peacefuljeffrey

That is an EXCELLENT article. Thanks for posting the link. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Oh yeah - Paul - I just doubt EVERY single thing my MOM sends to me. My dad sends me all kinds of forwards that I personally hardly ever believe, and then I send him an email back to correct him if I know it's false, or to express my skepticism if I don't believe it. The only trouble is, he usually sends these things that he receives (he is not the one who goes and seeks them) on to a bunch of other people besides me. I have tried and tried to tell him to either not bother sending them out, or verify the claims made in them. He continues on in his naivete, though. Several times, I have received a mass-email from him correcting or apologizing for the information that he forwarded. In recent memory, he sent me the one about how some nonexistent medical organization said that if you feel a heart attack coming on, you can save your life by coughing violently as a substitute for immediate CPR -- false; and one about how Mr. Rogers was a trained military killer who had dispatched 25 men, and wore long-sleeved sweaters to cover his many tattoos. Someone sent out a response that also reached me, refuting this one pretty well, too. (The same was said about Captain Kangaroo, actually.) Some people are so smitten with the internet that they fall for all the hoaxes just because they're so eager to take part in the exchange of information, I think. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

A cooler story would have ended with you not giving him any ticket. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Never pay it right away without trying to fight it. Why give them the automatic victory -- any chance to avoid the fine and the points on your license is a chance worth taking. I mean, we all know that your 74 was not really unsafe, so it's not like you're trying to defend against having done something objectively reckless, stupid and unsafe. So you're not wrong to object being told by the government that you should be penalized. Go to court, and if the officer who wrote you the ticket is not present, when your case is called, request a dismissal on the grounds of the officer's non-appearance. Explain, respectfully, that you have shown good faith to the court and its schedule, and that you realize that if you had been absent you would have been found guilty in absentia, i.e. you would have forfeited; and that by not showing up, for whatever reasons, the officer has caused you to have to waste your time and you would appreciate it if the court would not force you to do it again. One time, I explained that I had had to travel 200 miles from college during finals-time to appear for my ticket, and the judge, who initially balked about dismissing the ticket because I myself had had adjournments and postponements already. My sob story of inconvenience made him change his mind. If the cop is present, ask the judge (often you are given a chance to arrange a plea before all of the day's trials start) if you can get "adjudication withheld." This means that the court does not make a finding of guilty or not guilty -- so nothing goes on your DMV record or insurance -- but you have to pay the fine as though you pleaded guilty. I did this once or twice. Some judges make a special out of it. I was on line with the clerk, at the desk right next to the judge, and I arranged that very thing. I kept hearing him tell people, "Mr. Jones, I see they got you for 7 over the limit... That's not horrible. I'll withhold adjudication, see the clerk and pay the fine." THE STATE IS JUST IN IT FOR THE MONEY, ANYWAY. They don't give a shit if you get points on your license, they just want the FINE REVENUES. Good luck. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Christopher Reeve can tell you how very safe horseback riding is! (If you have the patience to wait for his ventilator to get him through it.) is right. How could your mom think you would be better off safety-wise by riding horses? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Here we go again....If you think skydiving is safe in any way, shape, or form...I have a bridge to sell you. If you do it in the ways you've been taught are correct, and you don't take stupid chances, and you fly current, good-condition equipment, with responsible people from a well-maintained aircraft, it is safe. You can't pretend it is unsafe just because it involves high speed, gravity, and a potential to hit the ground really fast. Handling radioactive material with one of those robot-arm setups through a thick leaded glass window is perfectly safe -- because of the safeguards put between the material and the handler. You could say it was unsafe just by virtue of the fact that the materials, if you were directly exposed to them, would kill you. But the big question is, "How reliably can you keep yourself from being exposed to the materials." So, by the same token, the more things you can put between you and a high speed impact, the safer skydiving is. Reach a certain point in the unlikelihood of having yourself an accident, and you can justifiably call it "safe." - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

The university pays for school and rent, Dad pays for car and cell phone. My parents live 3 hours away. WOW! A full ride? Are you some sort of prog- er, prodi- er, ...genius? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Sorry, but your dad is not thinking straight if he believes you'd be safer on a motorcycle than you would be skydiving. For just one thing, when you are skydiving, if you consistently force yourself to be safety-conscious, conservative, and exercise good judgment (and occasionally defer to the better, more experienced judgment of others), you will skydive for a long time. You can't say the same about a motorcyclist, since so many motorcycle injuries and fatalities have less to do with what the motorcyclist does than what other drivers do. Your dad is way off base, here. I hope he comes around, and I also hope that whether he does or does not, you keep skydiving. When I wanted to do my first jump, back in college in 1991, my parents did not object. My dad just asked me to wait a week so that he could get a life insurance policy written for me. It's 13 years later, and I still keep current on that $100,000 policy. It costs me $265 a year. So I figure, why not? Surely not. Tell your dad to get his head out of his ass and read some stats. And have fun skydiving! Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Okay, okay, now stop capitulating about it or someone's gonna start to think you're French! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

NO We are the People's Front of Judea I thought we were the Popular Front? "PFFT! ... Judean People's Front... Wankers!" - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Here's what he said (in part): "I have to make an unfortunate declaration on the people who agree with "hot saucing". you are a lazy fuck." Bill, in the context of this thread, this is the same as saying, "Jeff, you and the others who have expressed this opinion here in this thread are lazy fucks." You are drawing a distinction based on the forum rules that is not really there. He made a roundabout effort to pretend to be making a general statement instead of a targeted attack, but many of us are not fooled. How about if I made a similar pronunciation about gun control supporters?: "I have to make an unfortunate declaration on the people who agree with "gun control": you are a stupid, lying piece of shit." You're telling me that the people who had just posted previously in support of gun control have not been attacked? Come off it. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

The "democrats" I've called "far worse" have been the "Democrats" who run the national political machine, not the "end-user" democrats who are posting here. When I say, "those shit-eating, lying democrat scumbags" I typically am referring to Kerry, Schumer, Feinstein, etc. and you know it. This is different. It was clearly aimed at people on this board who fit the profile he had specified. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

In the UK and in Australia, where I now live, it is law to wear a helmet. I assume you would also have been in the group arguing against the mandate of seat belts in cars, or against reserves in parachutes. I believe that (1) you do what the law requires and (2) you do what common sense requires and wear a helmet. I choose a full face. After having taken a dune bug to the knee doing 100 miles an hour I decline the option of taking one to the face too - don't think i would stay on. But hey, if you want to kill yourself or suffer head injury - it is your choice. I'm not much in favor of government mandating the saving of ourselves from ourselves. I can't tell you how many times I read of rollover accidents (and others) in Florida that kill vehicle occupants -- particularly by making them EX-vehicle occupants. Getting thrown from a vehicle is, according to the instructor of a traffic school course I took, the number one way of dying in a vehicle crash. When I read stories in the newspaper that tell of people "ejected from the vehicle and killed," I chuckle and am sort of glad they're gone. That kind of death is indicative that he was a stupid person with shitty judgment, and I think the world needs a decrease in the number of such people using up air, water and space. I don't sympathize with a schmuck who takes himself away from his wife and kids because he's too fuckin' dumb to know that seatbelts save lives. The government can make all the laws it wants: it is never going to outlaw stupidity. A seat belt law can mandate their use, and punish people for not using them, but it cannot make them buckle the belt. That remains, despite the law, the responsibility of the user. One of the arguments I have heard used in favor of seat belt / helmet laws is the cost of medical care for accident victims. Costly injuries can be reduced through safety device usage and therefore a person who gets injured by the choice of not using a seat belt or helmet imposes his choice on others through the cost of accident insurance, or if he is unable to pay his medical bills he imposes the cost through the government, which may pay his bills. I think someone told me that some health insurance (hospitalization insurance) will be void if the injuries are the result of a motorcycle accident involving a helmetless rider. So think of what a $235,000 hospital stay including brain surgery to relieve swelling might do to a family! That's a mite selfish of the rider, yes? Same deal for the woman who "just isn't comfortable" with the seatbelt on, or who is worried it'll wrinkle her outfit, or whose cousin's friend's aunt's brother-in-law was (allegedly) decapitated by his seatbelt in an accident. (There are always people who think it's smart to treat the anomalous .0002% chance occurrence as the most likely thing, and base decisions of that coming to pass. Shit, if even 49 out of 100 uses of a seatbelt resulted in a fatality, the 51% save rate of seatbelts would make them the better bet. And we can be thankful that the margin is not even nearly that close!) - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Ahhh, that must be the loophole that allows men to join. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

This is just primary stuff, people, first of all. Second of all, in the new "anything to win" mentality that is sooo disgustingly prevalent today, it is not unheard of for a party to mobilize voters to vote in the primaries for the weakest possible opponent-party candidate, thus potentially bringing about a false popularity for the person who then becomes that party's candidate. Result: that party puts forth a candidate who is a weak match against his opponent. I don't see anything wrong with this plan as it has been explained so far. It seems to protect against having people who HATE a given party being able to have the best of both worlds. It locks them into having to make a primary vote for only one party, not, say, cruising down the ballot and making ad hoc decisions like, "Oh, the county judge, for that race, I'm gonna vote for the weakest possible opposition candidate," but back to their OWN party to pick the, say, Mayoral candidate they want to run in the election. This seems to be an attempt to take some of the cynical manipulation out of the primary elections. I think I like it. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Sorry, the devil made me do it. LOL! Cringing is part of life. Embrace the cringe!

Nice, unbiased nonpartisan site, that! Irony score 9/10 If I avow my own bias, and go out to collect every piece of damning evidence about the Democrats, and in the process I discover damning stuff about Republicans but I keep that stuff quiet, please tell me how that bias dimishes the truth of what I may find about the Democrats. In other words, just because they're on the hunt ONLY for Democrats' wrongdoings and lies, doesn't mean that when they find them, document them, and explain them, that they're untrue. Why can't you see that? It doesn't matter whether the source that discovers a truth is biased or not, as long as it is the truth. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

McCain commenting on the National Organization of Women?! I wish I had cable! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

5{ly separate issue is the growing and worrisome influx of muslim culture into France. I'd like to see how they plan to deal with that*** The influx of Muslim culture is not a bad thing. The rise of extremism and fundamentalism is. In modern times those things seem to follow Islam around more than they do any other religion. So good luck to France in trying to separate those things from the benign parts of Muslim culture as they all increase within its population. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Is there any nation in the world that can hold itself up as the only one in which members of the military have never abused innocent people? I don't disagree that such a picture would cause problems for the U.S. -- what I'm saying is that the problems would be from other countries that would be "casting the first stone," so to speak. People love to point out the foibles of the U.S., neglecting to mention those of other countries. Look at the glee that some expressed with the U.S. was briefly voted off the UN commission on human rights. Looks bad for us, until you find out that countries like CUBA and SYRIA were among those voting us off. Makes it all kinda laughable when countries like that criticize us. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

A flight instructor at the flight school where I took lessons here was bashed by a moron in a car who changed lanes into him. He wiped out pretty hard and suffered cuts, scrapes and a broken knee. He was wearing a full face helmet, and said that he would have suffered severe head injuries had he not had it. He's kind of a macho, muscular, tattooed tuff-guy, and it always seemed to me to be a bit out of "character" for a guy like him to wear a helmet, but I'm really glad I was wrong on that count. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Hey, some were funny! Holy shit I actually read something of yours that was insightful, right-on, and unnoticed by everyone else. Whoa, sick minds work alike! Don't keep me guessing -- which one was it?! Well, there's the gravedigger, who makes up for it... - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

To my knowledge, bazookas are quite legal to own. It's a tube with a handle. Nonetheless, it's an apples and handgrenades argument to compare so-called "assault weapons" to destructive devices, or any other object covered by the National Firearms Act. As it stands now, NFA firearms are out of the grasp of most law-abiding citizens simply due to the prohibitive price tags. You know what's funny? I have observed that only pro-gun people have any idea or understanding about most of the stuff you mentioned. If you talk to any typical anti-gun "hoplophobe," you find out very quickly just how ignorant they are about most anything related to guns -- whether it's laws that apply to them, or technical terms and function. Say "NFA" to an anti-gunner and he'll cock his head and have a quizzical "what's that?" expression on his face. Say "class III" and you get the same. I once asked an anti-gun friend's anti-gun dad for a quick definition of "semi-automatic weapon" when he had just said that he supported the "assault-weapons ban," and he made the "rifle motion" with his hands and said, "When you pull the trigger it goes buddabuddabuddabuddabudda...!" (imitating automatic fire) I said, "Thank you, you just proved to me that you support this law without even knowing what it does or doesn't do." I then explained to him that the weapons covered were "one pull, one bullet." I'll bet he's by now (9 years later) gone and forgotten all of what I taught him that night in favor of the simplistic "guns bad" mantra that is spewed at him up there in New York. Why let understanding be what causes you to be either pro or anti gun? It's just funny to me how you can predetermine that if someone is anti-gun, they know next to nothing factual about guns. Maybe it's because by the time they learn how they do, in fact, work, they switch from anti-gun to pro-gun. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I guess he was, like so many many people around the world, "true to his religion." That's why religion makes me sick. It takes people who would probably be GOOD PEOPLE if only they weren't trying to hold themselves to some ridiculous standards, and makes liars and hypocrites out of them. It's one thing to "play the field" (although I think two-timing women makes a guy an asshole who deserves neither of them), and it's another to do it while maintaining the ostensible claim that you're adhering to the tenets of your religion (monogamy, abstinence until marriage, etc.) A guy or woman who will have sex before marriage, to me, that's fine. No inherent "evil" or "sin" in doing that. But take the same person, attach to them the claim of piety and religious adherence to their bible, and having that same premarital sex makes them a hypocrite. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Does god or the bible say or require that christians wear crucifixes? If not, then it's a personal choice -- pride, if you will -- that makes people wish to wear these little symbols of their religious affiliation. Not wearing a crucifix does not make any given person "less" of a christian -- they may be MORE of one, since they are not dependent on ostentatious jewelry to "show the world" who they are and what they believe. They do their worshiping privately and therefore with greater likelihood of sincerity, since they're not doing it to show or prove it to anyone else. If people weren't so hung up on their symbols and showiness, this would be a non-issue. Either way, France is stepping on its dick with this. A totally separate issue is the growing and worrisome influx of muslim culture into France. I'd like to see how they plan to deal with that. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"