yoink

Nope. I'm an athiest - I don't believe in prayer. They do have my sympathies though. And you're still being an arsehole. Chalk this one up as a loss, professor. You're making yourself look foolish.

If someone of faith were asking the question 'How / why did God allow this?' to other believers, that would be a legitimate and potentially troubling conversation for them to have. For you as an atheist to try and start the discussion makes no sense. You're not actually interested in the replies you'd get and you didn't phrase the question in a way that had any respect or empathy for the event. That means that your motive for making the post was just some form of internet point scoring after a tragedy. THAT'S what's distasteful . The continued rationalization is simply to try and prove you weren't being an arsehole. It's not working - You were. If it were me, I'd apologise and move on. I'm going to leave this now - if you want you can PM me.

That's a pretty distasteful post, Professor. Mass shootings are what's really distasteful I find gloating about how God didn't save 20 people from being murdered in a church the day following the attack pretty sick. Just as sick as people making gun rights arguments the day after a vehicle attack. Stick to discussion of the event and leave the theology out of it. I also disagree with normiss - I don't think it's typical atheistic crap. It's an unnecessary cheap shot from one person. There are lots of atheists in here who wouldn't say something like that.

Anything below 3,000'. Yes, you can do it and will almost certainly be fine in regards to your deployment, but for me it's a deconfliction question. I think that by 3k almost everyone else on the jump will be under canopy (or in deployment) and I'm not a fan of mixing canopy flight and freefall. For the same rationale I'd feel just as uneasy if someone said 'over 4'500' There's that area between about 3 and 4k where everyone is transitioning from freefall to canopy flight. Outside that envelope I think that as many people as possible should be in the same flight state.

That's a pretty distasteful post, Professor.

The more I read and hear, the more something stinks like a week dead dog. Something just feels off to me. Every excerpt from this book has crime-fighting detective Donna Brazile sleuthing her way to the bottom of every wrong that might have been done, while at the same time having an excuse why she did nothing about any of them. It reads like post-rationalization that makes her sound like a victimized hero to me. Then of course, there's the book itself - she's on all the morning TV shows promoting it, but the question remains that if she solved all of these issues at the time, why did she wait until she was publishing a book about it to make them known? Again - massively self serving. I don't trust her.

Given that, Trump would not have gotten any votes. Jerry Baumchen See? My proposition is genius. GENIUS I tell you!

It's not really Trump's plan. It's Ryan's plan with some input from Trump. Tax policy is complicated. Who knew? So's healthcare apparently.

I do, and I know not many people agree with me on that. I think everyone has the right (and responsibility!) to educate themselves about the issues at hand, but you should only be allowed to vote on a particular subject if you've passed some basic knowledge requirement. I don't particularly want someone with absolutely no knowledge of economics of capitalism (or completely wrong knowledge) having input into the way the free market should work, for example. I don't think the tests should be built to exclude people with basic knowledge, just those with either non or factually wrong knowledge.

Mandatory voting is an AWFUL idea. Voting should be something done with consideration because it has real consequences, not just a chore to tick off. The mathematics of the winner-take-all system ensures that only a 2-party system can ever be a stable one. Increasing the number of voters does noting to change the system in place. You seem so keen on gloating about making the 'you've got the government you deserves' point, that you're ignoring the facts of the situation. We get it. You think it's funny / karma that we've got an incompetent asshole for a president and government. But increasing the number of voters does nothing to change that from happening again.

Only because people don't. In this case you're wrong. The system itself is broken - more people voting in a broken system doesn't magically fix it. Nor does it necessarily even highlight the problems. I also think that simply saying ''more people should vote' isn't necessarily a good thing. If you said 'more people should educate themselves about the issues then vote' then I'd agree with you, but simply more votes would probably lead to more uneducated* votes -votes that simple go the way the TV or their mate down the pub tell them without real thought given to the issues. Personally I don't think that's a good thing for democracy. *uneducated meaning lack of specific understanding of the complex issues to hand, not votes by unschooled people.

They will rationalize the cheating bitch because it's not about her, it's about the party. Eventually they will throw her under the bus because she is irrelevant to there in goals Throw her under the bus for what, exactly? I agree, what she and the DNC did is completely unethical, but at the moment it doesn't look like they broke any rules, unfortunately. She didn't cheat because she didn't break the rules. That's not the same as playing fair though. And to be honest, who cares about throwing her under the bus at this point in time apart from you extreme right wing folks? Like you said - she's completely irrelevant now. I'd much rather effort was put into current issues. The fact that you use the term 'bitch' to describe her shows how emotional you are about it (and hence how you are probably unable to make a rational argument). Maybe you should do what I've done - move on from Hillary. Just take a breath and let it go. She didn't win, she'll never hold another position of power. There are more important things to get angry over. Edit: If it turns out that she did break some rules, then I'm all for throwing the book at her without mercy. An example should be set IF she broke the rules.

First thought is that that excerpt from her own book shows Brazile in the best possible light, so I'm disinclined to trust it word for word. That said, I've been certain since before the primary that Hillary had been promised the nomination via back room deals. I'd love to see the DNC either clean house, or splinter into a real third party, but as long as the parties are private establishments there aren't really any rules... In my ideal world, each party would raise money for their candidates that would go into a shared pot. Candidates from each party would have an upper limit on how much they are allowed to spend during their campaign (call it a million just for an easy example). If each party has 3 candidates and raises $3m, then everyone can run at the maximum budget for a fair contest. If one party only raises $1.5m then they need to have an internal (but transparent) discussion on how to split that between their candidates, but you couldn't just assign all of it to a single candidate.

I've said for years that I would vote for anyone who runs on abolishing the electoral college, pretty much regardless of their other policies. But their is no incentive for those in power to change the rules, because those rules are what keeps them in power. A third party candidate who ran on changing those rules would never get backing from the established parties, and would never get the funds to compete. (Look at the current DNC scandal for example) Your idea of 'everyone voting as much as possible' making much of a difference is ludicrously over simplified and idealistic.

Nonsense. The system favor those who get off their asses and vote who usually wouldn't in the three or four contested states. In the other 46 individual additional votes really don't matter that much. Whether you win by 1 vote or 5 million, you still get the same number of electoral college votes.

I heard that Hillary Clinton was delivering that personally. Parachuting it in on canopies made from baby foreskin, and that for every 100 tonnes delivered she and Putin would have a US flag burning ceremony while throwing darts at pictures of George Washington. She really is a piece of work.

Just out of curiosity, do you think that this deal was actually a sale of Uranium from within our borders to Russia? No. But we do know that some went to Canada, the Europe and then from there no one knows Ohh. Right. Kinda like if you sell your gun to someone, then it gets sold to someone else and used for a crime we should hold you responsible. Gotcha.

Honestly? Probably not enough carnage to sell. Because everyone has their nice and tidy bullet point for a gun control discussion. We can reel them off no thought required. A new discussion? That's going to take AT LEAST 300 people dying to provide impetus for some actual new thought.

Yeah. By all means increase the tax rate on the poorest segment of society by 5% but keep the rate the same for the richest. Makes perfect sense... Those poor people don't show up to Washington lunches anyway.

Well that'll be FAKE NEWS, for a start.

Here's today's shooting - at a Walmart in Colorado. Doesn't class as a 'mass-shooting' though because only 3 people died... amateur. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41842985 My favourite quote comes from the police spokesperson responding to an event in which 3 people have just randomly been killed by a lunatic with a gun: 3 people murdered. hahaha... Crazy times huh? How 'bout them Dodgers? What a game!

Hey! That motherfucker puts fancy lah-de-dah mustard on his burgers. LOCK HIM UP.

Some of the posts in this thread beggar belief. 8 people are dead from a vehicle attack but instead of talking about the event itself, the usual suspects are unsubtly making gun-rights arguments. Why? Piss off over to one of the mass shootings threads and make your points there. Believe it or not, not everything is about guns or your access to them. I thought there was an interesting discussion to be had about the future of terror and how much people would accept limitations to their privacy in the name of security. I even said in my initial post that removing vehicles isn't a solution and we should concentrate on intelligence but apparently this doesn't stop your fucking moronic bleating. You see the word 'gun' somewhere in a post and your're instantly spewing out your standard replies in an almost Pavlovian reflex. It must be very comforting to live in a world where actual comprehension and thought are completely optional.

Shitty? Once, maybe. But it's tough to continually come up with new flavor profiles for vegetarian dishes. I wouldn't call someone unable to do that a shitty chef - more like someone who CAN do that a fucking Rembrandt. It's like asking a painter to paint a portrait without the colors black, white or red. Yeah, he can probably do it. If he's REALLY good he'll probably make a decent job of it. But for the rest of us mortals I choose not to hamstring myself when it comes to producing flavorful dishes. Removing access to ingredients necessarily limits the palate of flavors you have to work with.

Yes, because the tool’s the issue, not the behavior. Fucking apathy is the issue, apparently.