Define "prove". Your position happens to be sitting right next to a goalpost on wheels. forgive me if I choose to nail that puppy down before proceeding.
Horns of a dilemma. Have you stopped beating your wife?
The point is: you have constructed an argument with a no-win response required. The only way to win is not to play. A better question- and the one addressed by your esteemed opponent is: why is this hypothesis being tested? What lead you to think the brain in a vat is a valid possibility that merits testing? You have proceeded to the test phase of a hypothetical situation that is un testable, undetectable, and irrelevant. Rather than believe or disbelieve the premise, the proper position is to discard it entirely until it is falsifiable.
It depends on what you are willing to call evidence. Many of us do not consider subjective feelings and oxygen deprivation hallucinations as valid evidence.
Why should hard working US citizens be forced to support welfare moms
There is where you went wrong. While a few do this, it is as much a non-issue as voter fraud. Welfare has a less than 2% fraud rate, and over 90% of it goes to the disabled and elderly. The remainder is mostly short term food stamps to the underemployed. This means they have a job, but the job does not pay enough to survive on. See WalMart Employees for reference.
The whole "Welfare Queen" is a red herring put forth by right wing sources to free up more of your tax money for corporate welfare rather than social welfare. like the Farm Bill- that cut food stamps nearly 50% for "budgetary reasons" yet was twice as big as the previous one and paid 30% more in corporate farm subsidies.
There is no 45% income tax bracket, and the highest bracket-35%- is for those with an income over $1M per year. This is in no way "modest" income.
So, you are either a liar (most likely) or are both very rich and too stupid to hire an accountant. Neither bodes well for you.
I make a good income, and my income tax rate after deductions is about 15%, give or take a percent. That is a bit high, but not unreasonable.
A great example is the Salvation Army. All those donations for shelters and soup kitchens... but if you do not accept Christ as your savior and take communion at the door- no soup for you.
Note that the people you decry here work full time jobs, and often more than one of them. If the minimum wage was sufficient to live on, they would not need assistance like this, now would they?
Now, take church donations/tithing out of that and where are we? I don't care if the Pastor has a new Rolex or if the church has enough billboards, that is not a worthy goal.
And the disabled are not douchebags, they disabled. That's where charity comes in to play.
Want a shock to your errant beliefs? The disabled(including elderly) are 90% of all welfare recipients. Eliminate the "freeloaders" you seem to think are a suck on the system and nothing changes. Eliminate corporate welfare, and everything changes. If corporations paid their taxes on profits, the need for your income tax is virtually eliminated. More than half of the total profit of this country remains untaxed. Collect that, and income taxes as a whole can be dropped to very low levels.
The vast vast bulk of the taxes you pay go to corporations. Not the baby mama with 12 kids (that does not exist) that you are picturing in your warped and rancid little mind.
Which is what this is pointing out. You are outraged at the theft of your hard earned income- but are too dense to see who is really stealing it.
Odd that someone would think a federal bond is a fake IOU. Surely, as you are commenting on this topic, you are aware of basic facts, such as any money loaned out of the SS fund is done so with federal bonds....
Not too deeply anchored in reality, are you?
ATF forced nothing, they sold weapons directly (undercover pretending to be FFL's) in the hopes of tracking distribution. As they had been doing for a decade before.
The IRS targeted ALL political sounding organizations- 501(c)4-6 are NOT ALLOWED TO BE POLITICAL. That the vast majority of them were Tea Party (again, NOT ALLOWED) was merely an indication of the extent party's corruption, not a bias in the IRS. Only three were actually refused, BTW. All were Liberal. Dozens more were slated to be refused, rightly so, but the outcry put that on hold. Which is clearly what the outcry was intended to do. Fox did not scoop this, they planned it.
No story was fabricated, as has been determined time and time again by investigations. A reasonable conclusion was drawn- rioting was happening all over Egypt and other countries at that exact moment for specifically what they stated. Thinking that this is simply another of those identical riots is not a stretch by any means.
Agreed. They can detect pretty reliably if the URL was entered or clicked. If I entered it, don't try to "help" me. I know where I am going and what I want.
Generally, pages detect your device is mobile and redirect it before the main page even loads. your only choice is the mobile version, even though it sucks and the real version works perfectly fine in your mobile device. And to add insult to injury they generally try to force you to load an app for their site (which is just a browser that will only load their site anyway) every time a significant event happens- such as scrolling.
Slashdot Mirror
That only applies to someone who can be re-elected. a President is lame duck the instant he wins his first re-election.
Sedition. While they betrayed the American people, they did not betray them to a foreign government.
The fastest way to decimate the ranks of the Tea Party would be for Obama to announce he is in favor of respiration.
Define "prove". Your position happens to be sitting right next to a goalpost on wheels. forgive me if I choose to nail that puppy down before proceeding.
funny...it's impossible to prove that god doesn't exist... i'd love to see you try :-)
funny...it's impossible to prove that Unicorns don't exist... i'd love to see you try :-)
Science studies the unanswered questons.
Religion studies the unquestioned answers.
Horns of a dilemma. Have you stopped beating your wife?
The point is: you have constructed an argument with a no-win response required. The only way to win is not to play.
A better question- and the one addressed by your esteemed opponent is: why is this hypothesis being tested? What lead you to think the brain in a vat is a valid possibility that merits testing? You have proceeded to the test phase of a hypothetical situation that is un testable, undetectable, and irrelevant. Rather than believe or disbelieve the premise, the proper position is to discard it entirely until it is falsifiable.
It depends on what you are willing to call evidence. Many of us do not consider subjective feelings and oxygen deprivation hallucinations as valid evidence.
That's genius!
Why should hard working US citizens be forced to support welfare moms
There is where you went wrong. While a few do this, it is as much a non-issue as voter fraud. Welfare has a less than 2% fraud rate, and over 90% of it goes to the disabled and elderly. The remainder is mostly short term food stamps to the underemployed. This means they have a job, but the job does not pay enough to survive on. See WalMart Employees for reference. The whole "Welfare Queen" is a red herring put forth by right wing sources to free up more of your tax money for corporate welfare rather than social welfare. like the Farm Bill- that cut food stamps nearly 50% for "budgetary reasons" yet was twice as big as the previous one and paid 30% more in corporate farm subsidies.
There is no 45% income tax bracket, and the highest bracket-35%- is for those with an income over $1M per year. This is in no way "modest" income. So, you are either a liar (most likely) or are both very rich and too stupid to hire an accountant. Neither bodes well for you. I make a good income, and my income tax rate after deductions is about 15%, give or take a percent. That is a bit high, but not unreasonable.
A great example is the Salvation Army. All those donations for shelters and soup kitchens... but if you do not accept Christ as your savior and take communion at the door- no soup for you.
Note that the people you decry here work full time jobs, and often more than one of them. If the minimum wage was sufficient to live on, they would not need assistance like this, now would they?
Bearing in mind that they also consider, and list, evangelism as charitable work. Saving a soul is more important than feeding a starving child.
Judging by your post, Education is clearly not one of their successes.
Now, take church donations/tithing out of that and where are we? I don't care if the Pastor has a new Rolex or if the church has enough billboards, that is not a worthy goal.
They are including church tithing, and they love to include ALL church donations as Conservative because, clearly, no liberals go to church.
Building another megachurch because the current one is *GASP* 10 years old!!! is NOT a worthy charity.
And the disabled are not douchebags, they disabled. That's where charity comes in to play.
Want a shock to your errant beliefs? The disabled(including elderly) are 90% of all welfare recipients. Eliminate the "freeloaders" you seem to think are a suck on the system and nothing changes. Eliminate corporate welfare, and everything changes. If corporations paid their taxes on profits, the need for your income tax is virtually eliminated. More than half of the total profit of this country remains untaxed. Collect that, and income taxes as a whole can be dropped to very low levels.
The vast vast bulk of the taxes you pay go to corporations. Not the baby mama with 12 kids (that does not exist) that you are picturing in your warped and rancid little mind. Which is what this is pointing out. You are outraged at the theft of your hard earned income- but are too dense to see who is really stealing it.
Odd that someone would think a federal bond is a fake IOU. Surely, as you are commenting on this topic, you are aware of basic facts, such as any money loaned out of the SS fund is done so with federal bonds....
Waiting for the first beats of 'Velcro Fly' to start.
Not too deeply anchored in reality, are you? ATF forced nothing, they sold weapons directly (undercover pretending to be FFL's) in the hopes of tracking distribution. As they had been doing for a decade before. The IRS targeted ALL political sounding organizations- 501(c)4-6 are NOT ALLOWED TO BE POLITICAL. That the vast majority of them were Tea Party (again, NOT ALLOWED) was merely an indication of the extent party's corruption, not a bias in the IRS. Only three were actually refused, BTW. All were Liberal. Dozens more were slated to be refused, rightly so, but the outcry put that on hold. Which is clearly what the outcry was intended to do. Fox did not scoop this, they planned it. No story was fabricated, as has been determined time and time again by investigations. A reasonable conclusion was drawn- rioting was happening all over Egypt and other countries at that exact moment for specifically what they stated. Thinking that this is simply another of those identical riots is not a stretch by any means.
Agreed. They can detect pretty reliably if the URL was entered or clicked. If I entered it, don't try to "help" me. I know where I am going and what I want.
Generally, pages detect your device is mobile and redirect it before the main page even loads. your only choice is the mobile version, even though it sucks and the real version works perfectly fine in your mobile device. And to add insult to injury they generally try to force you to load an app for their site (which is just a browser that will only load their site anyway) every time a significant event happens- such as scrolling.