Claim: Pope will Convert President Trump to Climate Action

Hopefully not. The smoke and mirrors only work if it keeps the focus on the political fluff so no one notices how many regulations, etc are being ripped from the books. Let us hope the media continues following the smoke and mirrors, not the actual work being done.

“Some people think DT is safe for now.”
I tend to think so, too. None of the things the Left and MSM are exercised about, the Flynn deal, and talking to Comey about Flynn, seem to have put Trump in jeopardy at all.
Flynn may have done something illegal, I don’t know, but Trump is not involved in it because if he were you can be sure anything connecting Trump to Flynn would already by out in public, and Comey himself said *noone* had tried to interfere with the investigation into the Russia/Trump collusion, and he said this to Congress three weeks after Trump and Comey met and Trump supposedly tried to influence the investigation.
Those are the only two things the Left and the MSM can hang their hats on, and it is flimsy indeed, so I’m not too worried about a Special Counsel looking into these matters.
It’s the Left that should be worried about the Special Counsel. They have all sorts of things to hide including Hillary colluding with the Russians for financial gain. Her husband Bill got $500,000 for one speech in Russia right after Hillary ok’d selling 20 percent of U.S. uranium to Russia. Yeah, let’s look into that.
Ths only thing Trump is not safe from is cowardly, self-serving Republicans who seek to please the MSM and the Left more than they seek to serve their constituents. 2018 is fast approaching. Trump and his 62+ million supporters will be active in the next election. Never Trumpers and cowardly Republicans better watch what they say and do over the next year, or they might be in for a big surprise come next election day. We are watching you, and many of you are coming up wanting. If you abandon Trump, we are going to abandon you because by abandoning Trump you are abandoning us, too.

TA
A couple of things strike me about you comment.
Firstly, Trump ain’t daft, he knows he’s an unpopular president, however, my belief is, he’s happy to deal with all the accusations and crap now, rather than later in his tenure.
As I understand it, Clinton was impeached with a popularity pole rating of 70%+, Trump is, I believe, around half that at the moment. And forgive some of my terms here, I’m a Brit, but as I understand it, Clinton’s opponents couldn’t muster the necessary two thirds of the senate to carry through Clinton’s impeachment. Trump may be unpopular, but as I understand it, the Senate majority is in the Republicans favour, so it’s almost a racing certainty that even if Trump is impeached, the two thirds majority is unlikely to be achieved.
As I say, my simplistic evaluation of a government I can’t pretend to have much knowledge of.
As for the Pope, it seems the AGW debate has become such a profitable political fishing pond, that he’s decided to get the Churches sticky mitts on the subject, for the RC churches political, and undoubtedly, financial benefit, under the pretext of science; which the church has never acknowledged, otherwise the bible would be consigned to a nice fairy story.
Nor do I imagine Trump will be swayed by the Pope on any religious issue with AGW, nor scientific, nor financial, because I suspect he neither knows of the science, nor cares.
He see’s an opportunity to save billions of $’s, get Americans back to work, and encourage them to work as hard as the Chinese. In short, he’s doing what a POTUS should be doing, being more concerned with his own country, and his responsibilities to it, than to the lilly liberal, green, perception of life – just give everyone everything and the world will be a peaceful green land of milk and honey.
Life’s tough, the greens need to understand that.

Suppose DT vacates the office (for whatever reason). The new POTUS will instantly be [drum roll] … Mike Pence, until at least January 2021. And the EPA chief still Scott Pruitt, regardless of who controls Congress. Likely another SCOTUS vacancy or two before January 2019 (when Democrats could regain control of Congress). But thanks for playing.

Fewer than half the population approve of the job Trump is doing, but the problem for Democrats is that even many who don’t like or approve of him still prefer him to any Democrat on offer.
Joe Biden is a serious contender for the Democrat nomination in 2020, when he’ll turn 78. But then, next to Sanders, over a year older, he’s a spring chicken. Liz “Fauxcahontas” Warren at least will only be a youthful 71 then, just a year older than Trump turned in 2016.
Maybe Cory Booker. who’s eight years younger than Obama.

TA,
Yes, the Rock would be more formidable.
Hope you’re right about how things look in 2020, but there might be a stock market crash between now and then. A real rather than proxy war between the Gulf States and Iran could send gas back to $4. Too much could happen between now and then.
Health care and tax reform could go awry, for instance. The Great Wall of Trump might not get built. The working stiffs who supported him in 2016 may feel that he let them down, made promises he didn’t keep, just like an ordinary, BAU politician.
We don’t need to go nuclear on Nork Blob Boy Kim. Our precision-guided conventional weapons can do the job. But war in East Asia would surely affect the stock market, at least for a while.
IMO Trump could get reelected, if he even runs, but it’s not a sure thing.

“We don’t need to go nuclear on Nork Blob Boy Kim. Our precision-guided conventional weapons can do the job.”
I was thinking that Kim would be the one to introduce the nuclear weapons into the war. The U.S. probably doesn’t have to use nuclear weapons to defeat Kim, as you said. We can do Kim sufficient damage without that.
It’s just a crying shame that feckless leaders have allowed the North Korean situation to reach this level of danger, where millions of people in the immediate area are put in danger by a madman.
We should have stopped the Kim family a long time ago, when they were much less lethal, like during the Clinton administration when they first broke the nuclear agreement. A war then would have been much less costly.
Now Kim is so dangerous that we cannot allow him to increase his capablities any more. If we have to take action to stop him there’s no telling how many people will die, but if we don’t stop him, in a couple of years, ten or twenty times that many people will die. We cannot allow ourselves to be at the mercy of someone who has no mercy.

“It is to prevent that miscalculation on their part that Trump needs at long last to say enough is enough and, at a minimum, take out their nuke and ballistic missile capabilities.”
Yes, as you said, the North Koreans would be crazy to start a nuclear war. It would be certain death for North Korea’s leadership.
And I agree we should take out Kim’s missile and nuclear facilities.
Trump should send Kim a message that the next time he launches a missile or does another nuclear test, that the U.S. is going to destroy his nuclear and missile development facilities, and if Kim wants to stay alive, he better not react militarily to our attack, or we will consider that to be the start of full-scale war and will commence destroying him and his military forces immediately upon his initiation of hostilities.
And then do it if he is foolish enough to step over the line.
I know it seems harsh, but this situation has been allowed to go much too far, and it is going to take drastic action to fix it. Delaying the fix, only makes fixing things more difficult and deadly in the future.
Kicking the can down the road is no longer an option.

Mark,
I call BS on the Virgin Birth.
Parthenogensis has never been observed in humans, and had Mary actually given birth to Jesus without losing her virginity, then He would have been a baby girl. Unless artificial insemination were practiced in the 1st century Galilee.
So that important Catholic doctrine must be fictional.

I should add that not just has parthenogenesis never been observed in humans, but never in any other mammalian species in the wild. It has been achieved in the lab, with extensive intervention in vivo (rabbits and mice) and in vitro. Attempts in monkeys have failed due to abnormal embryonic development.
Lab creation of parthenogenetic human cells may however offer a way to obtain stem cells.

I also call BS on Original Sin.
Augustine hatched that whopper all by himself, and the Church gladly bought into the sc@m, as promising so much power over the peons.
It might have been an honest mistake on his part, because he never learned enough Greek to read the NT himself. He claims it was because he didn’t like his Greek teacher, but that sounds fishy to me, too. By his own admission, he was a lazy wastrel in his youth.
And if you already know Latin, Greek isn’t that tough. First and second century Koine is easier that Attic, which is easier than Homeric Greek.
Ditto papal ex cathedra infallibility. More BS.
Not that Protestants don’t have plenty of manure of their own to spread around.

Oops that ought to have read;
Chimp the imagination worshiper says;
“Since there is no evidence that God has ever done anything, that’s right, I don’t believe in miracles.”
If you can’t even manage to say something like; *…nothing I consider evidence that God has done anything …” then I don’t take your self centered ranting seriously.
You BELIEVE without question things you can merely imagine happened, yet disparage others who claim to have actually witnessed things, because you didn’t . . You’re NOT a skeptical/critical thinker, to me, just a zealous self-worshiper.

John,
Your beliefs are not evidence, but imaginary. You are confused.
As I said, there is no evidence whatsoever that your God did anything. That is not an imaginary belief but a fact. That it appears to us that something exists is not evidence that God made it all. That is no explanation at all. It’s also antiscientific, since science is based upon natural observations, not supernatural myths.
Because we perceive that the universe exists isn’t evidence of a god or any other supernatural agency. As I keep trying to tell you, a more satisfactory explanation, is that mass and energy are simply properties of spacetime. Supposing a creator is a supernatural superstition, not even a metaphysical, let alone physical explanation. It shuts down inquiry rather than promoting it.
As I also keep telling you, Protestant theology requires that God remain hidden, hence supposing that there is evidence of His existence is blasphemous. The faith which you believe, if Protestant, alone saves you would be of no value if there were evidence in favor of the God hypothesis.
I’ve quoted you the scripture relied upon by Luther and Calvin to derive this doctrine, which IMO is the proper interpretation of the Apostle Paul’s words. How can you argue with Calvin that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Creator predestines the fate of each soul, condemning the vast majority to outer darkness, hence there is nothing you can do to save yourself? Your fate is foreordained. If you have faith, you will be saved.
If you agree instead with the Catholic Scholastic philosophers that God’s existence is subject to “proof”, then take up with Paul, Luther and Calvin. They’re your witch doctors and sc@m artists, not mine.
Both Luther and Calvin opposed as unscriptural, which it is, the heliocentric hypothesis of Copernicus, without mentioning his name. But Calvin, following Augustine, at least recognized that much of the Bible is not literally true, such as the alleged waters above the firmament. His solution was “accommodation”, the belief that “Moses”, whom he thought wrote Genesis, wasn’t technically accurate because his audience were simple people.

“Your beliefs are not evidence, but imaginary. You are confused.”
And you know that how, featherweight? You imagine it is so, right? And, believe without question what you imagine, to the point of stating it as a flat statement of fact . . You’re an imagination worshiper, kid, not a brilliant anything, I say.

You really don’t get it, do you?
“You imagine supernatural beings, yet imagine that I imagine things.”
How do you KNOW (not merely imagine and believe) that I didn’t witness things you yourself would be convinced by, Chimp? You can’t time-travel and mind-read, right? You can imagine though, and in this case that’s all . . believe what you imagine without question/skepticism, and you’re an imagination worshiper . . treating your own imaginings as if utterances and visions of an all-powerful God . . This is kid stuff to me, that I couldn’t have been more than ten before grasping. Please try to think it through . .

JohnKnight May 18, 2017 at 4:29 pm
Since you refuse to state what your imagined evidence is, I can only conclude that there isn’t any that would stand up to scientific scrutiny.
I don’t make unsupported assertions. All my statements here are based upon what science has learned, always subject to test by the scientific method. That you don’t like the fact of evolution isn’t an argument against it.
In the Bible, the sun moves over the earth, which is immobile. There are waters above the firmament of heaven, including the storehouses of hail, snow and rain, the levers of which God Himself operates. Earth, day, night and plants all were created before the Sun. You imagine a global flood for which there is zero evidence and all the evidence in the world against it.
You imagine all these things without any evidence, yet imagine that I imagine things. Show me your evidence “proving” God or quit calling me names. You’ve got nothing except blind faith and a totally unwarranted certainty in the validity of your faith-based, evidence-free beliefs.

Chimp, it looks to me like you have done a lot of study on Christian religion. I’m impressed with the extent of your knowledge. You must have put a lot of effort into it.

PS:
By age 12, it was obvious that the Bible could not possibly be literally true. A church lady gave me a copy of “The Bible as Archaeology”, but even that clearly was lacking.
As I’ve mentioned here before, there is some agreement between archaeology and the Bible after c. 800 BC, but with spin. Before that, not so much. As in, hardly at all.
However, archaeology, ie cuneiform tablets, has elucidated the sources for the Pentateuch. The flood story comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh and the “begats” from the Sumerian kings list. The “six days of creation” and “Adam and Eve” creation myths also have Babylonian and ultimately Sumerian antecedents.

Gabro,
“It appears that the only featherweight in this discussion is you.
You’ve provided no evidence in support of the existence of your God, so he, she or it must be a figment of your imagination. ”
Not true (I most certainly presented some evidence) and not logical, to me . . the phrase “must be” is in no sense justified, weather or not I or anyone else failed to present evidence. All sorts of things have been found to exist, for which no one had presented any evidence in the past. I feel like I’m dealing with SJWs or something . .

This is a great example of Chimp’s failure to think logically about this stuff, it seems to me;
“However, archaeology, ie cuneiform tablets, has elucidated the sources for the Pentateuch. The flood story comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh and the “begats” from the Sumerian kings list. The “six days of creation” and “Adam and Eve” creation myths also have Babylonian and ultimately Sumerian antecedents.”
Now, if the great flood happened, one could expect many people to pass on stories about it for a very long time, weather or not God chose to have an inspired/authentic version written down at some point. That people wrote down versions before He inspired an account, is not surprising or indicative of much of anything, logically speaking.
It’s basically Chimp declaring that he figures (for unknown reasons) that God would have prohibited anyone from telling what they knew of the event before He provided an inspired account . . which makes virtually no sense that I can see . . Why even bother?

Chimp,
“I too missed that evidence. Please supply it again.”
No problem, yer welcome ; )
“And, for the non-self worshiping readers; People willing to be torn apart by wild animals in the Roman Coliseum, when they had merely to indicate they relinquished their claims to have witnessed miraculous things, is evidence they witnessed something they saw as miraculous. And, a great many people since then (myself included) testifying that they saw what seemed to them miraculous things, is evidence they did . . (even if Chimp the Giant-head doesn’t grasp the difference between evidence and proof ; ) “

JohnKnight May 18, 2017 at 6:44 pm
It never even occurred to me that that ludicrous spew was your “evidence”. As has already been repeatedly pointed out to you, M@slims, Communists and adherents of many other false belief systems have been just as willing to be torn and blown apart, stabbed, shot, burnt alive, fired on pans, boiled in oil and killed in a variety of horrible ways because their belief systems told them that they should. Christianity is in no way special in that regard.
Did you really not read the comments on Communist and M@slim martyrs above? Did you really never make that connection?

As for physical evidence, the uncovering of the vast complexity and order in even the simplest living things, is certainly evidence for a Creator. When people thought life was essentially goo that had been animated in a simplistic sense by some sort of electric of whatever force, they were obviously way off base, and subsequent evidence has become readily available that shows they were .
Now, Chimp can imagine living things arising in a similar fashion, by chance alone, but that’s just some dude imagining things, as it was back then, to me. He can declare it’s not evidence for a Creator, but then he doesn’t seem to me to grasp what the term evidence means . .

JohnKnight May 18, 2017 at 7:13 pm
As I keep trying to teach you, and as you keep not being able to handle the truth, complexity in living things requires not supernatural agency.
From complex chemical compounds to biochemistry is a small step. What are you going to do when, in the lifetime of most now reading this (if any are), my colleagues make living things out of organic chemicals in the lab?
Only your lack of information about advances in origin of life research allows you still to imagine that a supernatural agency is necessary for organic chemicals to become biochemicals.
I know better, because it’s my business.

JohnKnight:
I’m sorry, but can you really be this dense? You’re obviously not stupid, but that’s how you come across.
You bring ancient mythology to a science fight. That means that in a battle of wits, you come disarmed, my brother.
The theologians of your own religion utterly reject your creationist lunacy and delusion. Please, get a grip.

“The gap which you imagine between the constituents of life and modern complex cells has been bridged.”
Sure it has, by the god of the gaps, the god of bit by bit . .. in some people’s IMAGINATIONS . . including Chimp’s ; )

Yes Mark W… So the concept of the Pope being the Vicar of Christ is as BS as it gets. Especially if you are a Protestant, which I suspect you are based upon your previous writings. I suspect you know what it means. Calling the pope the “Vicar of Christ” implies that he has the same power and authority that Christ had over the church. If you believe this, then you are probably a Roman Catholic, and really, really nuts. Not that modern day cults of Christianity aren’t absolute nuts with a real hell fire brimstone, Intelligent Design or a literal age of the world being 6000 years old. I grew up with all that garbage, in fact tortured under it, and that is as close to Satanism as you can get. Although that doesn’t exist either. It is all just feel good fantasy for the faithful. Fill your boots, but not mine.
Chimp, I always looks forward to your comments because they are some of the most well thought out and intelligent statements here and we all learn a lot from you. But your statement that “there is no evidence of a worldwide flood” has me a bit confused. There was of course a world wide flood, and it was called the end of the ice age when ocean levels rose almost 400 feet. I believe this is the story and myth of the flood since nearly every culture on earth has some recollection of a literal flood. Not that the waters elevated, with the summits of the highest mountains under 15 cubits of water flooding the world for 150 days, but that over a relatively quick time of several thousand years the oceans flooded out coastal dwellers globally and especially catastrophic floods like the suspected Black Sea breach which is probably the origins of the Gilgamesh flood myth.
Anyway, as you say, the Christians here should know that their conviction is only based upon faith, and we will know them by their works. Why they try and argue that their God or their version of philosophical/religious truth is the only truth and everybody else is going to hell, is a mystery to me. I can only suspect that they have a massive insecurity in having to prove something.

Ron,
The rise in sea level during the transition to the Holocene did not flood the whole world over the highest mountains, as per Genesis.
Putting Mt. Everest under water would require three times the volume of water of all the oceans as they are now.
Didn’t happen. Couldn’t happen.

“You have “proven” nothing. Everyone here, ie all with the most elementary scientific education, either feels sorry for you or laughs at you.”
Then everyone here can go to hell, but it won’t change the fact that what you said is incontrovertible, is not incontrovertible. I can’t help it if you’ve fallen in love with your own imagination, and believe whatever happens to appear in it without question . . I didn’t indoctrinate you to worship human imagination(s).
“There is, as I said, no evidence whatsoever in favor of Noah’s flood.”
I don’t even know what that means . . there is evidence of flooding nearly everywhere, so you (and some geologists) deciding what happened long ago remains just speculation. They did not observe what they imagine happened long ago. Hell, it was only a few decades ago that they (for the most part) decided the continents have been moving around . . Why do you assume they are all-knowing time travelers of whatever?
You just don’t get it, but you do demonstrate how/why we got into this pickle with the “climate scientists” and their imaginings, it seems to me . . imagination worship.

“Nevertheless, at age 14, I was baptized, so I have all bases covered.
I haven’t accepted Pascal’s wager, but once saved, always saved. So, it’s all good.”
That’s kind of the way I am. I was baptised at about 12 years old, and although I don’t attend regular church services anymore, I try to live by the Golden Rule, and I figure that ought to cover me for most religions.
Chimp, have you looked at other religions besides Christianity?