LordBy

So if you fold a piece of thin crust pizza to lend it structural integrity while eating it, then it becomes a taco.
Or is a taco just a folded pizza, and therefore a hot dog is pizza by the communitive property of cuisine?
Hot dog is pizza, sandwich is calzone, burrito is stromboli, casserole is lasagna, mac and cheese is spaghetti, everything is Italian!

telephoneofmadness said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Israel

See the link above. Many Muslims don't recognize Israel as a legitimate country (therefore boycott Israel). I suspect the woman in the article has parents from one of the countries that doesn't recognize Israel.

The BDS movement is different than the countries who don’t recognize Israel so this is apples and oranges.

BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) recognizes Israel, but seeks to apply pressure for them to cease colonization, withdraw from occupied territories, and recognize Arabs in the country to be citizens with equal rights. This is a legitimate political position.

Again, I’m not an Israel basher, but the situation on the ground is fraught with problems.

Israel has been occupying territory since 1967 to assure its security in a region hostile to its existence. Three wars have been fought over the last 70 years, all of which were existential crises for Israel. There have also been frequent battles/skirmishes/attacks which demonstrate an ongoing threat.

Conversely the occupied territories have been occupied for 2 generations (at what point is it no longer an occupation?), the residents are not allowed citizenship rights, and the government builds settlements in those territories in a creeping annexation which contradicts positions that the territory is merely temporarily occupied and not intended to be part of Israel.

It’s a tough situation with valid grievances on both sides, which is why it hasn’t been resolved yet despite numerous efforts to do so.

asmallcat said:

Frakkin T said:

tom_g said:

Someone went to Prague - someone paid hackers.  Cohen is cooperating, it will all come out.  42% will fall to high 30s. 

The country will vote at record levels in 2020.

It is all coming out. I know it seems hopelessly optimistic to think Mueller will take him down but what happens when he can't cry witch-hunt anymore, when he loses Fox News, Drudge? At what point does McConnell decide Trump is a liability for his chances to keep the senate in '20 and cut bait? 

Neither of these things will happen vis a vis Russia. It will just turn from "It never happened" to "it doesn't mater," and the base will keep eating it up. And McConnell can't abandon Trump because he'll have a massive schism in his party, anyone who abandons Trump will get challenged from the right and have a very good chance of losing in deep red states. 

Agree. Politically it’s less abandoning Trump than it is destroying the GOP as it would create a massive, unbridgeable, schism in the party. I happen to believe it would be better to destroy the party and start from scratch than to allow it to continue to become the party of angry white males with authoritarian tendencies, but that’s me.

The destruction of the party would abdicate national offices for several election cycles while a new national coalition coalesced, which would allow a lot of the progressive agenda to be enacted. So it’s not just a Trump or no-Trump choice, it’s a Trump or [Medicare for All, Carbon Tax, Minimum Wage Increase or Universal Basic Income, Tax Increases on Businesses and the Upper/Upper-Middle Classes, Labor Protections, Immigration Reform, etc.] choice.

A conservative party is a healthy thing for the country. The GOP is no longer that party, Trump’s rhetoric more-resembles George Wallace’s American Independent Party of 1968. It’d have to be and expanded Libertarian or Constitution Party, a drastically-reformed Republican Party, or something new.

tom_g said:

I think a potted plant will be able to beat Trump in 2020.  Biden would win.

I think you have too much faith. Trump’s approval rating is still north of 42% despite of, or because of, the dumpster fire of his administration. Don’t underestimate his ability to gin up a crisis to scare folks into voting for him, and to promise all kinds of goodies if he wins for a carrot (remember the 10% middle class tax cut from before the midterms? Apparently Trump doesn’t).

And if anyone could win, then the Democrats shouldn’t play it safe anyway. Run a young charismatic progressive of color on a platform of expanding Medicare down to age 50 or something if not Medicare for all.

tom_g said:

Is there any aspect of the American missionary trying to preach Jesus to a remote people on an Indian island that should be discussed here?

Are they murderers?
Is it 'their' island?
Can they be happy without the internet?
Should Jesus people be teaching Jesus stuff to them?

Just kind of a cautionary tale, no?

Arrogant white Christian male with a remarkable white-savior-complex bribes his way onto known hostile island of brown heathens to deliver them from their willfull ignorance and evil. He knew he might die, but he thought it was worth it.

I’m not saying that his death was right, but it seems as much a suicide as a murder. And it’d be an interesting thought-experiment to imagine the tribe defending their actions as self defense against a hostile foreign invader based on the long history of Christian first contacts with indigenous peoples and the resulting outcomes.

Hell he was an existential biological threat if this population has been as isolated as described. He could have been carrying any number of pathogens against which an isolated population would have no immunity.

How many more will die, on either side, if they try to go in and retrieve his remains?