Then he couldn't have made any deal in violation of any law at that time. How can a presidential candidate sell US weapons without being president?

The claim was that the deal happened when he was a candidate, the actual weapons transfers happened later. The latter is not in doubt, the former is more of a conspiracy theory.

Which is likely why the US never sold weapons to Iran. Israel did and the US replenished Israel's. Splitting hairs I know, but if someone can argue the meaning of the word "is" in order to escape blame for wrong doing, certainly an actual step to isolate yourself would do the same.

So, you're saying providing arms to a state sponsor of terrorism in violation of an embargo is equivalent to receiving oral sex from a White House intern?

Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, were probably the only two presidents going back to Eisenhower who were actually pretty decent human beings

I'm reading "The Invisible Bridge" right now, and Ford does come across as relatively decent - hopelessly out of his depth, but also a victim of unfortunate circumstances.

Every president and vice president after Carter have been more or less sociopaths

I didn't think Bush Sr. was a sociopath - his foreign policy was a stunning triumph compared to everyone who followed, and he managed not to do anything else drastically stupid, which is really the most I expect out of our leaders at this point. I don't think it's irrelevant to his legacy that the Clinton years coasted by relatively smoothly with a strong economy and uncontested superpower status. His one unforgivable sin was appointing Thomas to SCOTUS.

I don't really think Obama or Biden are sociopaths either; like most politicians, they're career opportunists, but occasionally one of them does something that suggests there's an actual human being underneath, and I'm reminded of what a disappointment the last six years have been. But even Bush Jr had his occasional moments of decency and thoughtfulness, which made everything else about his presidency even more infuriating.

He couldn't have been traitorous as president, the president himself decides who our enemies are and are not.

Except:

1) Reagan wasn't president at the time of the supposed deal that GP mentioned
2) Iran was subject to an arms embargo at the time the administration sold it arms
3) The profits from arms sales to Iran were then funneled to the Nicaraguan Contras, further violating the law

In defense of Reagan - a phrase I never thought I'd write - there's no proof that he actually knew about (3), at least. So, a dupe, but not necessarily a traitor.

the tough part on this particular subject is likely that the language didn't provide for distinctions between "Earth" and "other planets' since no other planets were known to exist by the people who spoke the language that was first used for writing down Genesis.

Right, which is why it's silly to insist on a literal interpretation of the text (or to assume that everyone else necessarily adheres to a literal interpretation), since it's using a very limited vocabulary incapable of making these kind of decisions.

why are we so different from all other animals on Earth

In what way? Certainly on the molecular level we are completely unremarkable - obviously very complex, but no more so than the average cow.

Nearly everything I read on the subject carries a stated or more often unstated assumption that evolved alien life will have the same carbon-and-water basis that we do.

No, the assumption is that we won't be able to detect vastly different forms of life at a distance unless they have advanced technology. We know that an oxygen-rich atmosphere is extremely unlikely without photosynthesis, which means that we have a simple chemical signature that we can look for to detect probable life, even if it's only single-celled. We have no idea what kind of chemical signature to expect from other forms of pre-technological life.

what happened to giving Man dominion over all he surveys (Genesis 26, Psalm 8)

When that was first written down, "all he surveys" was almost certainly intended to mean "all that he surveys on Earth", with everything above being "the heavens", which was definitely not part of the dominion. And that's assuming that the English translation is actually 100% faithful to the original meaning, which I doubt.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet - Psalms 8:6
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

There's so much lost in translation that I'm reluctant to go with the literal interpretation here (especially as an atheist), but this seems pretty limited in scope to me. Unless you're a strict Biblical literalist - which is not a majority of Christians - there are any number of ways these statements can be bent to be compatible with the idea of life on other planets. Sects like the Catholic church have already managed to adapt to the fact of evolution and the age of the Earth without much effort; they stopped taking the early books of the Old Testament literally a long time ago. (It's the New Testament that's really important for most Christians.) I don't doubt that some adherents would freak out (not necessarily for purely doctrinal reasons!), but I'm pretty certain that Pope Francis would simply invite the aliens to mass.

I also have infinite confidence in the ability of diehard literalists to come up with contorted explanations for anything that contradicts the Genesis narrative. People who believe that the speed of light must have drastically changed over the course of several thousand years are capable of pretty much any type of cognitive dissonance.

I fully expect to be modded down

I expect so too, but that's because whiny, condescending statements like this are almost guaranteed to get your post moderated down.

The country has not been communist for a long time and there are strong arguments supporting idea that they truly were never communist in the first place

I don't know, I think the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are quintessential examples of communism in action, and had nearly nothing in common with capitalist systems.

Isn't it phantastic when science and engineering can profit from stupidity and narrow-minded nationalism? If only that were always the case!

Sadly, it's the case very often - just about anything that can be classified as a "dual-use" technology gets a great deal of funding when perceived to be strategically important. In addition to the obvious example of the space race, the development of radar and digital computers was heavily driven by WWII, and we've also made some major advances in medical care thanks to a number of wars that almost no one is proud of.

The US and countries friendly to the US control most of the shipping lanes and ports near China. South Korea, Japan, Philippines, Taiwan are all right in China's way. They desperately need North Korea and as much control of other shipping lanes as they can muster.

Why do the the Chinese need to control the shipping lanes? It's not like they have any problem exporting their products.

They're not being assholes about Tibet and Taiwan; they're trying to defend themselves and stay alive.

How is control of Taiwan vital to Chinese defense? And for that matter, if seizing Taiwan is seen as a matter of self-defence, shouldn't the citizens of South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines be very nervous right now?

To paraphrase "Scientists are too lazy to ensure integrity in their community unless the error is really bad or they have a personal issue".

It's not about laziness, it's about setting priorities in the context of our current incentive system. We are not being paid to police the literature, nor do we get any credit for this from journals or funding agencies like we do for reviewing articles or grant proposals; we are being paid to do original research, which already consumes more of our lives than would be considered reasonable in non-academic jobs. Frankly, on an intellectual level, proving that some shitty paper in Journal of Western Blots was faked is not terribly difficult, compared to actually doing real experiments. Arguing with other scientists and journal editors, on the other hand, is just about as involved, and the professional (or intellectual) rewards are minimal. Most of the people who really care are more interested in changing their field to avoid such problems in the future, because that's actually a genuinely interesting problem and potentially career-advancing.

Most journals will accept Letters or "Matters Arising", but very few are published. The journal's editors have an even higher bar for publishing a letter that disproves a published work than the bar they place on the published work itself. It's more difficult to refute bullshit than to publish bullshit.

Agreed, and I would add that the entire process is very time-consuming, which discourages scientists from investing time unless it's an especially egregious example or they feel personally wronged. I know of many examples in my field where the central evidence for a paper obviously does not support the published conclusions, but I don't bother pursuing them because a) that's not what I'm paid for, and b) I don't have any personal interest in the subjects (only the methods). And these aren't even subjective interpretations on my part, the papers would likely be retracted if I followed up, but it's still too cumbersome a process for me to get involved.

If cancer was insta-kill instead of the slow-death-money-milking disease that it is

This ignores a basic fact about cancer treatment: standard chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery aren't very profitable for pharmaceutical companies, and for many cancers, that's all we have. They may be profitable for other sectors of the medical system, but these are also a huge drain on the economies of rich-world countries, who have a big incentive to keep costs down. If you get one of the cancers for which there isn't a $100,000/year drug, your only option is a quick course of debilitating treatment aimed at eliminating metastases, which will either work and leave you cancer free (if you're "lucky" and have one of the less aggressive types of cancer, and/or catch it early), or not work, and you'll die in a relatively short time. Or, if you're especially unlucky, the therapy itself will kill you. No pharma company is getting rich off these patients.

If you do get to take the $100,000/year drug, there's a good chance you'll only add a few years to your lifespan anyway. Which is part of the reason why these drugs are so expensive, of course. On the other hand, a drug that could either a) eliminate cancer outright, or b) suppress cancer permanently for as long as it's taken, would be worth an incredible amount of money, either up-front or over the course of decades. And insurance companies and governments would be much happier shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a treatment that might actually "cure" the patient in some meaningful sense (and enable him or her to keep paying taxes and/or insurance premiums!), rather than a treatment that probably isn't going to work over the long term.