Random Politics & Religion #19

What if I told you I don't have an agenda...

It's almost impossible without a lobotomy...

Even if you plan to lay around in your pajamas all day and drink beer.... then you have an agenda

grocery lists, to do lists, vague idea of what to do with yourself next... are all technically agendas

even hikikomori have an agenda

Meh. For the past eight years, Repubs blamed everything on Obama, even ***that wasn't even Obama's fault, like the deficit which was created by two underfunded wars on two different fronts.

The latest push is to implant the idea that the kids NEED to get involved in politics, no more hugging puppies in the quiet circle inside the safe space they need to get out there and get involved!!!

We discuss politics a lot at home and the subject of Betsy Devoss came up and my son made the talking point statement that she went to private school....

I WENT TO PRIVATE SCHOOL YOU LITTLE ***!! HOW DO YOU THINK WE WOUND UP HERE IN THE SUBURBS!? /frypan

The latest push is to implant the idea that the kids NEED to get involved in politics, no more hugging puppies in the quiet circle inside the safe space they need to get out there and get involved!!!

Dinner has long been a daily debriefing in our home, to strip away the weird personal head trips the teachers often try to lay on my kids.... I remember when my older son was afraid to turn on the water faucet because his teacher told him it was "wasting water" and I had to go find his homework from earlier in the week about the water cycle to prove the hole in the bottom of the sink wasn't a black hole that destroys water...

I'm sure it's easier to go along and say betsy devoss is a moron because she went to private school... but then what about obama's kids they went to private school are they morons?

No, they are super intelligent mega geniuses....until they vote republican and then they are evil uncle tom traitors...

tldr pretend you're a democrat, lie to the pollsters and everything will work out trump.

Only if their the right preapproved certified progressive politics

My statement as to what's happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden.


Give the public a break - The facts I don't like media is trying to say that large scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully. NOT!

scary part is people are actually buying this

Milo Yiannopoulos lost his keynote speaking slot at the Conservative Political Action Conference after tapes surfaced of the right wing provocateur and senior Breitbart editor advocating for sexual relationships between “younger boys and older men.”

“Due to the revelation of an offensive video in the past 24 hours condoning pedophilia, the American Conservative Union has decided to rescind the invitation,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the group which sponsors CPAC, in a statement Monday afternoon. The group called Yiannopoulos to “further address these disturbing comments,” but defended its original decision to invite him as a nod to “the free speech issue on college campuses.” ...

josiah thought sweden was an island!

people are idiots and donald trump is our god!!!

Two Swedish police officers interviewed in a news report referenced by US president Donald Trump about crime and immigration say their quotes were taken out of context.

The controversial segment from a film by filmmaker Ami Horowitz, which was shown on Fox News on Friday and claimed immigration had led to a rise in crime in Sweden, made headlines after Trump (much to the surprise of Swedes) used the Nordic country as a cautionary tale in a speech on Saturday.

But two Stockholm-based police officers featured in the clip, talking about crime and the accessibility of weapons, have sharply criticized how they were portrayed and how their quotes were used in the interview.

"I don't understand why we are part of the segment. The interview was about something completely different to what Fox News and Horowitz were talking about," one of the police officers, Anders Göranzon, told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper on Monday. "It was supposed to be about crime in high risk areas. Areas with high crime rates. There wasn't any focus on migration or immigration."

He said neither he nor his colleague Jacob Ekström recognized the image painted of Sweden in the report, which has been criticized in Sweden for being riddled with inaccuracies and false claims.

"We don't stand behind it. It shocked us. He has edited the answers. We were answering completely different questions in the interview. This is bad journalism," Göranzon told Dagens Nyheter, which said it had attempted to contact Horowitz for a comment.

"It feels like hell. The real questions should be shown along with our answers. We don't own the rights to the film, but the end result is that we don't want to talk to journalists after this. We can't trust each other."

Asked if he had done anything to stop the film, he said: "We just saw it. What can we do? One thing is talking to you. The excerpt they showed doesn't say anything, we answered a different question. We don't stand behind what he says. He is a madman."

When US president Donald Trump this past weekend mentioned events in Sweden, he was referring to a TV broadcast about Swedish migration policy. Several claims in the broadcast are questionable, and some downright wrong. Swedish news agency TT has looked at the facts.

1. Claim: In the introduction to the Fox News segment, the presenter says: ”In 2016 alone the country accepted more than 160,000 asylum seekers”.

Fact: In 2016, nearly 29,000 people sought asylum in Sweden, a very sharp decline compared to 2015, when nearly 163,000 sought asylum, according to the Migration Board. In 2016 there were nearly 112,000 asylum decisions taken, some 67,000 were approved.

2. Claim: "They feel it is their moral duty to open their borders to all and any refugees that want to come to them”, says filmmaker Ami Horowitz in the interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Fact: In November 2015 Sweden sharpened border controls to temporarily include arrivals from within the EU, followed by temporary identity checks in January 2016. Together with actions in other European countries, led to a dramatic decline in the number of asylum seekers (see point 1).

In 2016, asylum policies were tightened in a number of ways, which meant that Sweden went from having the EU’s most generous asylum laws to the EU minimum level, according to the Migration Board.

3. Claim: "There was an absolute surge in gun violence and rape in Sweden once they began this open door policy” says Horowitz.

Fact: The number of killings in "the criminal world" has increased from an average of 4 per year 1990–1994, to 14 per year from 2010 to 2014, in the entire country of 10 million people. In 2015 the number is preliminarily estimated at 28, according to criminologist Michael Rying at the Police Authority.

Several such shootings took place also in 2016, but the overall rate of deadly violence in Sweden is still about 1 per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 5 per 100,000 in the US, according to the FBI.

The number of reports of rape has increased. However, because of several changes in sexual crimes legislation, and a belief that the propensity to report sexual crimes is increasing, it is difficult to compare the numbers over time.

Self reported female victims of sexual crimes number between 1 and 1.5 percent during the period 2005–2012. In the latest survey, in 2015, the figure had risen to 3 percent, according to the National Crime Prevention Agency. The responses say nothing about the type of sexual offenses.

4. Claim (about immigrant suburbs): "These are areas that cops won’t even enter, because it’s too dangerous for them. This is the policy of the national police authority in Sweden" says Horowitz.

Fact: Untrue. On the contrary, the police have strengthened their presence in several areas.

"There are no areas that the police do not go in to. In a report from 2015 the police describe 15 particularly vulnerable areas. These areas are characterized by, among other things, the difficulty for the police to fulfill its duty. There are no guidelines that the police should not visit these areas" writes Johanna Blomqvist, spokesperson for the national policeforce, to TT.

5. Claim: "The government has gone out of its way to try to cover up some of these problems”, says Horowitz.

Fact: "The Foreign Ministry and the embassies are working continuously to spread an accurate and fair picture of Sweden. Unfortunately, we see a general tendency that the incidence of false information is increasing," foreign Minister Margot Wallström writes in an email to TT on Monday.

6. Claim: "Sweden had its first terrorist Islamic attack not that long ago, so they're now getting a taste of what we have been seeing in Europe already" says Horowitz.

Fact: This probably refers to suicide bomber Taimour Abdulwahab, who blew himself up at the corner Bryggargatan and Drottninggatan in central Stockholm over six years ago (December 11th, 2010). No one else was injured. In an audio file that Abdulwahab emailed to TT, the security police (Säpo) and his family the same day, he wrote that "The Islamic state" exists in Sweden and Europe, and that its "actions will speak for themselves."