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I'll take it even further and point out that "God" was added to the pledge of allegiance and the national motto "In God We Trust" was adopted in response to the "godless communists" making the intent as an endorsement of religion pretty straight-foward.

Thank you. The adoption of the motto was a clear statement that the US is a christian nation, not a godless (communist) nation.

I've found that when people resort to "it's obvious" or "clearly", they are arguing a losing side. Nobody wakes up one morning, notices the motto on the dollar bill, and runs to church

I've found that when people resort to specious arguments they are arguing the losing side. If the bar for showing religious endorsement is set that high then thousands of rulings about state establishments of religion should be over-turned.

Why, obviously, they decided in those thirteen years that the Church of England was a Bad Thing and decided that such an abomination cannot be allowed to continue.

Again with the specious arguments. Expecting people to religiously follow a law that wasn't to be written yet for over a decade is ridiculous.

simply claiming "separation of church and state"

Yeah, good thing then that I haven't made a single argument here based on that phrase.

You might notice that at no time in history has the former interpretation been valid, even the day after the amendment was adopted by the very people who wrote it.

Well, except for the fact they explicitly left out any mention of God in the constitution itself.

I'll take it even further and point out that "God" was added to the pledge of allegiance and the national motto "In God We Trust" was adopted in response to the "godless communists" making the intent as an endorsement of religion pretty straight-foward.

At the risk of going even further off topic

Christians have understandably been very quick to distance themselves from the Oslo nutter
One of the prime methods has been to claim that that he was really a godless heathen
As an Atheist, I find that disgusting.

You might want to try Mao or Pol Pot, At least with them you could make a reasonable argument for your case.

Hitler said a lot of differenced things when it came to Christianity, Specifically he had a deep hatred of the church (Roman Catholic), This is often used, By many Christians, As a way to "muddy the waters" when dealing with the fact that Hitler was a Christian. Hitler was a Christian. He simply did not subscribe to the mainstream "version" being push by the church, That is; He believed that the church had "strayed" from real Christianity, And if we could only return to the good old days we would all be "saved" from the horror of the godless new world order! sound familiar?

Stalin is somewhat harder to declare Christian, How could the Stalin be anything but a godless commie?!?! Well.. Put on your tin-foil hat and google; stalin+jesuit

They were subverted manipulated, alright.

By US and NATO operatives. Not godless commies.

The kidnap and murder of the Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, was an orchestrated event, calculated to drive Socialist-leaning Italy to the right. This was done through direct and indirect instruction by CIA managed "terrorists", according to a design by Henry Kissinger - among others.

"In 1949, the CIA helped set up the Italian secret armed forces intelligence unit, named SIFAR, staffed in part with former members of Mussolini's secret police. It later changed its name to SID. At the end of World War 2, a former Nazi collaborator, Licio Gelli, was facing execution for his activities during the war, but managed to escape by joining the US Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. In the 1950s, Gelli was recruited by SIFAR. Gelli was also head of the P2 Masonic Lodge in Italy, and in 1969, he developed close ties with General Alexander Haig, who was then Assistant to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. Through this network, Gelli became chief intermediary between the CIA and General De Lorenzo, Chief of the SID."

"The Red Brigades were a leftist Italian terrorist organization that was formed in 1970. In 1974, Red Brigade founders Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini were arrested. Alberto Franceschini later accused a top member of the Red Brigades, Mario Moretti, of turning them in, and that both Moretti and another leading Red Brigade member, Giovanni Senzani, were spies for the Italian and US secret services. Moretti rose up through the ranks of the Red Brigades as a result of the arrest of the two founders."

"The Red Brigades worked closely with the Hyperion Language School in Paris, which was founded by Corrado Simioni, Duccio Berio and Mario Moretti. Corrado Simoni had worked for the CIA at Radio Free Europe, Duccio Berio had been supplying the Italian SID with information of leftist groups and Mario Moretti, apart from being accused by the Red Brigades founders as being an intelligence asset, also happened to be the mastermind and murderer of former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro. An Italian police report referred to the Hyperion Language School as âoethe most important CIA office in Europe." "

I guarantee you, behind Anders Breitvik is a NATO clandestine operation. The use of Freemasons is a good tipoff. It introduces incredulity when introduced to investigations - while actually providing a secret organisational structure and ritual omerta to enforce obedience.

You've seen this picture, right?

By your definition, someone who believes that 1+1=3 is a free thinker. He's not oppressed by the dogma in the scientific community, that suppresses and stifles any dissent!

And by God, if he's not allowed to teach the children that 1+1=3, then the socialist lobby with their Godless, homosexual, communist agenda has won!!1!!1

shouldn't you expect everything you do in public to be potentially monitored?

no. and you are stupid if you have already *assumed* this. dammit!

maybe its a generational thing. I'm in my 50's and I grew up with 'anonymity' and the freedom to travel and just *be* and not be disturbed if you are not bothering anyone. now, innocent or not, you are tracked and monitored and scanned at every chance.

people my age grew up in a country where all that we do now is what we said of 'those godless commies in russia'. so much of what I remember being told -as a kid - how different we are and what made us different; people don't say those things anymore. we don't compare ourselves to such-and-such a country and say we are the good guys, hands down. not unless we compare ourselves to the worst of the worst and that's not a very useful comparison for a world power, now, is it?

in just ONE generation, so much has been lost? this makes me incredibly sad. and that people of your age (I'm assuming, correct me if I'm wrong) are happy to accept google's CEO saying that privacy is dead. or[well], was that the oracle guy? I forget which power-happy CEO said that, but I don't care if jesus christ came down on mount high and said it - I will never agree that privacy is worth handing over and submitting for public inspection. just because there is tech ability to do X does not mean its ok to just plow ahead and say 'lets just TRY this and see'. no, some people can see this is already a bad idea and we don't need to try this out!

you don't realize what you give up. once its gone, its gone. you are asking society to fundamentally change and live in glass houses. people have varying degrees of 'their space' but you are all for pushing this limit, aren't you?

I think you are making a huge mistake simply giving in and accepting the conclusion that they feed you. there are varying degrees of information and privacy and its certainly not an all-or-nothing affair.

South Park 3:11

Nah, they'll just keep banging into the great crystal dome and falling back on Earth, not like these heathen's "shuttles" and "rockets" launched into the godless atheistic void. So there will be no point in creating those "God Pods" at all.

Traditionally, it goes soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammo box. But with powerful media corporations corrupting the electoral process by choosing which issues and which candidates for public office to play up and which to play down on national TV news, should the jury box be moved in front of the ballot box now?

No. Control the media with the zeroth box: the lock box, namely your wallet. It's the cheap version of the soap box. Don't like Rupert Murdoch's corporatist media empire? Tell other companies you won't buy products advertised in his papers. Don't like the fact that the Godless Liberals at Disney have a "Gay Day"? Don't buy their movies, don't go to the amusement park.

The jury box may not prevent bad politicians from getting elected and passing bad laws, but it's not supposed to. The jury box is a failsafe against politicians who no longer represent their constituents.

When people attempt to use the ballot box as a failsafe against the jury box, Bad Things happen. Consider the course of events if we switch the jury and ballot boxes: a bunch of citizens get mad at their fellow citizen jurors (soap box), and demand (via ballot box) that their politicians Do Something (because the jury box, in this scenario, comes first). Next thing you know, there's another "{Megan|Kyleigh|Jessica|Dru|Caylee}'s Law", with all the side effects that come from laws named after dead kids. Passed with the full endorsement of the politicians - who use the very media you're worried about - to win at the ballot box. That's not exactly what I call failing safe; that's a feedback loop.

America's got its faults, but its legal and political system - as flawed, creaky, and corrupted as it may be - really isn't that bad. Keeping it working isn't easy. But nobody ever said it was supposed to be easy.

Warn them about the Tsunami

Yeah, but I can't *stop* that.

Besides I hate the Japanese people. Not for Pearl Harbor, or Nanking or any of that shit, mind you. I hate them for anime. That headache-inducing crap really turned the Cartoon Network into a godless wasteland. Well, except for Adult Swim of course. Someone has to pay.

When my doorbell rings and the Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons are on the doorstop, I tell them "No, thanks."

Really? It's so much more efficient to simply ask a few basic questions about their faith. When they see that you're capable of rational thought, they run away and add you to their "godless sinners" list and no one from their church will bother you again.

Except, some 90% of the population is religious and as a result, they won't see the hypocrisy and absurdity. All they will see is that some "godless secularist is mocking our religion". Remember, religious people see themselves as a minority constantly picked on by those 10% of non-believers out there.

That's all well and good, but you forgot to account for solar activity, malfunctioning gravitrons, and the politicization of godless scientists.

No, I guess he is quite right. The Islamic fundies are imported, they didn't "grow" there. The US (more specifically, the CIA) ported them over to Afghanistan in the 80s, mostly from the Arabian Peninsula. Which served two goals at once, you got rid of the Islamists in the "important" areas like the oil regions (imagine, another Iran... Saddam couldn't have waged a two front war for us, against Iran AND Saudi Arabia) and the poor sods went on to fight the godless Russkies for us too. Worked like a charm, really.

I guess the US then somehow managed to double cross their former friends when the Russians didn't want to play the evil Commies anymore and became our ... well, not quite friends, but no longer "teh evilz" and that pissed Ozzy enough for that 9/11 stunt. I mean, it's not like the US don't simply dump their buddies when they're no longer convenient. For reference, see Saddam.

There is money to do it now, so you Americans should do it now, is what I think.
Well, think of this made-up example of doom & gloom:
The Shit Hits The Fan in USA. E.g. federal government defaults on its debt, the roller-coaster off of Hubbert's plateau starts, large scale society collapses like the Roman empire, or something like that.
Not many people die, but most people switch their attention from watching politics on TV to growing potatoes and carrying jerrycans of water or gasoline on their head.
Now imagine that the nuclear waste of all USA power plants is *NOT* yet in Yucca Mountain, to be reviewed and reprocessed in 300 years. It would be like Fukushima Unit 4 (mind I DIDN't say unit 1-3! I mean the pool), but then squared.
Do you seriously believe that in 100 years from now, god-emperor Nehemiah Scudder of East Utah will apportion a percentage of his precious tithes to transport the spent fuel rods in the leaking swimming pool of the abandoned nuke plant that nobody dares to get near to anymore, through enemy territory (the heretic separatists of West Utah, the communists of Arizona or the godless hedonists of Las Vegas), to that faraway Yucca Mountain site, in exchange for ... nothing ...?
Mind you, it might make a good script for a film.

Paying the cash is great, even if inconvenient to cards, but I use a Visa Check Card all the time, and I don't see any of this, I even use the godless Bank of America, and we can all agree the biggest companies are the biggest abusers. In fact the majority of my financial junk mail comes from my mortgage company... Citibank.

Despite, the real reason you don't get calls at dinner time is mostly because that type of cold calling is illegal these days, not because you stopped using your CC. Not to mention, if you just add yourself to the DO NOT CALL registry and then add a credit alert to your account (it blocks random CC mailings and requires all companies to do extra checks before assigning lines of credit).

He's got a point on wasting money on ethanol subsidies though. That crap needs to stop. I found a station near me that sells pure gasoline and my fuel economy jumped about 3% after switching. Not much, I know, but over the course of a work week that's worked out to an extra day of driving before I have to fill up.

And you're giving money to those Godless heathens in the Middle East (or Norway, whatever) instead of paying to support American farmers. Why do you hate America?

Sarah? Is that you or did you give Michelle your user id and pw again?

He's got a point on wasting money on ethanol subsidies though. That crap needs to stop. I found a station near me that sells pure gasoline and my fuel economy jumped about 3% after switching. Not much, I know, but over the course of a work week that's worked out to an extra day of driving before I have to fill up.

And you're giving money to those Godless heathens in the Middle East (or Norway, whatever) instead of paying to support American farmers.

Why do you hate America?

If you're going to play that game then may I suggest you stop using the web? Y'know, seeing as how it was created by godless commie yurpans...

Go back to Gopher and usenet, please.