The forgot to check the hearts of the congresscritters voting to end unemployment benefits as a Christmas gift, after having to cut the school lunches and food stamps. They would find it way colder than Antarctica.
I agree with that interpretation, totally. Our founding fathers were very idealistic when it came to national defense. At least some of them would have been alive to see the war of 1812, the sacking of our capital and the burning of our Presidential Mansion (which was not called The White House then).
But even if we thing a time traveling mind readers have been installed as a justice of the Supreme Court, we need to obey their reading of that amendment. We have the freedom to disagree with them but unless we get enough votes to amend the constitution, we have to recognize, nay, defend, the rights of the gun nuts to all the guns they want.
We fought the Nazis with our professional military. Not folks engaging in gun nuttery. Freedom of expression does not help against invading armies, that is why we have professional army.
Now suddenly you change your point of view and start talking about raising up in rebellion against our own army! Our own government! You little gun twits, if you were a real threat to our democracy we will put you down, using any means necessary, and it is constitutional to do so too. You rise against our duly elected government, you are an enemy of our constitution. It is the sworn duty of our Executive to fight you. You don't get to shoot down government officials because you think what they do is unconstitutional.
Rifles in the hands of citizens have never been used to oppress ANYONE, and YOU KNOW IT.
What a load of crap. Rifles in the hands of citizens who call themselves rebels, helps them grab power and to become the next government. They become even more tyrannical because they owe their power to bullets, not ballots. They are scared of the next set of rebels. They don't worry about people or ballots. If you what you say is true, South America and Africa should be veritable gardens of Democracy.
You got the whole point missed. Right to bear is not medicine. It's vaccine.
Very funny, probably true too. Vaccines are just viruses rendered impotent. Glad you agree you guys are just armed thugs rendered impotent.
You are free to dwell in your realms of fantasy. Right to bear arms is constitutional in USA, and if it provides you some solace and some way to compensate for your feelings of inadequacy, go ahead, buy all the guns you can afford and even pretend you are somehow a liberator.
You got cause and effect reversed. There are thousands of places in the world where anyone can buy/own any kind of weapon one wants. Most of them have crappy standard of living. Just look how many times guns were used against tyranny that produced enduring democracies instead of next set of tyrants? How many times freedom of expression against oppressors liberated people and created enduring democracies? Guns are the tools are up-and-coming tyrants against existing tyrants.
The freedom of expression, used by people willing to suffer the consequences of standing up to tyrants, their ability to inspire millions of ordinary people to rise up against tyranny is what creates a thriving democracy with great standard of living. That is when warrior wannabes like you strut around claiming to be the cause. You are the effect, not the cause, of the first amendment.
Trying your "second amendment solutions" against a lawfully elected government of the USA is rebellion, and it is constitutional for the government to put such insurrection using any means necessary. If the government is restrained it is because of the first amendment rights of people who would speak up against heavy handed tactics by the government. Definitely not because of your puny little glocks, brownings or bushmasters. Our army had been battling AK-47s and IEDs for ages now buddy, you don't stand a chance against our army. You are able to trash talk, only because we restrain our government against taking overt and open actions against US Citizens.
Just look around you. People who used guns to overthrow tyrants became tyrants themselves. People who spoke out and inspired ordinary people to rise up against tyranny created enduring democracies. Only in such democracies crazy wingnuts are able to run around waving their guns thinking they somehow are the protection against tyranny.
It took several billion years because the atmosphere lacked oxygen and it took them (cyanobacteria) several billion years of emitting oxygen by photosynthesis to go to the next stage. If oxygen was already available, they could have saved a couple of billion years.
The theory of punctuated equilibrium holds that there were long periods of stasis and sudden bursts of evolution when the conditions changed rapidly. So if the statis periods were short plenty of evolution could take place in a few million years. Still it is difficult to believe multi celluar organisms could evolve that quickly.
I don’t know about you evilutionists. But to me, these stalactites and stalagmites look very much designed. Only dogmatic Darwin worshipers could be dumb enough to believe that these stalactites and stalagmites would know where to start growing so that eventually meet at a point, conjoin, become a pillar and hold the roof of the cave up.
There is symmetry in the formations, symmetry means information, symmetry means reduction in disorder, reduction in disorder is reduction in entropy and entropy can not be reduced by random naturalistic mechanistic processes. If these formations are “natural” then they violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The pathetic inability of the theory of evolution to account for the cave formations completely disproves any credibility the Big Bang Theory might have. It stretches the credulity of the American Public, 62% of whom don’t believe evolution anyway, that these scientists would confidently see amino acids and methane in planets and moons in the sky, when they cant see that mud-to-stalactite evolution is impossible.
But the point remains, no one is FORCED to believe in the statue.h
Exactly! You got it buddy. You will not be forced to believe in the satanistic display.
you do NOT have the right to not be offended anymore than someone of a different faith/non faith
Very well put. Christians have no right to be not offended. The satanistic display will have equal access to the public places.
You worship yaweh, he worships satan, all American citizens respect the right of each other to worship whomsoever they want and have equal access to the public spaces. I am very glad you agree.
Actually most people are greedy, and some of them end up rich and continue to be greedy. What has happened in the last 30 years was that the opposition disappeared. There used to be a time where people would stand up and agree to tax the rich and put the money back into the circulation. But the rich have bought the think tanks, the pundits, the news media, the politicians, the academics, the judges, all of them and went on saturated coverage where there is no effective push back against them.
When they say "taxation is theft for the government", we should reply in equally short sentence. "Taxation is the ROI for the government". Longer argument would be, the government invested on all the citizens, not knowing who will win and who will lose, much like investing in an index fund. Some fund will win and it will pay dividends. Congratulations, you won. Now kick back the government's share of the profit.
When they say, "the rich are the job creators", we should counter, "the consumers are the job creators".
Unless we go on the offensive, value of all the labor will be lost. There is no difference between blue collar and white collar. Between software engineer and domino's delivery man. All labor is taxed at double the rate of passive investments. Why should my wages be taxed more than their dividends?
Why was this comment modded down? Almost all the developed countries feed exactly the same water to the kitchen faucets and the flush tanks for toilets. We are literally, not figuratively, pooping in excellent fresh potable water.
Installing gray water systems to catch the water from laundry machines and using them to flush toilets is not a bad idea. The day is not far off, the fresh water price goes up so high, people voluntarily install such systems to cut their water bills down.
Thanks for the nugget of info. If eagles can easily dart around the wind mills, and death occurs when eagles mistake the windmills for something else, we can find much simpler solution to avoid eagle deaths. Some kind of paint schemes, some noise generators and some flashing lights should do the trick.
OTOH, capitalism just works and has done more to relieve poverty and build wealth than anything else out there.
You are correct that capitalism has done more to relieve poverty. But the "winner take all, no regulation from the government" is feudalism, not capitalism. Capitalism will deliver the goods only when there is a strong government, strong enough to enforce contracts, strong enough to disrupt collusion and other anti-competitive behavior of the rich and powerful. The day government is weaker than the most powerful individual (or corporation) capitalistic system will degenerate into feudalistic system.
When you were on the individual market, pre Obamacare, it was a free for all like wild west. Very difficult to compare plans offered by competing vendors. Most people could not even see the offering from competing vendors. It was like the days of booking airplane tickets through travel agent. I am curious, were you actually able to compare packages from different vendors, like you are able to do under Obamacare? Or did you have just "trust" something your agent tells you?
But anyway the correct thing to compare is not "adding maternity coverage to a family policy". You should compare the cost of male, under 50 individual, no maternity, no breast examn, no pap smears with the cost of under 50 female. Under 50 female group, because of the low incidence of heart diseases had much lower premium than under 50 males despite having contraception, breast examns, pap smears and maternity coverages. Check it out.
I actually anticipated your argument about doing charity without coercion by the government too. Please check that out. Then you should also ask the government not prosecute illegal immigrants and allow them self deport like Romney said.
When you equate taxation with armed robbery, you disagree with Jesus about paying unto Caesar what was Caesar's. When our founding father's declared "No taxation without representation", they did what Jesus did not do. Jesus never questioned the right of the Romans to rule Judea. Realize too Jesus did not talk about liberty and pursuit of happiness. Of course with a PhD in theology you could dredge up little known, and never preached and never sermonized sections of the bible to argue he did too. But that would open a new set of problems and even more convoluted explanations.
Anyway, from the passages you quoted, it looks like divorce should be illegal. I only know of Catholics still trying to enforce it, and even they create a loop hole called post facto annulment of marriages, which makes the couple's married life a life of sin retroactively! And Jacob marries both Rachel and Leia, so you demand a religious exemption from polygamy laws too? And they were his first cousins too. So you want to revisit incest definitions of American laws too?
BTW do you realize the most basic passages of the ten commandments implicitly permit slavery? Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's man slave nor the woman slave? Current versions use the term "man servant" and "woman servant", and argue the terms "slaves" were mis-translations. But remember the bloodiest war that killed more Americans than all other wars put together was fought because some Christian imams ruled that slavery was halal for Christians. Just think how many things you are currently holding and fighting for might be ruled mis-translations by your future imams and bishops.
Thanks for adding it should not be as complicated as it had been. Too often people compare Obamacare to what a perfect system should be and find it wanting.
It is not as horrible as most people think. Take all the brouhaha about religious institutions having to or not having to pay for contraceptives. Technically contraceptives are cheaper than Ob-gyn. Dropping contraceptive coverage should trigger additional premium for these institutions. Adding you to the pool with mammogram and pregnancy coverage lowers your premium. Are you complaining you don't have the choice to pay a higher premium? Are you complaining women are forced to pay for diseases that affect men more like prostate cancer, heart attacks and hyper tension?
I have heard enough horror stories too. It all depends on the credit worthiness of the underwriter. Your premium is way below the market rate. If you believe in free markets, then you should figure out why the competitors are not lowering the premium. There is a catch. You should know what it is.
400% of FPL is about 90K for a family of 4. Unless you are someone with 20 kids the 400% FPL is much lower than that. Further the 9.8% will only buy you a median silver plan. Median silver plan is less than 10K a year even in Beverly Hills,CA 90210. (That is the zip code that came to my mind when I was testing the site)
Why flame bait? I am still raking my brains about it. Is it because I called the Christians socialists?
Well, I would not win the third prize in the Scripture Knowledge, something even Betram Wooster could. But I do know that the last sermon on the mount of Olives by Jesus basically said, "Those of you who gave food, clothed, cared for, bailed out (yes bailing out of jails is in that list) those of you who were the least fortunate did those things to me, so you guys get to go to heaven. Those of you who did not, you guys go to hell". If that is not socialism what is? Even the Pope agrees with that statement.
Of course some Christians claim that charity should be done voluntary without coercion from the government. Reminds me of Romney's "self deportation solution". But anyway if enough Christians practiced that part of the religion without coercion voluntarily, there would not be 40 million uncared for hungry poor people in this country.
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The forgot to check the hearts of the congresscritters voting to end unemployment benefits as a Christmas gift, after having to cut the school lunches and food stamps. They would find it way colder than Antarctica.
How many times freedom of expression against oppressors liberated people and created enduring democracies?
Zero? What are you talking about?
Gandhi. Mandela. Aung San Suu Kyi (work in progress).
But even if we thing a time traveling mind readers have been installed as a justice of the Supreme Court, we need to obey their reading of that amendment. We have the freedom to disagree with them but unless we get enough votes to amend the constitution, we have to recognize, nay, defend, the rights of the gun nuts to all the guns they want.
People who used guns to overthrow tyrants became tyrants themselves.
Like the founding fathers?
Got anything more recent in the last two centuries? eh?
Now suddenly you change your point of view and start talking about raising up in rebellion against our own army! Our own government! You little gun twits, if you were a real threat to our democracy we will put you down, using any means necessary, and it is constitutional to do so too. You rise against our duly elected government, you are an enemy of our constitution. It is the sworn duty of our Executive to fight you. You don't get to shoot down government officials because you think what they do is unconstitutional.
Rifles in the hands of citizens have never been used to oppress ANYONE, and YOU KNOW IT.
What a load of crap. Rifles in the hands of citizens who call themselves rebels, helps them grab power and to become the next government. They become even more tyrannical because they owe their power to bullets, not ballots. They are scared of the next set of rebels. They don't worry about people or ballots. If you what you say is true, South America and Africa should be veritable gardens of Democracy.
You got the whole point missed. Right to bear is not medicine. It's vaccine.
Very funny, probably true too. Vaccines are just viruses rendered impotent. Glad you agree you guys are just armed thugs rendered impotent.
You are free to dwell in your realms of fantasy. Right to bear arms is constitutional in USA, and if it provides you some solace and some way to compensate for your feelings of inadequacy, go ahead, buy all the guns you can afford and even pretend you are somehow a liberator.
And we will protect your rights too.
The freedom of expression, used by people willing to suffer the consequences of standing up to tyrants, their ability to inspire millions of ordinary people to rise up against tyranny is what creates a thriving democracy with great standard of living. That is when warrior wannabes like you strut around claiming to be the cause. You are the effect, not the cause, of the first amendment.
Trying your "second amendment solutions" against a lawfully elected government of the USA is rebellion, and it is constitutional for the government to put such insurrection using any means necessary. If the government is restrained it is because of the first amendment rights of people who would speak up against heavy handed tactics by the government. Definitely not because of your puny little glocks, brownings or bushmasters. Our army had been battling AK-47s and IEDs for ages now buddy, you don't stand a chance against our army. You are able to trash talk, only because we restrain our government against taking overt and open actions against US Citizens.
Just look around you. People who used guns to overthrow tyrants became tyrants themselves. People who spoke out and inspired ordinary people to rise up against tyranny created enduring democracies. Only in such democracies crazy wingnuts are able to run around waving their guns thinking they somehow are the protection against tyranny.
Those microbes are my ancestors, you insensitive clod!
The theory of punctuated equilibrium holds that there were long periods of stasis and sudden bursts of evolution when the conditions changed rapidly. So if the statis periods were short plenty of evolution could take place in a few million years. Still it is difficult to believe multi celluar organisms could evolve that quickly.
It was a very snarky posting there. I had chopped off the bottom that gave away the game. Sorry.
I don’t know about you evilutionists. But to me, these stalactites and stalagmites look very much designed. Only dogmatic Darwin worshipers could be dumb enough to believe that these stalactites and stalagmites would know where to start growing so that eventually meet at a point, conjoin, become a pillar and hold the roof of the cave up.
There is symmetry in the formations, symmetry means information, symmetry means reduction in disorder, reduction in disorder is reduction in entropy and entropy can not be reduced by random naturalistic mechanistic processes. If these formations are “natural” then they violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The pathetic inability of the theory of evolution to account for the cave formations completely disproves any credibility the Big Bang Theory might have. It stretches the credulity of the American Public, 62% of whom don’t believe evolution anyway, that these scientists would confidently see amino acids and methane in planets and moons in the sky, when they cant see that mud-to-stalactite evolution is impossible.
We just killed a 500 year old clam. Now you want to kill a 5 billion year old microbe? Just for the fun of studying it? Whats wrong with you?
But the point remains, no one is FORCED to believe in the statue.h
Exactly! You got it buddy. You will not be forced to believe in the satanistic display.
you do NOT have the right to not be offended anymore than someone of a different faith/non faith
Very well put. Christians have no right to be not offended. The satanistic display will have equal access to the public places. You worship yaweh, he worships satan, all American citizens respect the right of each other to worship whomsoever they want and have equal access to the public spaces. I am very glad you agree.
That is true. Gray water systems are illegal in almost all the building codes. But if it saves money people would push for code changes.
When they say "taxation is theft for the government", we should reply in equally short sentence. "Taxation is the ROI for the government". Longer argument would be, the government invested on all the citizens, not knowing who will win and who will lose, much like investing in an index fund. Some fund will win and it will pay dividends. Congratulations, you won. Now kick back the government's share of the profit.
When they say, "the rich are the job creators", we should counter, "the consumers are the job creators".
Unless we go on the offensive, value of all the labor will be lost. There is no difference between blue collar and white collar. Between software engineer and domino's delivery man. All labor is taxed at double the rate of passive investments. Why should my wages be taxed more than their dividends?
Installing gray water systems to catch the water from laundry machines and using them to flush toilets is not a bad idea. The day is not far off, the fresh water price goes up so high, people voluntarily install such systems to cut their water bills down.
!Binge
Thanks for the nugget of info. If eagles can easily dart around the wind mills, and death occurs when eagles mistake the windmills for something else, we can find much simpler solution to avoid eagle deaths. Some kind of paint schemes, some noise generators and some flashing lights should do the trick.
OTOH, capitalism just works and has done more to relieve poverty and build wealth than anything else out there.
You are correct that capitalism has done more to relieve poverty. But the "winner take all, no regulation from the government" is feudalism, not capitalism. Capitalism will deliver the goods only when there is a strong government, strong enough to enforce contracts, strong enough to disrupt collusion and other anti-competitive behavior of the rich and powerful. The day government is weaker than the most powerful individual (or corporation) capitalistic system will degenerate into feudalistic system.
But anyway the correct thing to compare is not "adding maternity coverage to a family policy". You should compare the cost of male, under 50 individual, no maternity, no breast examn, no pap smears with the cost of under 50 female. Under 50 female group, because of the low incidence of heart diseases had much lower premium than under 50 males despite having contraception, breast examns, pap smears and maternity coverages. Check it out.
When you equate taxation with armed robbery, you disagree with Jesus about paying unto Caesar what was Caesar's. When our founding father's declared "No taxation without representation", they did what Jesus did not do. Jesus never questioned the right of the Romans to rule Judea. Realize too Jesus did not talk about liberty and pursuit of happiness. Of course with a PhD in theology you could dredge up little known, and never preached and never sermonized sections of the bible to argue he did too. But that would open a new set of problems and even more convoluted explanations.
Anyway, from the passages you quoted, it looks like divorce should be illegal. I only know of Catholics still trying to enforce it, and even they create a loop hole called post facto annulment of marriages, which makes the couple's married life a life of sin retroactively! And Jacob marries both Rachel and Leia, so you demand a religious exemption from polygamy laws too? And they were his first cousins too. So you want to revisit incest definitions of American laws too?
BTW do you realize the most basic passages of the ten commandments implicitly permit slavery? Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's man slave nor the woman slave? Current versions use the term "man servant" and "woman servant", and argue the terms "slaves" were mis-translations. But remember the bloodiest war that killed more Americans than all other wars put together was fought because some Christian imams ruled that slavery was halal for Christians. Just think how many things you are currently holding and fighting for might be ruled mis-translations by your future imams and bishops.
It is not as horrible as most people think. Take all the brouhaha about religious institutions having to or not having to pay for contraceptives. Technically contraceptives are cheaper than Ob-gyn. Dropping contraceptive coverage should trigger additional premium for these institutions. Adding you to the pool with mammogram and pregnancy coverage lowers your premium. Are you complaining you don't have the choice to pay a higher premium? Are you complaining women are forced to pay for diseases that affect men more like prostate cancer, heart attacks and hyper tension?
I have heard enough horror stories too. It all depends on the credit worthiness of the underwriter. Your premium is way below the market rate. If you believe in free markets, then you should figure out why the competitors are not lowering the premium. There is a catch. You should know what it is.
400% of FPL is about 90K for a family of 4. Unless you are someone with 20 kids the 400% FPL is much lower than that. Further the 9.8% will only buy you a median silver plan. Median silver plan is less than 10K a year even in Beverly Hills,CA 90210. (That is the zip code that came to my mind when I was testing the site)
Well, I would not win the third prize in the Scripture Knowledge, something even Betram Wooster could. But I do know that the last sermon on the mount of Olives by Jesus basically said, "Those of you who gave food, clothed, cared for, bailed out (yes bailing out of jails is in that list) those of you who were the least fortunate did those things to me, so you guys get to go to heaven. Those of you who did not, you guys go to hell". If that is not socialism what is? Even the Pope agrees with that statement.
Of course some Christians claim that charity should be done voluntary without coercion from the government. Reminds me of Romney's "self deportation solution". But anyway if enough Christians practiced that part of the religion without coercion voluntarily, there would not be 40 million uncared for hungry poor people in this country.