let me rephrase, whatever truth has been revealed has been relentlessly spun by the administration or buried under such piles of bullshit that few people access it.
There is a world of difference. However, that is a balance not many achieve. If you cannot allow someone else to live their life without your judgement upon it, then it is unlikely... though maybe YOU are an exception, many are not... that you will be able to treat those people with tolerance.
My tolerance stops with those who refuse it of others. And tolerance does include allowing others to live their lives without persecution or interference, whether you agree with it or not, so long as they are not victimizing anyone against their wills.
Any "value" that promotes intolerance and bigotry against people who are not hurting anyone with their actions should most definitely be easily and quickly discarded.
New doesn't mean better. But Better most definitely means new.
Like, it's ok to enslave people who have different color skin? It's ok to keep women as property? It's ok to burn someone alive because you suspect them of being posessed by the devil? It's ok to invade other countries and take their land as long as you are on the side of god?
Are those the moral values you refer to? Cause frankly I'd have to say modern morality still has a long way to go, but we've come a long, long way from those "good old days" the fundamentalists preach about.
Fundamentalism is the respite of those too desperate or too stupid to see things in anything but black and white. It's true for Islamic fundamentalists and it's true for christian fundamentalists. Only ours have less reason to be desperate.
when I first started playing Unreal Tournament, stats were the crack that kept me playing constantly. I'd check my stats 3-4 times a day. Especially if you were ranked well, it was very, very addictive.
By UT2003 though, when I realized how little stats had to do with how well you played, I used them only to actually review performance.
I make no claim that I am an average gamer guy though, I was pretty focused on competition at a high level.
ok, you are an idiot. I called someone using the world Fag a redneck; how did this turn into calling everyone who voted for bush an idiot, even though now that you mention it, they are?
I do not believe in being bound by the rules of civility when confronted with malicious ignorance. You can smile and nod and disagree politely if it makes you feel better. I, however, will call a steaming hunk of bigoted shit a steaming hunk of bigoted shit, and I won't feel the least bit apologetic about it either.
they are not the same as slamming someone for chosen behaviour. I.E. calling someone a bigot, or a jesus freak is not the same as slamming their race or sexual orientation.
I hope you realize there is a difference in slamming someone for chosen behaviour than in slamming someone for their sexual preference. Much like me calling you an idiot for not seeing the difference would be based on your actual behaviour, rather than calling you, say, a "fag".
I think you're mistaken. The low end of the scale is not rising. That's called inflation. The rate at which income disparity is growing is far, far beyond inflationary growth.
That's not just morally offensive, it's dangerous.
I believe welfare needs to be seriously reformed into work programs; however the state of the welfare system can be reformed without throwing out progressive taxation. Taxes do more than pay welfare, you know. They do things like allow for medical research into cures that are not necessarily as profitable as viagra and hair growth tonic. You know, things that are good for society as a whole.
The rich have the ultimate recourse if progressive taxation goes too far; they can move elsewhere and forget the whole thing if it makes sense to do so. Or they can just purchase a few congressmen to make sure it doesn't go too far.
I agree that it's not the best or only thing necessary in a society. But it is necessary. Without it, you get... welllll, what we've got now ever since Reaganomics hit the scene; rapid growth of income disparity.
You may say that's fair, but it's not good. History should tell you why. Eventually it doesn't matter if it's fair or not; the have nots revolt. And sadly the easies way to make money is to have money to begin with.
Finally, as for your allusions to the benefit of fairness of plutocracy, if the posession of money were any indication of one's worth or possible contribution to the world, then maybe it would make sense. However if I find a wallet full of cash on the ground this does not make me more intelligent, or a better leader.
I think all you need to do is squint a little bit differently; how much you pay back to your society under a progressive tax scheme is dependant on how well that society is serving you, in effect, by either providing the economic environment or the opportunities needed to succeed. This includes things like STABILITY, which the government influences through economic policy as well as social policy!
Without a stable economy, you have a society much less prone to progress. Witness the progression we've had since the advent of keynesian economic policies. The world is changed, and it's changed BECAUSE of progressive structures, IMHO.
It IS fair. It's not EQUAL, but it is FAIR. More important than either of those things, it's PRAGMATIC as well as EFFECTIVE. Not wholly; I'm sure the system can be improved. But it is most certainly better than what came before....
Where did I claim to be unbiased about redneck self righteous holier than thou assholes feeling like they have a right to tell everyone else how to live their lives?
You're damn right I'm biased against them. That's why I don't vote republican. I have a brain and I prefer to use it to make decisions rather than let my hysterical preacher with the emotional maturity of a 13 year old dictate it for me with his own biased interpetations of an often mistranslated, censored book from thousands of years ago.
As I've noted, where I come from Morality is a measure of how you treat people. Not how you live your own life, unless you are hurting other people; how you live your life is your own choice. I can see why you are confused; one of my points is that this use of the word "morals" is not morality at all. It's traditionalism and bigotry pretending to be morality. Generally religion is what blurs the line, but it's not the only reason.
It's not, you're correct. A moment of silence should be very allowable.
so mormon's aren't christians. there is plenty of overlap in their agendas.
many non christians do share beliefs with christians. Obviously. thus you get really big numbers in areas that have lots of christians, because you get to add those people to the religious right people. So what? Are you trying to say the religious right does not exist or does not have a lot of power in the RNC? They are not the only ones who hold their views. They do, however, vote very cohesively and exist in very substantial numbers. If you think it takes more than that then I don't know what to tell you, it seems pretty simple to me.
And as you show, it seems that people who believe as they do, do so across the board pretty much. You share their view on abortion, and the bigoted attitudes of many americans regarding something that shouldn't really be any of your business whatsoever.
I'm not anti religion at all. I am, however, anti "moral" leglistlation, at least in the complete perversion of the word "moral" as the RR uses it to further bigoted, rigid, simplistic agendas.
Reagan cut things that were needed too, like alternative energy tax credits. Course it didn't bite us during his administration, but we are starting to now and it's going to get much worse very shortly. He also dramatically inflated our prison systems with his "zero tolerance" drug policies, to the point where our incarceration rates are through the roof. You may see diverting funds from social programs to guns, jails, and voodoo economic policies as a good thing. It does not, however, shrink our government. It does grow huge deficits. Deficit spending is fine during a recession. However it does need to be balanced out as well. Republicans have not demonstrated that they realize this. So you prefer to hand off massive debt to our children rather than behave responsibly, good for you.
GW is anti Roe V Wade. Your own party believes this. here, check it out: http://bush2004.meetup.com/345/ maybe you weren't at that meeting. Bitching about abortion as "primary birth control" is a straw man. Some women exist who do this I'm sure. Ask any woman who admits to having had an abortion, however, and you would know it is not a decision that is pleasant or taken lightly. It is a gut wrenching issue for women. My own mother, in fact, had one, and attempted to give me up for adoption. Luckily for my mom and I, she had a mother willing to help when she couldn't go through with it. But she couldn't have raised two children, we struggled as it was, and rather than go on welfare my mom made the choice she needed to in order to be able to actually care for the child she had. I have never in my life met a woman who had the attitude that they didn't need birth control because they could just go off and get an abortion. I have met several, however, that are not sucking off of welfare or living lives of poverty because safe abortion was an option.
"Ethical" vs "Moral" is code for the same crap; promoting the fundamentalist christian agenda as somehow morally or ethically superior to making pragmatic decisions regarding the health of our nation. Drop the semantics.
Relying on abstinence only teaching is a joke; it doesn't work, and it prevents our teens from being educated as to how they can actually protect themselves when they have sex. And they will. They have been since the dawn of time, and they will continue to do so, whether or not our society is thinking that childhood lasts longer and longer or not, puberty begs to differ with our laws.
You keep trying to say that I am calling all republicans religious. I am not. The republican platform is heavily influenced by the christians. Please keep it straight. Yes, there are atheists that agree with christian ideals, but six in ten americans identify themselves as religious, and you're trying to tell me this isn't a very significant fraction of the RNC? please.
re racism; no, the RNC did not force blacks to use crack. They noticed that blacks were using crack, and upped the sentences on it, when in fact it is less potent then the cocaine GW was using at Yale. Please explain to me why this made sense, since obviously there wasn't a racial component involved. Your computer crime analogy is another straw man; if all blacks used macs and whites used PC's, and computer crime on macs were punished more severely, then the analogy would hold true. If cocaine had been upped like crack, it would have at least been fair.
The "american people" you refer to is a large select subset. The RNC base. The RNC has chosen to be the RR's mouthpiece in government. Hey, it helped elect them, and those people deserve representation even if I personally have no respect whatsoever for their politics, but do not pretend the RNC has not taken this role. You can pretty it up all you like, but you are rubbing shoulders with the Mormons and the Holy Rollers in your RNC voting block.
Telling people their unions don't matter as much as someone else's is bigoted. It really is that simple. You may think the bigotry is justified,
1. It's not a GW thing. Neither his father, nor reagan actually shrank government. They both talked a great game and then continued to grow the fed to monstrous proportions. In fact, the slowest growth of government has occurred under Clinton in recent memory.
2. Abortion is still legal because of the supreme court. And GW wants real bad to change it. Your little comment about "primary birth control" shows that you too have been buying the RR's propaganda. Well done. There is no prohibition of moments of silence, only group prayer by state run institutions.
3. The RR inflates the anti-gay numbers dramatically. I think you understimate how many religious people are out there. If any significant proportion of non-religious people agreed with them on the issue, the numbers would be and are large.
4. They havent' succeeded at too much in the way of moral leglislation, except pushing abstinence only teaching programs and funding religious groups under the "faith based initiatives". However GW wants a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BASED ON MORAL ISSUES, you noticed that? Stem cells, ring a bell? You don't think these things point to a mindset of leglislating morality? Head, meet sand.
5. Intolerance is intolerance. Gays, blacks, what have you, it's all rooted in the same shit. Republicans orchestrated, among other things, tougher sentances on crack cocaine than powder cocaine (guess which demographics use which) even though crack is a LESS POTENT variety of pure cocaine. Just the first example that pops to mind.
6. The RNC has some moderates in their fold. I would vote for McCain in a heartbeat. However their policy under GW is heavily swinging to the RR's agendas, and if you can't see that by now, you are actively avoiding the obvious.
7. I did not say all republicans were racist. I said their agendas are being influenced by people who make them look racist. I guess you don't see it. It's there. I also did not say all conservatives were religious, but it is an undeniable... well, if you have any sanity or reason whatsoever... to note that the party platform has been heavily influenced to appeal to the RR. The constituency does not make the entire party, but it certainly does influence the party platform, and that is almost as bad in this case.
Gee, I wonder why we relate republicans with religion?
The republicans are the pro-life, anti-gay, pro-prayer party now. You think it's odd we see that as "religious"? Bush just won an election promoting an AMENDMENT TO THE CONSITUTION FOR THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT'S AGENDA. Gosh, what are we thinking huh??? We just make this stuff up!
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let me rephrase, whatever truth has been revealed has been relentlessly spun by the administration or buried under such piles of bullshit that few people access it.
There is a world of difference. However, that is a balance not many achieve. If you cannot allow someone else to live their life without your judgement upon it, then it is unlikely... though maybe YOU are an exception, many are not... that you will be able to treat those people with tolerance.
My tolerance stops with those who refuse it of others. And tolerance does include allowing others to live their lives without persecution or interference, whether you agree with it or not, so long as they are not victimizing anyone against their wills.
posted before I read all the replies... live and learn, my apologies.
Any "value" that promotes intolerance and bigotry against people who are not hurting anyone with their actions should most definitely be easily and quickly discarded.
New doesn't mean better. But Better most definitely means new.
Like, it's ok to enslave people who have different color skin? It's ok to keep women as property? It's ok to burn someone alive because you suspect them of being posessed by the devil? It's ok to invade other countries and take their land as long as you are on the side of god?
Are those the moral values you refer to? Cause frankly I'd have to say modern morality still has a long way to go, but we've come a long, long way from those "good old days" the fundamentalists preach about.
Fundamentalism is the respite of those too desperate or too stupid to see things in anything but black and white. It's true for Islamic fundamentalists and it's true for christian fundamentalists. Only ours have less reason to be desperate.
"From now on"?
Gee, I haven't seen too much truth coming out for awhile now.
and still not nearly as old as marriage itself.
I don't know, but how often are exit polls that far off?
when I first started playing Unreal Tournament, stats were the crack that kept me playing constantly. I'd check my stats 3-4 times a day. Especially if you were ranked well, it was very, very addictive.
By UT2003 though, when I realized how little stats had to do with how well you played, I used them only to actually review performance.
I make no claim that I am an average gamer guy though, I was pretty focused on competition at a high level.
ok, you are an idiot. I called someone using the world Fag a redneck; how did this turn into calling everyone who voted for bush an idiot, even though now that you mention it, they are?
Not acceptable?
I do not believe in being bound by the rules of civility when confronted with malicious ignorance. You can smile and nod and disagree politely if it makes you feel better. I, however, will call a steaming hunk of bigoted shit a steaming hunk of bigoted shit, and I won't feel the least bit apologetic about it either.
maybe you do, I live in the united states of canada ;)
they are the same thing, agreed.
they are not the same as slamming someone for chosen behaviour. I.E. calling someone a bigot, or a jesus freak is not the same as slamming their race or sexual orientation.
I hope you realize there is a difference in slamming someone for chosen behaviour than in slamming someone for their sexual preference. Much like me calling you an idiot for not seeing the difference would be based on your actual behaviour, rather than calling you, say, a "fag".
So says a fellow using the word "fag", showing exactly how seriously his opinion should be weighed.
Go back to jesusland, redneck.
I think you're mistaken. The low end of the scale is not rising. That's called inflation. The rate at which income disparity is growing is far, far beyond inflationary growth.
That's not just morally offensive, it's dangerous.
I believe welfare needs to be seriously reformed into work programs; however the state of the welfare system can be reformed without throwing out progressive taxation. Taxes do more than pay welfare, you know. They do things like allow for medical research into cures that are not necessarily as profitable as viagra and hair growth tonic. You know, things that are good for society as a whole.
The rich have the ultimate recourse if progressive taxation goes too far; they can move elsewhere and forget the whole thing if it makes sense to do so. Or they can just purchase a few congressmen to make sure it doesn't go too far.
I agree that it's not the best or only thing necessary in a society. But it is necessary. Without it, you get... welllll, what we've got now ever since Reaganomics hit the scene; rapid growth of income disparity.
You may say that's fair, but it's not good. History should tell you why. Eventually it doesn't matter if it's fair or not; the have nots revolt. And sadly the easies way to make money is to have money to begin with.
Finally, as for your allusions to the benefit of fairness of plutocracy, if the posession of money were any indication of one's worth or possible contribution to the world, then maybe it would make sense. However if I find a wallet full of cash on the ground this does not make me more intelligent, or a better leader.
I think all you need to do is squint a little bit differently; how much you pay back to your society under a progressive tax scheme is dependant on how well that society is serving you, in effect, by either providing the economic environment or the opportunities needed to succeed. This includes things like STABILITY, which the government influences through economic policy as well as social policy!
Without a stable economy, you have a society much less prone to progress. Witness the progression we've had since the advent of keynesian economic policies. The world is changed, and it's changed BECAUSE of progressive structures, IMHO.
It IS fair. It's not EQUAL, but it is FAIR. More important than either of those things, it's PRAGMATIC as well as EFFECTIVE. Not wholly; I'm sure the system can be improved. But it is most certainly better than what came before....
Where did I claim to be unbiased about redneck self righteous holier than thou assholes feeling like they have a right to tell everyone else how to live their lives?
You're damn right I'm biased against them. That's why I don't vote republican. I have a brain and I prefer to use it to make decisions rather than let my hysterical preacher with the emotional maturity of a 13 year old dictate it for me with his own biased interpetations of an often mistranslated, censored book from thousands of years ago.
As I've noted, where I come from Morality is a measure of how you treat people. Not how you live your own life, unless you are hurting other people; how you live your life is your own choice. I can see why you are confused; one of my points is that this use of the word "morals" is not morality at all. It's traditionalism and bigotry pretending to be morality. Generally religion is what blurs the line, but it's not the only reason.
Definitely true. I'd bet you dollars to donuts the majority of the anti gay citizens are in fact right wingers though.
It's not, you're correct. A moment of silence should be very allowable.
so mormon's aren't christians. there is plenty of overlap in their agendas.
many non christians do share beliefs with christians. Obviously. thus you get really big numbers in areas that have lots of christians, because you get to add those people to the religious right people. So what? Are you trying to say the religious right does not exist or does not have a lot of power in the RNC? They are not the only ones who hold their views. They do, however, vote very cohesively and exist in very substantial numbers. If you think it takes more than that then I don't know what to tell you, it seems pretty simple to me.
And as you show, it seems that people who believe as they do, do so across the board pretty much. You share their view on abortion, and the bigoted attitudes of many americans regarding something that shouldn't really be any of your business whatsoever.
I'm not anti religion at all. I am, however, anti "moral" leglistlation, at least in the complete perversion of the word "moral" as the RR uses it to further bigoted, rigid, simplistic agendas.
Reagan cut things that were needed too, like alternative energy tax credits. Course it didn't bite us during his administration, but we are starting to now and it's going to get much worse very shortly. He also dramatically inflated our prison systems with his "zero tolerance" drug policies, to the point where our incarceration rates are through the roof. You may see diverting funds from social programs to guns, jails, and voodoo economic policies as a good thing. It does not, however, shrink our government. It does grow huge deficits. Deficit spending is fine during a recession. However it does need to be balanced out as well. Republicans have not demonstrated that they realize this. So you prefer to hand off massive debt to our children rather than behave responsibly, good for you.
GW is anti Roe V Wade. Your own party believes this. here, check it out: http://bush2004.meetup.com/345/ maybe you weren't at that meeting. Bitching about abortion as "primary birth control" is a straw man. Some women exist who do this I'm sure. Ask any woman who admits to having had an abortion, however, and you would know it is not a decision that is pleasant or taken lightly. It is a gut wrenching issue for women. My own mother, in fact, had one, and attempted to give me up for adoption. Luckily for my mom and I, she had a mother willing to help when she couldn't go through with it. But she couldn't have raised two children, we struggled as it was, and rather than go on welfare my mom made the choice she needed to in order to be able to actually care for the child she had. I have never in my life met a woman who had the attitude that they didn't need birth control because they could just go off and get an abortion. I have met several, however, that are not sucking off of welfare or living lives of poverty because safe abortion was an option.
"Ethical" vs "Moral" is code for the same crap; promoting the fundamentalist christian agenda as somehow morally or ethically superior to making pragmatic decisions regarding the health of our nation. Drop the semantics.
Relying on abstinence only teaching is a joke; it doesn't work, and it prevents our teens from being educated as to how they can actually protect themselves when they have sex. And they will. They have been since the dawn of time, and they will continue to do so, whether or not our society is thinking that childhood lasts longer and longer or not, puberty begs to differ with our laws.
You keep trying to say that I am calling all republicans religious. I am not. The republican platform is heavily influenced by the christians. Please keep it straight. Yes, there are atheists that agree with christian ideals, but six in ten americans identify themselves as religious, and you're trying to tell me this isn't a very significant fraction of the RNC? please.
re racism; no, the RNC did not force blacks to use crack. They noticed that blacks were using crack, and upped the sentences on it, when in fact it is less potent then the cocaine GW was using at Yale. Please explain to me why this made sense, since obviously there wasn't a racial component involved. Your computer crime analogy is another straw man; if all blacks used macs and whites used PC's, and computer crime on macs were punished more severely, then the analogy would hold true. If cocaine had been upped like crack, it would have at least been fair.
The "american people" you refer to is a large select subset. The RNC base. The RNC has chosen to be the RR's mouthpiece in government. Hey, it helped elect them, and those people deserve representation even if I personally have no respect whatsoever for their politics, but do not pretend the RNC has not taken this role. You can pretty it up all you like, but you are rubbing shoulders with the Mormons and the Holy Rollers in your RNC voting block.
Telling people their unions don't matter as much as someone else's is bigoted. It really is that simple. You may think the bigotry is justified,
1. It's not a GW thing. Neither his father, nor reagan actually shrank government. They both talked a great game and then continued to grow the fed to monstrous proportions. In fact, the slowest growth of government has occurred under Clinton in recent memory.
2. Abortion is still legal because of the supreme court. And GW wants real bad to change it. Your little comment about "primary birth control" shows that you too have been buying the RR's propaganda. Well done. There is no prohibition of moments of silence, only group prayer by state run institutions.
3. The RR inflates the anti-gay numbers dramatically. I think you understimate how many religious people are out there. If any significant proportion of non-religious people agreed with them on the issue, the numbers would be and are large.
4. They havent' succeeded at too much in the way of moral leglislation, except pushing abstinence only teaching programs and funding religious groups under the "faith based initiatives". However GW wants a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BASED ON MORAL ISSUES, you noticed that? Stem cells, ring a bell? You don't think these things point to a mindset of leglislating morality? Head, meet sand.
5. Intolerance is intolerance. Gays, blacks, what have you, it's all rooted in the same shit. Republicans orchestrated, among other things, tougher sentances on crack cocaine than powder cocaine (guess which demographics use which) even though crack is a LESS POTENT variety of pure cocaine. Just the first example that pops to mind.
6. The RNC has some moderates in their fold. I would vote for McCain in a heartbeat. However their policy under GW is heavily swinging to the RR's agendas, and if you can't see that by now, you are actively avoiding the obvious.
7. I did not say all republicans were racist. I said their agendas are being influenced by people who make them look racist. I guess you don't see it. It's there. I also did not say all conservatives were religious, but it is an undeniable... well, if you have any sanity or reason whatsoever... to note that the party platform has been heavily influenced to appeal to the RR. The constituency does not make the entire party, but it certainly does influence the party platform, and that is almost as bad in this case.
sad but true? NYC has three times as many people as my entire state. The city *should* be able to outvote a bunch of trees and shrubs.
Electoral votes should be split, however.
Utah went for Bush, with 86% of the vote.
Gee, I wonder why we relate republicans with religion?
The republicans are the pro-life, anti-gay, pro-prayer party now. You think it's odd we see that as "religious"? Bush just won an election promoting an AMENDMENT TO THE CONSITUTION FOR THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT'S AGENDA. Gosh, what are we thinking huh??? We just make this stuff up!