<Snipped quote by Penny>
I hate to say it but of course they did.

I think its fair to say that any Republican candidate that wasn't caught sleeping with under aged girls would have won in a landslide.

<Snipped quote by POOHEAD189>

I think its fair to say that any Republican candidate that wasn't caught sleeping with under aged girls would have won in a landslide.

Definitely.

@catchamber

You seem to be operating under the misguided understanding that people are somehow not servants and subjects to God in Christianity. This is more or less stated throughout with the caveat that God, specifically through the story of Jesus, wants people to be his friend as well. The liberation you are speaking to is the liberation from sin and death, having nothing to do with personal liberation beyond that aside from any they themselves find or work toward that is in accordance to the plan. So your argument of "not being worthy of respect" is nothing greater than an argument of, "Well I don't like that.", to which I will note, "I do not care." Not only because it is a non-argument, but because it is immature and childish of a perspective. People are not as awing or worthy of a place as they think themselves; overvalued and overrated.

Continuing, the concept of free will against omnipotence and omniscience is not an actual issue. A simple example will suffice here, in that no matter what it is you choose, the greater plan has already accounted for all of your choices and will react accordingly. You might think you have won yourself a battle against God in Christianity, but all you have done is provoke a reaction. To further simplify this, it is plainly evident God operates by a laissez-faire philosophy, or that which is explicitly a "hands off"; he isn't playing chess like an amateur and moving pieces all over the board just to demonstrate he can.

Oh, you chose a passage did you? Interesting one you chose, given you have clearly misunderstood what it is talking about or the scenario it is presented in. Let us try not to play the game without context next time, it only degrades your attempt.



Strange that you chose Revelations of all examples to try that, as this sort of comes at the tail end of the entire judgment component (of which came in Revelation 20). No less, here is the part that people all love to forget, "... for the older things has passed away." and is literally titled "A New Heaven and a New Earth", followed later by “I am making everything new!”. So yes, that is accurate, it just requires the judgment of God on the soul and the death of all things to be remade anew. No small order there.

Again you parrot your demand to be respected as a human being when realistically, if we are going to play by standards of Christianity which we are debating the merit of, let us not forgot the Old Testament God who could and did literally smite people. I would have to say that by contrast the fact at all he can forgive the unforgivable, let us step aside from all the Jesus examples because those are easy to go to and people subsequently ignore them because they roll their eyes at the name, and not choose to utterly destroy men as he did in the past just for speaking ill of him or even looking upon him or his relics is a pretty large step forward in respect.

Do you know what is unworthy of respect? People who think that a force that power or grand needs to respect them. It goes to the old example of, to an ant man might well be God. He has the power to sustain them, to nurture them, to care for them, they dwell in his home and his land, but at the same time he could totally and unmercifully with little thought annihilate them. Yet the man who pays his ants no mind but avoids stepping on them, who is he? Clearly avoiding killing them is a measure respect. We could go round and round with this, but I have no intention to, I just merely enjoy a laugh at the notion people somehow deserve respect just because they are people in the context of gods and forces all powerful. To further clarify, for myself and myself alone, I view people as any other animal or any other thing, just that they have copious amounts of hubris and more intellect than wisdom.

In short, your opinion of what "deserves" and is or is not "respect" holds no water in the context of this faith or debate. Obviously to an outsider, as you well seem to be, that notion is strange but in context? That man bends knee to God is no need for thought. Neither is the fact that all problems will be solved in time, which we saw part of in Revelations, it just is not on your time. Again, I repeat that people are so obsessed with themselves that they erroneously believe it is about them. No, people are one component of the entire story, and the greater the crowd, the more negligible he individual.

@Xandrya

That is the issue with religion in place of faith if I can be honest. People have turned a very personal, introspective, insightful thing into an external process and an institution, a machine. This is to be expected of humans and you are honestly not the first, surely not the last, who I will hear this from. It is not a game of prayers and recitations, of attending church and trying to live the stereotypical "wholesome Christian lifestyle", but rather a thing explored by feeling and experience. In an institution you are exceedingly unlikely to experience this and instead more likely to feel mundanity. For that I am sorry, people have a terrible habit of poorly reflecting the message they intend.

No less that you did it not for yourself but for someone else is, without question, a major issue as to why you probably felt nothing and are in part probably somewhat resentful. Any faith, any religion, is not so much a group exercise as it is a process meant for each person. Your attendance, essentially under duress, is going to evoke more negative than positive. Speaking from a personal perspective, the people who attend just because they are being coerced into it tend to come out of it for the worse, while those who are curious and want to know more who are brought by others to a place of worship tend to flourish there.

As for people barging into lives with faith, yes, that is a sore trope, but a major factor forgotten in this day and age where man has traded his gods for his new captors of proposed knowledge and science, is that human beings cannot escape faith. It has been with them since their most primitive of existences as any amount of research into prehistory can show; man has been obsessing over the notion until recently. But now? Now people are skeptical of it and cling to their new, unofficial faiths - faith in fact alone - and snub just about anything which cannot be utterly and completely explained by fact. It creates this situation where those on either end of the isle tend to force themselves upon others; we all know that screaming athiest just as much we know the screaming Christian. We want neither at our door critiquing everything we do.

I love how most of the people that are congratulating Alabama for voting Jones are just pretending to care. And they will probably say how Alabama is still racist and inbred.

I am not sure if you were following Twitter and the trending hastags, but exactly this played out in verbatim. There was a point when Judge Roy Moore was leading that almost all of the tweets were bashing Alabamians for being "racist inbreds", then going back to congratulating them on not choosing him later on. They are just as insincere as you think they are. They care nothing for anyone but themselves.

<Snipped quote by The Spectre>

I am not sure if you were following Twitter and the trending hastags, but exactly this played out in verbatim. There was a point when Judge Roy Moore was leading that almost all of the tweets were bashing Alabamians for being "racist inbreds", then going back to congratulating them on not choosing him later on. They are just as insincere as you think they are. They care nothing for anyone but themselves.

To be honest, I wasn't aware that Twitter already done that. I was just making a prediction because most Democrats would do something like that to any republican states. Now that I have been on Twitter and read some of the tweets about the whole election, it's sad as hell. We have a whole lot of tweets that are annoying me. Users creepy worshiping black people for "saving the election." Most of the tweets either attacking white people, Republicans, or both. No wonder why they feel attacked and surrounded.

God, something that this is only the beginning. Can't wait until the 2018 midterms.

Yikes. The Justice Department released FBI messages that are clearly anti-Trump. What are your guys thoughts on the Trump-Russia investigation now?

Yikes. The Justice Department released FBI messages that are clearly anti-Trump. What are your guys thoughts on the Trump-Russia investigation now?

Never was a case to begin with just a bunch of butthurt liberals trying anything to steal the presidency to install a failure.

Yikes. The Justice Department released FBI messages that are clearly anti-Trump. What are your guys thoughts on the Trump-Russia investigation now?

This is a terrible attempt at discrediting the entire investigation via guilt by association.

Two former people on Mueller's team, who were both fired by Mueller for having 'anti-Trump bias', shared opinions in privacy before the investigation began. FBI agents are allowed to have opinions, especially on a man that has attacked the FBI several times.
Opinions commonly shared by the public. An opinion also shared by the Trump appointed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Both agents were removed before the press even learned about their 'bias'. They haven't been involved in the investigation for months now.

The deputy attorney, Rod Rosenstein is behind Mueller and sees no reason to fire him. He was the one that appointed the special council.

• Mueller was appointed by the current administration.
• Mueller was last known to be a registered Republican. He has a history of non-partisanship.
• Mueller was interviewed and considered by Trump to be the FBI Director after Comey was fired.

The investigation has led to the indictments of four people. Flynn, Manafort, Papadopoulos and Gates.

Mueller ain't going away.

---

The real concerning thing here is that the head of DOJ used their power to assassinate the character of two private citizens by leaking their text messages sent in privacy to the press.

a terrible attempt at discrediting the entire investigation via guilt by association.

Weird.

<Snipped quote by The Spectre>

This is a terrible attempt at discrediting the entire investigation via guilt by association.

Two former people on Mueller's team, who were both fired by Mueller for having 'anti-Trump bias', shared opinions in privacy before the investigation began. FBI agents are allowed to have opinions, especially on a man that has attacked the FBI several times.
Opinions commonly shared by the public. An opinion also shared by the Trump appointed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Both agents were removed before the press even learned about their 'bias'. They haven't been involved in the investigation for months now.

The deputy attorney, Rod Rosenstein is behind Mueller and sees no reason to fire him. He was the one that appointed the special council.

• Mueller was appointed by the current administration.
• Mueller was last known to be a registered Republican. He has a history of non-partisanship.
• Mueller was interviewed and considered by Trump to be the FBI Director after Comey was fired.

The investigation has led to the indictments of four people. Flynn, Manafort, Papadopoulos and Gates.

Mueller ain't going away.

---

The real concerning thing here is that the head of DOJ used their power to assassinate the character of two private citizens by leaking their text messages sent in privacy to the press.

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in [deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe’s] office that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40…”

I don't know, man. That's a pretty sketchy text message that potentially suggests launching an investigation with no proof for a prolonged period of time in order to sink him and his approval numbers.

Yes, an agent can harbor an opinion, but any eagerness to push forward because of their bias does throw some doubts upon the credibility of the investigation.

Also, some other things:

1) Good for Rod Rosenstein. So what? This does not mean Rod Rosenstein harbors no political biases or motivations of his own.

2) Good for Mueller and his party registration. So what? Joe Scarborough was/is a Republican, but that doesn't mean he follows Republican ideology to a T. Jeff Flake is a republican, but does that mean he's absolutely true to that to every single letter? Simply, the answer is no. People call people Democrats and Republicans "in name only" for a reason. Just because you are labeled or registered in a particular manner does not make you an unbiased party.

3) The public opinion is another 'so what?' moment here. Public opinion does not equate to the correct opinion.

Too many coincidences revolving around Mueller and his investigation. Far too many.

---

As it stands, I have no idea how long this investigation will go on. My opinion is that they have, and will continue to have nothing (on Trump), but will continue the investigation for as long as possible because the longer they can keep the shroud hovering above the more they can sway a decent number of the general public's thought on Trump and his administration.

Mueller's investigation will drag on for years yet. Watergate took years and there was something to find. If there is no collusion it will clearly be harder to prove a negative. They wouldn't be dealing with Flynn and Papadoplis if they didn't have something to offer but we will have to wait and see exactly what that is.

<Snipped quote by Heat>

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in [deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe’s] office that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40…”

I don't know, man. That's a pretty sketchy text message that potentially suggests launching an investigation with no proof for a prolonged period of time in order to sink him and his approval numbers.

First off. These two agents did not start the investigation. They did not run it. They were both removed from it as soon as Mueller discovered their opinions on Trump.

Yes, an agent can harbor an opinion, but any eagerness to push forward because of their bias does throw some doubts upon the credibility of the investigation.

They didn't push forward because of their bias. These messages were from before the investigation began. Questioning the credibility of the entire investigation over two dismissed agents is idiotic. Neither one has been involved in the investigation for months now.

1) Good for Rod Rosenstein. So what? This does not mean Rod Rosenstein harbors no political biases or motivations of his own.

He was a Trump apointee. He was the man that pushed for Trump to dismiss Comey.

2) Good for Mueller and his party registration. So what? Joe Scarborough was/is a Republican, but that doesn't mean he follows Republican ideology to a T. Jeff Flake is a republican, but does that mean he's absolutely true to that to every single letter? Simply, the answer is no. People call people Democrats and Republicans "in name only" for a reason. Just because you are labeled or registered in a particular manner does not make you an unbiased party.

True. But Mueller was considered by Trump to replace Comey. His track record of bipartisanship speaks for itself.

3) The public opinion is another 'so what?' moment here. Public opinion does not equate to the correct opinion.

What is the 'correct opinion' then? Your own? It shows that this is a commonly held opinion that Trump is an idiot.

Too many coincidences revolving around Mueller and his investigation. Far too many.

That website reeks of bias.

“Special prosecutors, investigators, and counsels are usually a bad idea. They are admissions that constitutionally mandated institutions don’t work.” I wonder how they'd feel about a Clinton investigation.

How many coincidences have we seen with members of the Trump administration and their ties to Russia?

---

As it stands, I have no idea how long this investigation will go on. My opinion is that they have, and will continue to have nothing (on Trump), but will continue the investigation for as long as possible because the longer they can keep the shroud hovering above the more they can sway a decent number of the general public's thought on Trump and his administration.

Well that's your (biased) opinion. The investigation has given way to indictments of several people. No one knows whats going to happen next in it. Investigations take time.

I have to ask in all seriousness, especially with the light of all the mounting proof that there is no evidence of collusion and the media giants that be admitting much of it was drummed up for attention and sales, as well as revenge against a man they hate, does anyone sincerely believe there is wrong doing here anymore? Every "Ah-ha!" moment at this point has been an absolute and complete nothing. On the contrary, this investigation has inadvertently revealed more corruption and falsification of their own isle than anything legitimately criminal or questionable on behalf of the President or his prior campaign.

@The Harbinger of Ferocity I'll refer you to Penny's quote

Mueller's investigation will drag on for years yet. Watergate took years and there was something to find. If there is no collusion it will clearly be harder to prove a negative. They wouldn't be dealing with Flynn and Papadoplis if they didn't have something to offer but we will have to wait and see exactly what that is.

Not only that, but the question that remains is, if Trump or his staff staff never had anything to hide, how come they never give a full story?
Like the meeting with Donald Jr. and the the Russian lawyer. Why did it take weeks for them to admit it was not just him, but in fact 8 people in the room? It took multiple occasions of questions and reports to find out something Donald Jr. could have just outright stated.
This is a consistent trend within the Trump administration. If they do have nothing to hide, they're doing a poor job at it.

@SleepingSilence

It isn't a major problem here yet, but I agree with you. It's ridiculous and those people trying to impose sharia law should go back to wherever the hell they came from. Then again, the media probably didn't give those incidents that much attention and that's why people are oblivious to it. But that's my reasoning as to why a number of atheists here don't pay Muslims any mind; it doesn't necessarily mean I agree or disagree with them.

But to answer your question, I was a believer up until my early to mid twenties. I only attended church for another year as a non-believer, or at least a skeptic, before I stopped attending altogether. I hope that makes sense?

@mdk

Well yes, they make the conscious decision to follow x religion in the end, whether their parents have any influence or not. Ultimately, it's that individual's decision to make (unless you know, they threaten you with death or whatever), not their parents. But I mean, there's a higher probability that if you're from a certain nation, you're more than to follow its customs than the customs of any other nation. Not saying that's the case for everyone, but it's the correlation not causation argument.

@The Harbinger of Ferocity

It's true what you say. The mind is a powerful thing, and the more I slipped away from my faith, the more it became "mechanical" and it just snowballed from there. Same for someone seeking fulfillment. Maybe they find it because they want it so badly? It's tricky. It surely wouldn't hurt for me to find some spiritual peace, because this damn stress might as well be killing me, but if not through religion, then how?

First off. These two agents did not start the investigation. They did not run it. They were both removed from it as soon as Mueller discovered their opinions on Trump.

And then when there were inquiries about their removal, there was a significant amount of stonewalling.

They didn't push forward because of their bias. These messages were from before the investigation began. Questioning the credibility of the entire investigation over two dismissed agents is idiotic. Neither one has been involved in the investigation for months now.

1) We don't know that.

2) Time of message does not really matter, they were apart of the investigation at the beginning.

3) Questioning the removal of the two agents wasn't exactly handled with transparency. The lack of transparency surrounding removing agents with extreme anti-Trump bias is more than a good enough reason to question the credibility of the entire investigation. Call it idiotic all you want; whatever.

He was a Trump apointee. He was the man that pushed for Trump to dismiss Comey.

And if he did, he may have had political motivations to do so. Trump's appointing of him may have been a mistake on Trump's part. There's still nothing of serious relevance here.

True. But Mueller was considered by Trump to replace Comey. His track record of bipartisanship speaks for itself.

You call it a track record of bipartisanship, I say there is no real record of bipartisanship. Your word. My word. Fox's word, or CNN's word. This one comes down to perspective.

What is the 'correct opinion' then? Your own? It shows that this is a commonly held opinion that Trump is an idiot.

Who knows? You think you're correct. I think I'm correct. You might be right. I might be right. We might both be half right, or a quarter right. All I'm saying with that particular statement was that popular consensus does not equate to accuracy.

The question still remains: so what? I can think anyone's an idiot on any given day just like any other person. Who took the poll? Where did they take the poll? What was the political ideology of the person answering the poll? I don't care if you or anyone thinks Trump (or someone else) is an idiot because it has no substantive meaning with regards to legitimate discussion revolving around meaningful data. I'm not sure what you intend to prove by saying the commonly held view of the public is that Trump is an idiot. Are you saying that he's an idiot because someone else thinks so?

That website reeks of bias.

“Special prosecutors, investigators, and counsels are usually a bad idea. They are admissions that constitutionally mandated institutions don’t work.” I wonder how they'd feel about a Clinton investigation.

Probably all websites reek of bias. Philosophically speaking, people are biased. CNN or the Huff Post can get something right just as much as Fox News or Breitbart can.

And to answer your wondering: who can know? That's speculation of the author's thoughts with little to no evidence to prove your harbored beliefs as to what their feelings might be. I'm inclined to agree with their sentiment as to one thing: we shouldn't need special prosecutors, the system shouldn't be so corrupted and untrusted that we can't investigate and imprison criminal wrongdoing amongst our politicians who have done wrong.

How many coincidences have we seen with members of the Trump administration and their ties to Russia?

It's not a bad (or criminal, even) thing to have "ties" with Russia, so long as they're not ties that are of a criminal nature. Many of these ties have different meanings depending on which side you ask. Manafort and company may indeed be guilty of something, but we've got no idea what. Manafort was removed long ago. Flynn was removed after he'd misled the VP. In any case, these are ongoing stories with an ending we're only grasping at through the dark.

Well that's your (biased) opinion. The investigation has given way to indictments of several people. No one knows whats going to happen next in it. Investigations take time.

That's the reason for the line separation. Indeed, it is my biased opinion. There is no such thing as an unbiased opinion. I can only take what there is available at hand and then make my own judgment call on the matter. And I already stated that I have no idea how long the investigation will go on or what will be the end result. I'm taking a guess, that's all. Your guess would, as I'd suspect, probably be different than my own.

Here's an opinion piece from a website I hardly ever agree with. There's what, I would call, a lot of relevant information in there regarding the credibility of the investigation.

@The Harbinger of Ferocity I'll refer you to Penny's quote

Not only that, but the question that remains is, if Trump or his staff staff never had anything to hide, how come they never give a full story? Like the meeting with Donald Jr. and the the Russian lawyer. Why did it take weeks for them to admit it was not just him, but in fact 8 people in the room? It took multiple occasions of questions and reports to find out something Donald Jr. could have just outright stated. This is a consistent trend within the Trump administration. If they do have nothing to hide, they're doing a poor job at it.

The implication is that Watergate is equivalent to this. They are different cases, with a different set of facts, so in the end bringing up Watergate doesn't have much relevance other than that yes, investigations can take a long time.

Also, when you're involved in those sort of legal situation: you don't often say much because people have accidentally incriminated themselves before when they didn't do anything. There is reason for saying this, or not saying that.

In the end, this doesn't matter so much because nothing to date has been released on the Trump, Jr. meeting to prove, well, anything. As of this moment, there is no proof of information having exchanged hands.

ADDED: We're getting into speculation of motives and what not here, and that's a shady as fuck place to get because once again, we're like blind people grasping about in the dark. The focus should be: crime committed? crime not committed? prove it.

@POOHEAD189

When ever does the current administration admit anything to their opposition? Look at the lengths they have gone to in order to prevent leaking. Everything they do behind the scenes is under absolute lock and key, utter secrecy, because anything they do - even going back to the moon - is somehow fuel for controversy and spite. As for having "Nothing to hide.", that seems to be the real issue, that they have nothing to hide. But this comes back around, do you enjoy people spying on you? Everyone makes a great point of the hysteria about "net neutrality" and internet privacy, see all the issues taken with the National Security Agency alone, so why would this be any different? Let us not forget the man has been called "one of the most transparent administrations in history" and has complied with all the requests for information.

The Donald Trump Jr. meeting, as we have come to learn was a set-up by his opposition in an attempt to trap him for having a meeting. I remind you that they were indeed there under entirely different pretenses that had nothing to do with intelligence gathering about their opponent. If that were untrue, the argument of collusion would have been proven outright. Donald Trump Jr. politely saw himself out the moment it turned that direction and this has been publicly validated; it was posted directly to Twitter even.

I am not going to point fingers at previous administration, because everyone rolls their eyes at it, but thus far? There is significantly less scandal here still compared to "scandal free" presidencies and ones that promised transparency and still have holdovers who refuse to honor it - to the point of ignoring court orders, repeatedly choosing to plead the fifth, decline to appear, or submit documents for Freedom of Information requests or investigative agency demands. That is suspicious to me. The President and his inner circle being completely tight-lipped? Not an ounce of shock down the spine here.

Look to the fake news parade and how many times they have jumped the metaphorical gun with believing they had proof on this investigation; no one knowing anything is for the better, because apparently, if they even so much as think they know something, they fire it off and hope they are right. That is not how an agency, federal or news, should be doing business.

@Xandrya

People do not find fulfillment by forcing it into themselves, they need work their own way into it. The same thing can be said with forced conversions of old - how many people truly admitted and surrendered themselves to their new faith, rather than play along so as to avoid torture or death? Few, I think.

As for finding a way to decouple from stress, as I said before, turn not to religion but to spirituality. There is nothing wrong with being a spiritual person and coming to find what you personally believe so long as you are not imposing it on others. It truly is for the better to feel it out for yourself and not turn to the institutions of man who claim to know about what "faith" is; you already feel a bitterness there it seems, correct me if I am wrong, but my advice is to honestly discover it for your own benefit. Provided you are not forcing anyone else to participate or doing any harm, I believe with good reason you might be pleasantly surprised.

Either way, I hope that offers some solace.

They are different cases

Wait, you mean Muller isn't investigating President Nixon?!

crime committed? crime not committed? prove it.

Apparently Muller is working on it.

Also, when you're involved in those sort of legal situation: you don't often say much because people have accidentally incriminated themselves before when they didn't do anything. There is reason for saying this, or not saying that.

The very best you can say is that Trump's campaign had sketchy Russian connections (Mannafort) and sketchy Turkish connections (Flynn). It is easy to imagine that Trump, a relative new comer to the political stage wouldn't be aware, or at least aware of how problematic, this could become. I think its completely understandable that his legal counsel is ultra cautious. I haven't really been following the story but I haven't heard they are obstructing.

.