Ron Paul and Jessie Ventura?

[SaroDarksbane]

Actually, this is probably a much more interesting conversation:

Citizens united. That was the last "win for the oligarchy" that I recall.

Are you against the Citizens United ruling? I consider it one of the best SC rulings I've seen, next to perhaps Heller.

[BobCox2]

I like this one Ron Paul alone is not real Change alone anymore than Obama was

I am ****ing tired of the fact that it is our own elected officials that are presenting the greatest threat to our civil liberties, rather than being the guardians of these civil liberties that their oath of office requires them to be. (self.politics)
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/com...it_is_our_own/

I think that with a congressional approval rating of 13% our politicians have decided that they can run amok because nothing they do can make us hate them any substantial amount more.

[BobCox2]

Who did they vote 4?
http://www.wtoc.com/story/16571904/s...-for-primaries
Already, there has been some question into folks who cast their ballots on Saturday.

South Carolina's Attorney General, Alan Wilson has notified the U.S. Justice Department of potential voter fraud.

Wilson says an analysis found 953 ballots cast by voters were people who are listed as dead.

He has asked the State Law Enforcement Division to investigate.

Copyright 2012 WTOC. All rights reserved.

[BobCox2]

I try not to copy Llad. BTW he's not posting at the other place either (land of the banned). He just mysteriously disappeared one day. Dondrei too mysteriously left the other place. I'm pretty sure I PMed you when everyone left. Do you really not remember me? I suppose there were too many steves back then. it diluted my brand. :(

Um - I have seen you both at another place.
At the same time.
Just saying, Forum index crash not saving Jmervyn

[Bowzer]

Voter fraud in America, how quaint.

[Stevinator]

Actually, this is probably a much more interesting conversation:

Are you against the Citizens United ruling? I consider it one of the best SC rulings I've seen, next to perhaps Heller.

It put corporations on an equal footing with other constiuencies, but it was a move in the wrong direction. istead of letting more money into politics to make it fair, we should be taking money out of politics to make it just.

i don't yet have a good plan for that. i definitely want more transparency as to whom is making advertisements. more disclosure on the Super-pacs and more coverage on who's funding them.

i'll try to come up with a list of "demands" to further clarify my thoughts.

[jmervyn]

I think we're watching different videos...

The second time I've posted this.

Hard to say (about the videos). Read your definition carefully; it clearly applies to Paul. The secondary phrase about "generally" is what you're tripping over; I notice you're going with urbandictionary (which is blocked for me) instead of wikipedia because wiki clearly identifies the blanket nature of the term.

Citizens united. That was the last "win for the oligarchy" that I recall.

Depends on whether you feel that more regulation is the solution to business' involvement in elections.

Besides the right also likes to kick down doors, I fear government intrusion into my life from several angles.

The "right" is the lesser of two evils when it comes to door-kickery. Does that mean they're pure as the driven snow? Hardly. But that does not support "theocracy" foolishness of any level.

I don't support funding either side of that war. How's that for consistency?

Not good enough. When one side slaughters random American innocents for kicks and claims God said it was aces, why <shouldn't> we support their enemy? Particularly when their enemy consists of a large block of people from under 300 miles near where I live? That's why I reject Paul's thesis: Islamists don't hate us for supporting Israel - that's just a handy excuse. They hate us because we represent the British continuum of Western Civilization, and their insecurity finds that superior culture anathema.

okay, but if we spend half of what we do now, we could still be there fastest with the mostest because we'd still be outspending most of the rest of the world (save maybe china).

That's the old argument Llad12 (aka Ill) used to make. I have two, no, make that three answers.

1. Department of Education. America spends more than any other nation on education as well. So why is it that all I hear are shrieks about how impoverished teachers are, and how much easier their jobs need to be made? Are we getting the world's most effective education system for all our expenditure?
2. Department of Health and Human Services. America is mocked for spending such extensive monies on health care by Europeans, Canadians, and other riff-raff Yet they're among the first clawing at each other when <THEY> are the ones in need of cancer treatment or other sophisticated medicines, courtesy of the U.S. of A. What is so wrong about paying for quality?
3. Department of Defense. The extreme expenditures of the DoD are in no small part due to keeping open bases in specific congresscritters' home turf, or funding projects that will directly benefit states for said congresscritters. Yet the cuts all but invariably come from operations.

So we pay higher than top dollar for substandard products (Education) and are lambasted for not forking over even more money. We're chastised for not having the wisdom to socialize our medicine industry, guaranteeing the Gov't controls 1/6th of the national economy and provides a substandard product equally (HHS), even though people already are able to access that substandard fare (i.e. illegals at the ER). Yet it is somehow unreasonable, nay immoral, for the Gov't to pay high prices and achieve highest quality when it comes to the one duty they actually HAVE?

Sorry, yet again no sale. I could tell you about enough waste, fraud, and abuse to sicken you, but that doesn't mean we should just gouge military effectiveness the way THE WON intends to.

Please explain the cincinnatus concept...

Citizen/soldiers, the way Paul envisions our military. Aside from the technical complexity the military requires in the modern era, it simply became impossible to feasibly train up recruits or levies efficiently enough for modern warfare. That's why Democrats are always bringing up the Draft under a variety of disguises - most notably wanting the "rich" to provide "their fair share" - they value the indoctrination and potential for the use of civil force rather than any cretinous pretense of equality. When I went to Desert Storm, my Mom was one of two individuals in THE WHOLE GAWDDAMN STATE DEPARTMENT who had a child in the military. Progressive Democrats (aka cowards) will ensure that their children will escape the "death sentence" of military service just as the cowardly rich will ensure their child finds an escape. That's the way it always was and always will be - the vile thing is that we have a society that thinks not fighting for your beliefs is somehow noble.

You really don't remember me? I'm hurt.

You'll heal. (Of course I remember you, as much as I remember anyone else. I just never wanted to open up another forum 'environment', though I've abandoned the GW OTF now.)

I'm intrigued as to whom you're supporting. You mentioned Cain a while back, but he's out.

In honesty, it's a tough choice now. None of them are much good; you'd have to stitch several of them together into some Frankenstein-like amalgamation in order to have someone I'd like. Yes, large pieces of Paul would be in there too.

The church wasn't the one rising up and learning. The church was fighting people who disagreed with it, both in science and dogma.

There's that revisionism again. Yes, the church bureaucracy was not interested in philosophies that undercut Rome's supremacy, but there wasn't as much to do about it as there used to be when the Inquisition was holding the Friday Night Floggings. A significant number (likely a majority) of your Reformation thinkers were observant Catholics. Before that, Luther and the Protestant Reformation both were anti-Roman after the Church was already far weaker than it had previously been, but they were both disagreeing over dogmatic and political issues rather than religious ones; the constant infighting and the Islamic Conquest had guaranteed that what passed as nationalism had far more secular power - and the Church far less - than before. It's never a fun thing to contemplate damnation for whatever sin you might have performed, but when that damnation is backed up by being banned from any commerce or support (and sometimes even making you a target) it carries a lot more weight.

wow, okay I'm wrong, he's just a regular bigot--trying to find a cure to the scurge of all civilization.

I have *** friends, and their relationships are often healthier and more loving than mine.

When you don't accept the (unfounded) claims of medical/genetic sources for being queer, it is clearly behavioral in nature. Society determines why one behavior is wrong and another is not. It's not so many years since I recall the "have you now or have you ever been" question asked - and not with mockery or sarcastic intent - and I find no reason to think that he's deserving of the title 'bigot' just because he believes in the ability to "pray away the ***". My sister stopped smoking thanks to her conversion. I've heard of many other miraculous conversions. So I don't find it laughable or ludicrous that he considers his practice to fix queers in the same light others do in anti-drug or sobriety counseling. I've known a couple of happy queers myself, but I've known (personally) at least as many who are embittered by their dealings with scum of the opposite sex or whose leanings are all but certainly due to other, more severe personal issues.

Of course gingrich and paul and one of the others have similarly iffy plans, but none as specifically bad as cain's.

I agree that nobody is covering themselves with glory in this aspect. I think if someone took the "Fair Tax" of Neal Boortz or some of the "Flat Tax" aspects and made a serious bid to dismantle the IRS, that person could capture the TEA Party vote. Progressives like Romney and Gingrich won't support that sort of thing, I expect.

After many pages of political talk, i suppose you might know someone who fits my mold closer? i'm open to suggestions. Clearly you've done your homework.

Not of anyone running currently, though I obviously disagree with your criteria. I don't know how progressive Santorum really is, and since he's gone the "babykisser" route I don't know how much I should or can ignore your silly "theocratic" issue. It's one thing to be stupid enough to imagine the U.S. at risk of a theocracy, when the opposite is already a regular occurrence. It's another thing entirely to vote for someone because they thump the Bible to distract from their weakness on policy.

Does it work?

He thinks it does; I still cudgel him when the topic comes back up.

Why does god wait until your death to punish you? that's not effective at all,

Properly, the Christian God does not punish anyone - the final judgement is more about taking out the waste paper to the incinerator. Live without God's blessing is enough punishment; he doesn't heap more upon you (that's the Devil's job, since he's the one managing affairs here).

for someone to learn to behave in the way you want them to the reinforcement must be tied to the punishment. this is pretty basic psychology.

Then doubtless you'll recognize the false choice in only considering the negative aspect of faith. People should <want> to be moral, upstanding, honorable people, not simply trying to find the sleaziest, least difficult way out of a situation they've caused. As a Christian, I accept the things that I say or do that cause harm as sin, and on a personal basis attempt to live as inoffensive and beneficial existence as I can (though you'd never know from my online discussions).

If anyone, a god would know best how to affect the behavior of his creations, would he not?

I think he still does, but why would you want a totalitarian God if you don't want a totalitarian ruler?

JC tells the Pharisee that there's no other way to salvation than "thru the gate" which is in that chapter explained to be JC himself. The ONLY way is to accept JC, and be forgiven. And he always forgives everything except one offense--talking bad about the holy spirit.

See, some Unitarians don't even believe those parts - which is why I don't like Unitarians. There's plenty of discussion out there about Jesus' words and whether they apply in a literal or figurative sense to us - in this instance, it's pretty obvious that they would have to be figurative since the entire endeavor is based upon his words being applicable to humanity rather than just his immediate crew.

So you don't think religion makes society better? you're dancing on the fence here.

No, and no. The type of religion does indeed make a difference; the Aztecs and Incas were certainly not making a better society for themselves.

your analogy leaves me with little wiggle room, but I'm arguing here that we can build a better house with better hammers and saws. maybe some table saws so our cuts are straighter, and not guided magically.

Yet every house built with your better hammers and saws has exploded, often destroying neighbors' homes, frequently killing half or more of the households in each, and the remaining family members have often spent the rest of their lives as impoverished crack heads living in the gutter. Are you going to continue to tell me that it's all the builder's fault, whether it's Commie Brothers or Hitler & Sons, rather than ever admit you have a deep-seated hatred for legitimate woodworking because it takes longer and costs more?

BTW he's not posting at the other place either (land of the banned). He just mysteriously disappeared one day.

I try not to be uncharitable (much) but it's pretty hard to take a Progressive Communist seriously when in moments of weakness he gloats about how much better he is than you because he's so rich.

[BobCox2]

Hard to say (about the videos). Read your definition carefully; it clearly applies to Paul. The secondary phrase about "generally" is what you're tripping over; I notice you're going with urbandictionary (which is blocked for me) instead of wikipedia because wiki clearly identifies the blanket nature of the term.

Redefining Generally is something Pol's Do.

JMervynising or something like that, Does the J stand for Jerry?



As a more "General" Comment
Barney Frank (Homo-Congress-retired today)
had this Quote I loved.



ROFL at Stevinator feeding troll.

[Stevinator]

Hard to say (about the videos). Read your definition carefully; it clearly applies to Paul. The secondary phrase about "generally" is what you're tripping over; I notice you're going with urbandictionary (which is blocked for me) instead of wikipedia because wiki clearly identifies the blanket nature of the term.

Both are suspect sources that we use all the time. Instead of quibbling terms, i agree with the idea that there are repercussions for our foreign policy. Paul's point about the US inciting blowback rings true with me. I stop short of accusing Bush's administration (or the previous several) from having any part in knocking down the towers other than not catching onto the plot. It would have been nice to connect the dots, but honestly, I'm not going to blame him for that. It wouldn't be fair. I'll just say our intelligence organizations could have done more, and they missed one. I'm not for disbanding the entire CIA, in fact I probably would dismantle less than Paul. (look we're back to the thread topic! Double reverse hijack.

Depends on whether you feel that more regulation is the solution to business' involvement in elections.

I don't even think the curent GOP candidates support the current environment, not even in private. i suppose they do take a little solace in being able to stand up there and claim they can't stop the negative advertising, but i think they'd take the trade for more control of their own messages. The regulations need not be burdensome. I'd like to see more transparency (who's ad is it?), and more accountability for the message.

The "right" is the lesser of two evils when it comes to door-kickery. Does that mean they're pure as the driven snow? Hardly. But that does not support "theocracy" foolishness of any level.

With Obama recently signing terrible legislation that seems like it would be from the far right you may have a point, zooming out a bit, the current party system ensures that my rights will slowly be eroded for both sides...

I'd like to think that we should want more from our politicians than the slogan, "eroding your freedoms and a much slower rate than my competitor". Just doesn't have a good ring to it.

Not good enough. When one side slaughters random American innocents for kicks and claims God said it was aces, why <shouldn't> we support their enemy? Particularly when their enemy consists of a large block of people from under 300 miles near where I live? That's why I reject Paul's thesis: Islamists don't hate us for supporting Israel - that's just a handy excuse. They hate us because we represent the British continuum of Western Civilization, and their insecurity finds that superior culture anathema.
That's the old argument Llad12 (aka Ill) used to make. I have two, no, make that three answers.

1. Department of Education. America spends more than any other nation on education as well. So why is it that all I hear are shrieks about how impoverished teachers are, and how much easier their jobs need to be made? Are we getting the world's most effective education system for all our expenditure?
2. Department of Health and Human Services. America is mocked for spending such extensive monies on health care by Europeans, Canadians, and other riff-raff Yet they're among the first clawing at each other when <THEY> are the ones in need of cancer treatment or other sophisticated medicines, courtesy of the U.S. of A. What is so wrong about paying for quality?
3. Department of Defense. The extreme expenditures of the DoD are in no small part due to keeping open bases in specific congresscritters' home turf, or funding projects that will directly benefit states for said congresscritters. Yet the cuts all but invariably come from operations.

So we pay higher than top dollar for substandard products (Education) and are lambasted for not forking over even more money. We're chastised for not having the wisdom to socialize our medicine industry, guaranteeing the Gov't controls 1/6th of the national economy and provides a substandard product equally (HHS), even though people already are able to access that substandard fare (i.e. illegals at the ER). Yet it is somehow unreasonable, nay immoral, for the Gov't to pay high prices and achieve highest quality when it comes to the one duty they actually HAVE?

Should we find ways to make our education system more effective and dramatically reduce it's budget? yes. Good luck, the Teacher's Union ensures that won't happen. I KNOW you'll agree with me on that. BTW since I'm teasing you about forgetting me i'll remind you my mom is/was in education and was heavily involved in union activites. We don't discuss it at dinner anymore.

Health care is a tricky one. With Education it's a lot easier to define your goals and measure to them. It's not easy, but it's much easier than health care. What do you use to measure success? The entire system has a lot of good things, a lot of messed up things, and single payer solves some while creating all new probably much worse problems. I 'll let this go to a different thread, but le's just say that i don't have a good all encompassing solution to this problem. The GOP has some band-aids (there's a health care analogy), and the left has the wrong idea, so I'm a little torn on that issue. i will say that my usual let the market work solution can't work for health care. the market can't function when someone's life is on the line. Can you draw a demand curve for a life saving operation? it basically comes down to everyone would pay prices above the amount they could feasibly re-pay. That breaks the usual rules for markets. When you throw those out, well, you have to start from scratch. tinkering with malpractice insurance, chasing the poor out of emergency rooms, that's all band-aids. Since I'm rambling again, I'll just say i think we could and should be more effective here.

Here's a little story though. My grandfather is well over 90 years old. His doctor scared the bejesus out of him to get surgery on one of his heart valves, he's in physical therapy and appears to be recuperating, but i have to wonder if it needed to be done and if he'll really see any significant improvement in quality of living. the surgery cost tens of thousands--just for the three hours they were cutting on him. the whole debacle will likely cost the taxpayer well into the 6 figure range. His out of pocket was next to nothing 9well that's relative i suppose--it was a very small percentage) because he had Medicare, his navy insurance, his old employer's insurance, and apparently some other policy that i don't totally understand where it came from (it's not medicaid, they aren't rich, but they live comfortably). Now it's his life so I didn't try to talk him down, but it sure seems to me that since the valve wasn't life threatening (especially for someone with his short life expectancy), the doctors really took a risk with his remaining time. The insurance system, the profit motive of the doctors and the difficulty in finding sound non-biased opinions (especially for someone who can't turn on the computer) all make for a bunch of misallocated (spell check says this isn't a word) resources.

As for the department of defense, again, i think we can and should cut heavily here. I spoke (posted?) previously on what our per family spending looks like. I know it would be nice to go back to the two front policies of the past, but we simply can't afford it. We'll need to have our allies realize that they need to take a greater role in defending themselves. Surely you see some merit in that.

And yes, defense (actual defense) is one of the things the governments should do. I'm not saying we get rid of the military. I'm saying that we should ask ourselves how many nuclear submarines we really need. Can't we trim some pork?

Sorry, yet again no sale. I could tell you about enough waste, fraud, and abuse to sicken you, but that doesn't mean we should just gouge military effectiveness the way THE WON intends to.
Citizen/soldiers, the way Paul envisions our military. Aside from the technical complexity the military requires in the modern era, it simply became impossible to feasibly train up recruits or levies efficiently enough for modern warfare. That's why Democrats are always bringing up the Draft under a variety of disguises - most notably wanting the "rich" to provide "their fair share" - they value the indoctrination and potential for the use of civil force rather than any cretinous pretense of equality. When I went to Desert Storm, my Mom was one of two individuals in THE WHOLE GAWDDAMN STATE DEPARTMENT who had a child in the military. Progressive Democrats (aka cowards) will ensure that their children will escape the "death sentence" of military service just as the cowardly rich will ensure their child finds an escape. That's the way it always was and always will be - the vile thing is that we have a society that thinks not fighting for your beliefs is somehow noble.

okay. I'm not surprised that those that can find ways to avoid putting their kids in harm's way. I'm also not arguing with the fact that the left uses this argument unfairly.

Now this is a place where the market can help. I imagine that if the pay was high enough, people would start to sign up to serve over there. Makes me wonder what my number would be.

You'll heal. (Of course I remember you, as much as I remember anyone else. I just never wanted to open up another forum 'environment', though I've abandoned the GW OTF now.)

Bear with me in my time of grieving.

In honesty, it's a tough choice now. None of them are much good; you'd have to stitch several of them together into some Frankenstein-like amalgamation in order to have someone I'd like. Yes, large pieces of Paul would be in there too.

I never actually read the original Frankenstein book, don't they lose control of the monster? Be careful what you wish for.

There's that revisionism again. Yes, the church bureaucracy was not interested in philosophies that undercut Rome's supremacy, but there wasn't as much to do about it as there used to be when the Inquisition was holding the Friday Night Floggings. A significant number (likely a majority) of your Reformation thinkers were observant Catholics. Before that, Luther and the Protestant Reformation both were anti-Roman after the Church was already far weaker than it had previously been, but they were both disagreeing over dogmatic and political issues rather than religious ones; the constant infighting and the Islamic Conquest had guaranteed that what passed as nationalism had far more secular power - and the Church far less - than before. It's never a fun thing to contemplate damnation for whatever sin you might have performed, but when that damnation is backed up by being banned from any commerce or support (and sometimes even making you a target) it carries a lot more weight.

Again, even if i agreed with your interpretation of history--I don't want the church having that kind of power. Once i'm labelled as a sinner, I'm chased out of the market and the social contract no longer applies to me? yikes, that's the dystopia (spell check hates me--is that right? Why are there no words in the spell check dictionary? is that a forum thing or a chrome thing? it's a sea of red squiggles over here) I'm afraid of.

When you don't accept the (unfounded) claims of medical/genetic sources for being queer, it is clearly behavioral in nature. Society determines why one behavior is wrong and another is not. It's not so many years since I recall the "have you now or have you ever been" question asked - and not with mockery or sarcastic intent - and I find no reason to think that he's deserving of the title 'bigot' just because he believes in the ability to "pray away the ***". My sister stopped smoking thanks to her conversion. I've heard of many other miraculous conversions. So I don't find it laughable or ludicrous that he considers his practice to fix queers in the same light others do in anti-drug or sobriety counseling. I've known a couple of happy queers myself, but I've known (personally) at least as many who are embittered by their dealings with scum of the opposite sex or whose leanings are all but certainly due to other, more severe personal issues.

I've argued that since we've been unable to identify any genetic markers for homosexual behavior that it's likely either a conscious choice or an effect of a person's environment (you're not born ***). Before the flames arrive, I don't think that makes it okay to treat them as a second class of citizens. If we go any deeper than that, we'll need a new thread. Let's just leave it at I'm pro-*** rights. Let's also say that straight people do some very strange things in the bedroom too. For evidence, I submit the internet. (okay, I on'y put that last line in to make a pron reference)

I agree that nobody is covering themselves with glory in this aspect. I think if someone took the "Fair Tax" of Neal Boortz or some of the "Flat Tax" aspects and made a serious bid to dismantle the IRS, that person could capture the TEA Party vote. Progressives like Romney and Gingrich won't support that sort of thing, I expect.
Not of anyone running currently, though I obviously disagree with your criteria. I don't know how progressive Santorum really is, and since he's gone the "babykisser" route I don't know how much I should or can ignore your silly "theocratic" issue. It's one thing to be stupid enough to imagine the U.S. at risk of a theocracy, when the opposite is already a regular occurrence. It's another thing entirely to vote for someone because they thump the Bible to distract from their weakness on policy.

You're going to groan aloud when you read this, so if you're at work, check the room.


While I support a flatter fairer tax, i think that should include taxing income from capital gains and dividends at the same rate as income. i don't like regressive taxes, and i don't want to see the full tax rate on the lowest income earners because I'd rather see the tax burden shift more towards taxing mostly disposable income. it just seems a little unfair to hit that family barely making end meet at the same rate as the well off. Still, taxes are too high and my system with that one lower bracket is much fairer than what we have. Taxing different types of income at different rates let's us financial guys play some funny games. So my perfect tax plan starts at 0 dollars with a very low percent (no negative taxes, no deductions), and goes to maybe twice the poverty rate, and steps up to the full rate, and is flat thereafter. Corporations and LLCs are taxed at that same scale. There's no separate line item for FICA or Medicare or anything (well some states would have an income tax--but that's up to them), it's all rolled into one.

That wasn't that bad, but you didn't catch this part--I'd tax any church's and non-profits too. that's where the javelins come out, but people don't realize that the non-profit tag is rife with abuse. Sure some (many) churches are legitimate charity organizations that do all kinds of good stuff, but i don't like the government deciding what's "charitable". We complain all the time about choosing winners and losers, but we blindly overlook the fact that government is choosing what's a legitimate charity and what is not. I'd rather we find ways to reduce that tax rate to something low enough that charities can still manage.

The GOP always says that capital gains and dividends were already taxed. no they weren't. the initial investment was, but the NEW money created was not. taxing the initial investment again would amount to a wealth tax, which I would not support. taxing capital gains and dividends is taxing NEW money--income that you brought in that year. Why should dividends be taxed at half the rate interest on your savings account gets taxed at? that doesn't make sense. When you hear "flatter tax rate" look and see if they include everything, and you'll find they don't and won't. Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Herman Cain all proposed tax plans that specifically discluded capital gains and dividends.



He thinks it does; I still cudgel him when the topic comes back up.
[/QUOTE]

Cudgel again! i still haven't found a chance to use it.

Properly, the Christian God does not punish anyone - the final judgement is more about taking out the waste paper to the incinerator. Live without God's blessing is enough punishment; he doesn't heap more upon you (that's the Devil's job, since he's the one managing affairs here).

Ah, but you have to have one to have the other. That's semantics. God could easily smote the devil since he/she/it is all powerful.

Then doubtless you'll recognize the false choice in only considering the negative aspect of faith. People should <want> to be moral, upstanding, honorable people, not simply trying to find the sleaziest, least difficult way out of a situation they've caused. As a Christian, I accept the things that I say or do that cause harm as sin, and on a personal basis attempt to live as inoffensive and beneficial existence as I can (though you'd never know from my online discussions).

Calvin and Hobbes 9the philosophers not the awesome comic characters) each had their own thoughts about whether people were inherently good or bad. I like to think they're good, therefore religion is superfluous. The matter hasn't really been settled though.

I think he still does, but why would you want a totalitarian God if you don't want a totalitarian ruler?

Is neither an option? Anyway, now we're off the deep end on hijacks....

That's the trouble with these new-fangled gods. They're all omniscient, and omnipotent (can't let the other gods be tougher), so you get into these sticky questions about pre-determination vs free will, whether letting you burn even though he knew you were going to do that ahead of time is cruel or not...Philosophy was so much easier when the gods thought you were minuscule and unimportant. When you're omniscient and omnipotent, you have to care.

Interestingly enough, i did once hear the arguement that god does NOT know your future choices. It took a little googling, but I found this gem that explains why:
http://www.cogwriter.com/god-omnipot...mnipresent.htm

Here's the cliff notes, because it's a couple pages.

The Bible tells us that God does perceive all things, which means that no fact can be hidden from His knowledge. As King David recognized: “Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You” (Psalm 139:12). God sees all things, and nothing can be hidden from His knowledge—not even the secret intentions of the heart (Psalm 44:21). In fact, He understands our own intentions better than we do (cf. Jeremiah 17:9-10; Hebrews 4:12)! As Paul explains, “there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13).

***stuff cut out in between***

But if we are to use the word omniscient to describe our Father and His glorified Son, it cannot mean that God knows our every choice before we make it in every circumstance, because Scripture tells us otherwise! For example, the Bible shows that when God gave Abraham the supreme test of sacrificing his son Isaac, He did not know until that moment whether Abraham would choose to obey. Upon seeing his choice, He told Abraham: “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me” (Genesis 22:12). This was one of the most crucial points in the history of faith and in the plan of God! It was a challenge so intense, and involving such faith, that God did not know what choice Abraham would make.

You gotta like that. God didn't know, and I completely missed it when I was reading it. Never noticed.
If anyone is still reading this, their mind is blown. They're scribbling all those passages down in their "I'll pwn you later" file, for just such a debate. I love the internets.

See, some Unitarians don't even believe those parts - which is why I don't like Unitarians. There's plenty of discussion out there about Jesus' words and whether they apply in a literal or figurative sense to us - in this instance, it's pretty obvious that they would have to be figurative since the entire endeavor is based upon his words being applicable to humanity rather than just his immediate crew.
No, and no. The type of religion does indeed make a difference; the Aztecs and Incas were certainly not making a better society for themselves.

Nobody likes unitarians, or most of these wacky made up denominations. It doesn't seem fair that people pick and choose through their faith like its a salad bar. you're in or you're out, or you're not sure. You can't just make up a new one (at least not without a new prophet or revelation or something--even the scientenlogists came up with SOMETHING). What legitimacy can you really have then?

Yet every house built with your better hammers and saws has exploded, often destroying neighbors' homes, frequently killing half or more of the households in each, and the remaining family members have often spent the rest of their lives as impoverished crack heads living in the gutter. Are you going to continue to tell me that it's all the builder's fault, whether it's Commie Brothers or Hitler & Sons, rather than ever admit you have a deep-seated hatred for legitimate woodworking because it takes longer and costs more?

I would argue that the exploding issue did not start with the new hammers and saws, in fact most of the previously built houses blew up too, and I hope one day we'll learn to build a non-explosive house before it's too late and there's nowhere to live.

I try not to be uncharitable (much) but it's pretty hard to take a Progressive Communist seriously when in moments of weakness he gloats about how much better he is than you because he's so rich.

Well, they revoked his Lib-card when he signed up with the oil companies.

[jmervyn]

JMervynising or something like that, Does the J stand for Jerry?

Jackson, maybe. Jerk?

Barney Frank (Homo-Congress-retired today) had this Quote I loved.

Considering that Bawney's lover was found guilty of having a "grow your own" farm on Bawney's property, (different lover from the one who ran the queer whorehouse out of Bawney's apartment) I think you can safely say that being an arrogant, nasty, fat queer were the least unpleasant things about the man. I wonder why Bawney didn't lose HIS WHOLE FECKIN HOUSEHOLD LIKE ANY OTHER PROLE WOULD HAVE!?!

I don't routinely heap hate on a specific individual. Bawney and Chris Dodd (now the MPAA's chair/CEO) are two who I make an exception for. Both of them should be given the Edward II treatment in public using sledgehammers, and that's probably too kind.