just leave. He wants even back payments. It would a big change from the times whee no one could leave Nato. Of course even if he would get elected that would not happen. He is just saying what Republican voters say all the time in conversation and even in the local media.

He also wants South Korea and Japan to take care of their own security.

If this guy would win and do everything he says, which i doubt, that's just electoral talk he would be a disaster above all for the US.

[pogo]

This is long but well worth a read. It places Trump and his supporters in a strong American tradition, associated with previous presidential runs and one presidency (Jackson, so they are Jacksonians). And even though Trump is unlikely to win his supporters are not going away.

The re-emergence of the Jacksonians

Trump’s followers may not articulate it very well, and they may too easily allow their anxiety about immigration and trade to spill over into nativism and hatred of foreigners, but they do have a strong case that makes them in fact part of a venerable history. Trump is almost certainly not going to resolve any of these issues for them – the historical precedents are pretty clear on that point – but it isn’t stupidity that drives them anyway to Trump. It is the recognition that because anyone that belongs within the political establishment has clearly proven himself unwilling or unable to resolve any of these issues, then gambling on someone “outrageous”, who they identify as outside the political establishment, is perfectly reasonable because it has no possible downside. Their logic is the logic of successful hedge funds: when there is no cost to being wrong, then you must gamble, no matter how small the chance of being right.

[zip accident]

The re-emergence of the Jacksonians

Avast says it's infested.