The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[W. Niederhut]

7 minutes ago, Mark Knight said:

Historically, nations which have shown favoritism toward one religion over another have been nations filled with strife. Theocratic societies are generally not democratic; they're usually somewhat dictatorial.

I oppose Christian Nationalism in America for the same reasons I oppose Muslim Nationalism in America, or even Pastafarian Nationalism in America. I'm not anti-Christian; I simply don't believe that anyone should be held to the interpretation of Christian law, as even different denominations of Christians can't agree as to which interpretation of Christian law should be followed. The same with Sunni and Shiite Muslims. No matter whose religious laws are codified, someone else's freedoms are trampled upon. Hell, Christians [Catholics and Protestants] in Ireland have trouble getting along, to this very day.

My beliefs are my beliefs. My religion should be no more binding on you, in a legal sense, than your religion is binding upon me. 

 

Indeed, Mark, and religious tolerance/freedom is a very old American ideal, appearing originally in Roger Williams' charter for the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations colony in the 1630s.  Williams advocated religious tolerance and freedom in response to the rigid Puritan theocracy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

(Which is why the oldest synagogue in the U.S. is Newport, Rhode Island's Tauro Synagogue.)

The ideal of religious tolerance and freedom-- and the separation of church and state--was later championed by Thomas Jefferson and our Enlightenment era Founding Fathers, many of whom were Deists.

So, it is, indeed, a myth that the U.S. was founded on Christianity-- although the Puritan Bay Colony had been.

 

[Matt Allison]

(Reuters) - Russian government-backed social media accounts nurtured the QAnon conspiracy theory in its infancy, earlier than previously reported, according to interviews with current and former Twitter executives and archives of tweets from suspended accounts.

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-qanon-cyber-idUSKBN27I18I

[Matt Allison]

 

[Matt Allison]

 

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

 

There should be a low IQ section of the forum where you can post this stuff, Matt. I want to encourage you. 

[Benjamin Cole]

15 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

 

Matt:

The Columbia Journalism Review, generally far left, has published a scathing four-part series condemning media, but especially the NYT, for the Russiagate hoax. 

From the CJR: 

"In January 2018, for example, the New York Times ignored a publicly available document showing that the FBI’s lead investigator didn’t think, after ten months of inquiry into possible Trump-Russia ties, that there was much there. This omission disserved Times readers. The paper says its reporting was thorough and ‘in line with our editorial standards," wrote Gerth. "Another axiom of journalism that was sometimes neglected in the Trump-Russia coverage was the failure to seek and reflect comment from people who are the subject of serious criticism. The Times guidelines call it a 'special obligation.' Yet in stories by the Times involving such disparate figures as Joseph Mifsud (the Maltese academic who supposedly started the whole FBI inquiry), Christopher Steele (the former British spy who authored the dossier), and Konstantin Kilimnik (the consultant cited by some as the best evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump), the paper’s reporters failed to include comment from the person being criticized."

----

The Times appeared to legitimize Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy who authored the infamous dossier, claiming he had "a credible track record" while Steele's so-called "primary" source was telling the FBI that Steele "misstated or exaggerated" in his report and that information stemming from Russia was "rumor and speculation."

---30---

For example, Trump explained his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, mentioning the "Russia thing" as being a "made-up story" to NBC's Lester Holt but acknowledged the firing would likely "lengthen out the investigation."

"The media focused on the ‘Russia thing’ quote; the New York Times did five stories over the next week citing the 'Russia thing' remarks but leaving out the fuller context. The Post and CNN, by comparison, included additional language in their first-day story," Gerth wrote.

In another instance, the Times avoided covering some of the more damning texts from Peter Strzok, who wrote "there’s no big there, there" shortly after the appointment of Special Counsel Robert  Mueller, something Gerth noted was covered by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. 

---30---

"There is no big there, there"--Strzok. 

From CJR: "But neither Baquet nor his successor, nor any of the paper’s reporters, would offer anything like a postmortem of the paper’s Trump-Russia saga, unlike the examination the Times did of its coverage before the Iraq War."

So what was the real reason for the protracted Russiagate episode? And who was behind it? 

Worth exploring is if Russiagate was essentially a regime-change op, or soft coup, with a semi-witting, complicit media---we have seen that twice before, with JFK and RMN. 

Unfortunately, the CJR four-part series appears to be behind a paywall. A synopsis of sorts is here:

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/prestigious-liberal-watchdog-condemns-new-york-times-russiagate-coverage

I think we should dispense with Russiagate as example of Trump corruption, and engage the topic as an example of intel state-media relations. 

 

 

 

[Matt Allison]

1 hour ago, Chris Barnard said:

There should be a low IQ section of the forum where you can post this stuff, Matt. I want to encourage you. 

And that's about the best rebuttal anyone could ever expect from such a beacon of intelligence as yourself, Chris..

[Matt Allison]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

From the CJR: 

Ben-

Are you saying Paul Manafort delivering polling data to Russia was a hoax?

Are you saying that Russia hacking the DNC and RNC was a hoax?

Are you saying that Trump and Sons getting funding from the Russians was a hoax?

Are you saying that the recently-arrested Russian asset embedded in the NYC FBI is a hoax?

You should stop reading America-hating, Putin buttsniffers like Greenwald and Taibbi; there's a reason no real journalism outlet will hire them now.

 

[Benjamin Cole]

Just now, Matt Allison said:

Ben-

Are you saying Paul Manafort delivering polling data to Russia was a hoax?

Are you saying that Russia hacking the DNC and RNC was a hoax?

Are you saying that Trump and Sons getting funding from the Russians was a hoax?

Are you saying that the recently-arrested Russian asset embedded in the NYC FBI is a hoax?

You should stop reading America-hating, Putin buttsniffers like Greenwald and Taibbi; there's a reason no real journalism outlet will hire them now.

 

Matt:

The Columbia Journalism Review is more or less saying Russiagate was a hoax story. They are separate from Taibbi and Greenwald, although I regard both as excellent independent reporters.

As stated, I think the Russiagate story now needs to be examined as an intel-state soft-coup or regime-change op, with a complicit, semi-witting media. 

Manafort gave some private-sector polling date to someone who was working for Deripaska? So what? Is that a crime? A national security breach? 

Ponder the CJR four-part story.

Has CJR also become Russian stooges and anti-American? Or, is CJR raising serious issues about a hoax story? 

 

 

[Matt Allison]

30 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Manafort gave some private-sector polling date to someone who was working for Deripaska? So what? Is that a crime? A national security breach? 

As this was the only one of my points you felt safe in discussing, I will ask you this:

Do you think it's ok that Trump's campaign manager Manafort gave polling data about America voters to the Russians so that the KGB could more specifically target their propaganda operations?

[Matthew Koch]

4 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

You were telling me how liberals are. You were generalizing and I showed you how so in each case.

Just because a single liberal, or a group of liberals, says or believes something, doesn't mean that all or most liberals believe the same.

 

 

(I never said he wasn't.)

You cherry picked a liberal pundit who lambasted the founding fathers as though it proves that most liberals are like that. Well, we're not.

BTW, Mystal is never a guest on the prime time MSNBC shows I watch (Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Lawrence O'Donnell).

 

 

I didn't say that. Here is what I said:

"Defund the Police is a radical idea that is primarily supported by minorities. Most people reject it and my news source, MSNBC, rarely mentions it."

What I said is true. "Defund the Police" is old news and I rarely see it mentioned on MSNBC. I mean, sure, they reported on it a long time ago when it was new. But that was then and now is now.

But the important point is that it was always a fringe idea held by minorities that was never going to happen. And that's why the video you produced was about reforming the police -- something that could conceivably take place in Congress -- but certainly not about defunding police.

 

 

Christian Nationalism is where Christians mix their religion with politics and want to run the country like a theocracy. It has no place in a democratic republic like America.

 

You don't even know what a "Liberal" is and are not using in the right context. "Just because a single liberal, or a group of liberals, says or believes something, doesn't mean that all or most liberals believe the same." Since you don't even know what the term means here you go: 

liberal

adjective

respecting and allowing many different types of beliefs or behavior: 

a liberal society/attitude

 

You are not a "Liberal" just like most of the people here who have TDS, you are a partisan leftist Democrat who parrots the propaganda he see on MSNPC and doesn't think it's biased. That's why the constant projecting like "White Supremescy" or "Christian  Nationalism" aka projecting that your enemies are fascists and must be shut down. You don't think for yourself which you showed by your lame replies to being contradicted with your own propaganda. Defund the police killed alot of people, which you don't seem to care. There was no cherry picking I could put up a lot of more Clips of Joy Reed pushing the 1619 project. Do you even know what 1619 project that is Sandy??? I'm sure you don't, it's that our country was actually founded in 1619 by Slave Owning Racists. Which is the back bone to Critical Race theory propaganda Democrats what to poison children with after they teach them about Queer Theory and being Binary. These are the attacks on the family I mentioned earlier that you couldn't understand because MSNPC didn't tell you what to think..

[Matt Allison]

And you might want to avoid such fake news "sources" like Zero Hedge...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2022/02/15/us-reportedly-accuses-financial-blog-zero-hedge-of-publishing-russian-propaganda/?sh=18a92f26d2c4

[Matthew Koch]

13 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

And you might want to avoid such fake news "sources" like Zero Hedge...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2022/02/15/us-reportedly-accuses-financial-blog-zero-hedge-of-publishing-russian-propaganda/?sh=18a92f26d2c4

That article cites unnamed intelligence officials similar to CNN during the Russian Collusion Hoax. 
This debunks the claim but nothing is ever enough for the rube of the scam the mark is the last to realize he was scammed.. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinton-did-it-robby-mook-michael-sussmann-donald-trump-russia-collusion-alfa-bank-11653084709

Edited February 1, 2023 by Matthew Koch

[Steve Thomas]

Christian Nationalim? Go peddle that to the American Indians. I'm sure they'd love to hear all about it.

Steve Thomas

[Ron Bulman]

 

Froze in here.  Over 1-2" of ice.  Dry, grainy pellets coming down, bonded on the ground.  Thankfully not sticking on the power lines like five or six years ago.  No power for three days, no heat.  140 accidents in FW/D, 16 rollovers.  I-20 W of Fort Worth backed up for 20 miles with 18 wheelers that can't get up hills.  Same thing E of Dallas on it near Tyler  (where GHWB spoke on 11/22/63).  A trooper reportedly walked 10 miles knocking on windows of drivers who had fallen asleep, including 18 wheel drivers who had crawled into the bed behind the cab.  I'm thankful the electricity is still on and the water hasn't frozen up.  But dreading the next likely new record electric bill.  When natural gas prices are falling significantly.