peacefuljeffrey

Marine's bereaved father won't be charged for vehicular arson Okay, the guy's son was killed in military service. I have compassion and sympathy for that. But in stories I've read, the military spokespeople said that this kind of violent reaction is unheard of. This is not a lashing-out with fists, a flailing and flopping around in unimaginable grief. This is a deliberate act of walking in one direction, picking up tanks of flammable liquid, walking in another direction, pouring the flammable liquid, and deliberately setting it on fire on and in a vehicle. So now, out of sympathy and compassion for this man over the loss of his son, the man will not be charged for what are CLEARLY criminal acts. While it may seem hard-hearted of me, I DO NOT AGREE with the policy decision of not charging him for arson. He put people in danger, whether they claim he was trying to hurt others or not. He damaged government property; I wonder if the decision to not charge him means they also won't seek compensation from him for the total loss of the van. Just imagine if "compassion" becomes the measure by which we determine what offenses are chargeable. And just imagine if other relatives of other K.I.A. soldiers start using this as their excuse to also get violent. After all, a precedent has been set here: "We cut slack to those whose relatives have been killed in war, even for criminal acts." Why charge a woman who kills her husband after he beats her? -- and I mean kills him at a point when he is not a present threat to her, like a day or two after a fight. I mean, we can sympathize with her position, her pain, her feelings of hopelessness, right? What about people who show up at an airport to check on the status of relatives they fear lost in a crash? What if one of them drove an SUV into the wing of a 737 upon learning that their relative had been killed on a place that wasn't maintained properly? How far do we take this touchy-feely bullshit where it impacts on enforcement of the LAW?! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I need to ask, "What good is a bible that doesn't contain definitive information on this subject (and many others, actually)?" I think that the main reason that it doesn't set down exactly how all this stuff "works" is that the humans who wrote the bible didn't know the answers, so they could hardly be definitive about them. This reminds me of how prior to discovering other planets, and the immense possibility of life on other planets, in other solar systems or galaxies, the big brains of history claimed to KNOW that the EARTH was the center of the universe. Making grandiose claims to stupendous facts of creation only to be undermined by actual scientific discovery years later is very damaging to one's credibility. Perhaps the b ible's authors didn't assert much specificity about the soul because they were afraid to be disproven later, when their disprovers could then say, "Um, HOW did you say you 'knew' this stuff about the soul, given that it's not true, again?" People have made the mistake of asserting a "be-all, end-all" answer to questions in the past when they were anything but justified in doing so, i.e. they didn't REALLY have the answer, they had to have known they didn't really have the answer, and so they were out of line to assert that their THEORIES were the unequivocal TRUTH. We can thank people like Galileo and Copernicus (fellow Polack!) for helping dispel this kind of mythmaking. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Well, I always imagined that the "soul" was the sum of the conscious entity that is "you" (or "me"), and does the thinking and feeling. So if I take a konk on the head and lose a bunch of mental function, what was damaged? My brain or my soul? And if I live the rest of my life in that state, unable to think clearly and maybe unable to communicate, if that's not my soul that's been damaged, then what good is my soul? If the soul is not the consciousness, and we cannot "feel" our own souls, what are our souls supposed to be? We can demonstrate that injury, drugs and alcohol can have a profound effect on our conscious state. What if, as a captive to some bizarre experiment, a person was kept doped-up, in a constant drug-induced haze of irrational behavior, from, say age 21 til death, incited to do all sorts of immoral and sinful things under the influence of those drugs, and it never occurred to him nor was he permitted to seek cleansing of his "soul" through religious worship and confession? What would be the state of his soul? All he'd have ever known would be a drug haze, like he was constantly high and "out of it." When he dies, and his "soul" goes wherever it goes, what would its state be? And let's say it goes to heaven because it wasn't his fault he was prevented from spiritual cleansing (I dunno, does god make such allowances?). Would he reach heaven and miraculously be transformed into a clearheaded soul that he never had been on earth? What about BABIES that die? If their souls go to heaven, having never developed into thinking, conscious adults, do they just sit there on their backs in a crib in heaven for eternity, perhaps being provided with the things that make BABIES comfortable and satisfied? Or does god "age-progress" them to a state where they're consciously able to enjoy heaven as a developed adult? These things I wonder. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Very few. Care to do a search and count them? Not likely. I know I've seen it plenty. And if they weren't all by you, they were by clones of your opinions and fallacious lines of argument. It's been enough that I've surely taken notice of it. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Probably the same odds that the last time an animal/medical research facility was firebombed, it was by a big Kerry supporter. Fish in a barrel, man. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Come on, Kallend, WHAT the FUCK?? Did you miss what happened on September 11th of the very next year, and all the shit that had to happen as a result? How could the focus possibly have been put on Social Security? To me, Social Security is a minor issue anyway. It's possibly because I'm young enough to not think all that much about retirement, but also because I'm not naive enough to believe that any government, under any president, should be counted on to provide the money I'll need to live off when I am too old to work. If that's what people are counting on, it's probably because they're stupid, or didn't plan well enough for retirement while they were working. - "Now is the time " is what he said in 2000, not "Early in my second term". -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Except W's driving didn't include someone dying while the coward driver fled to his lawyers house. Is Kennedy running for President? No-one told me. No, but he's posturing himself as someone to listen to about whom to vote for president. He spoke at the Democratic National Convention, right? It's plenty fair to point out where he's a sack of shit, so that people don't mistake him for an honorable man they should listen to. You keep hiding behind the preposterous idea that no one should be analyzed and criticized unless he's one of the contenders for the presidency -- oh, and unless he's pro-Bush. How many times have I seen you attempt to dismiss a criticism as "irrelevant" just because the criticizee is not one of the candidates?? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Is that true?! I hadn't heard much at all about him -- not having cared much about him to bother reading up -- but if that's true, what an asshole. And people -- like ME -- who didn't know the moron caused his own triple amputation, went having sympathy for him. You're right: what a jackass. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

If George W. Bush had 3 purple Hearts and a Silver and Bronze Star I would think it in very bad taste if anyone attacked his military service too. What did you think of the Jibjab parody of "This Land is Your Land"? It heavily lampooned BOTH candidates, picking on the "kernels of truth" about each and caricatured them to the Nth degree. How many times in that thing did Kerry go, "I won three Purple Hearts!"? It was funny as hell -- and it's funny because HE is the one going around not shutting up about his military service and his oh-so-hard-won Purple Hearts. This is the very nature of political satire you are complaining about, Kallend. It's time you got used to it, becaue this is the way it has always worked. People pick on conspicuous features of the candidates. It's not about diminishing the honor of the military service, it's about making jokes that are funny, and Kerry has made himself a huge target. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

No fuckin' joke! Suddenly, since it's against Kerry, it's not okay... - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I dunno. Do regular humans have souls? If my best friend's sperm fertilized his wife's egg and made a pair of cells grow into trillions of cells and become a daughter who is now two years old -- can someone tell me at what point a soul appeared in that matrix? Did it spontaneously generate itself there the very instant the two cells began working together? Did the soul exist in some heavenly repository, waiting for a sperm/egg pairing to occur, and then it jumped down to earth and became a little girl? I think that since no one knows how it works, no one should be claiming to even know souls exist. If you can't know where souls come from, and you can't quantify them, see them, measure them, detect them, I'd like to know on what basis -- besides "faith" -- anybody knows that souls exist. I have lots of issues with the ostensible ways souls "work." I also have questions about what the soul is supposed to be. If a person has a stroke, or suffers from Alzheimer's disease, and their mental being just sort of rots away and they are no longer mentally the person they once were, and are heavily debilitated, is that the soul debilitated, or do we really just prove that the so-called "soul" is just a function of the biology of the brain? I'd love to believe that we are eternal souls, but I just have no reason to, and lots of evidence for not believing so. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

On a gun thread no less! I think you should have to buy double BEER!! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

No worries, Bob. This is how I am when I do skydive on a weekly basis! I jumped three times last week, and will probably do three to five this week. New jumpsuit and helmet and all!

Hmmm, what a great idea! Let's start throwing more rocks! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Why? cause he posts the truth that you are afraid to read? It's fascinating how more and more of these "truths" are being shown, after investigation, to be distortions, outright lies, or out-of-context quotes by Bush front groups. The just have a lot of catching up to do to match the Kerry frontgroups. You know, the ones paid for by Hungarian Billionaires who want to use their money to run the United States. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Oooh! Save me a scent gland!! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Ahh, the Nuremberg Defense! I thought that had gone out of style! Is there really an officer in a war who doesn't know you're not allowed to shoot defenseless civilians in the back and burn their villages? I'm leery of having such an ignorant person run the risk of becoming president of the United States... - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Is this supposed to qualify as an "American joke"? I think it's more like "thread drift." Couldn't you substitute any other two nationalities for that joke? Maybe a Bavarian wrestler to use the "pretzel hold," I'm thinkin'... Adds a little more "truth" to the joke. And, um, is it supposed to be common knowledge that having one's balls bitten gives one a burst of strength?! Not so sure about that... Still lookin' for truth in humor... - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

So Wendy, are you saying that all it takes is for some people to have the whacked-out erroneous perception that the U.S. suffers more oil slicks on beaches than any other place in the world to make it a funny joke to say You know you're on an American beach because of the oil slick? It begins to seem as though some of you people just don't believe there's such a thing as a joke that flops! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Kennedy? Chappaquiddick? Punished eternally to diving down trying to rescue the girl he left to drown? It wasn't meant as a political comment, just an increase in funniness quotient. More appropriate would be if he were punished by diving down, each time getting kicked in the balls, and surfacing for air to do it again. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Are you looking forward to the blacks who used to be duped into voting for Democrats being led by Jesse Jack$on and Al $harpton to call Colin Powell an Uncle Tom or a House Nigger? 'Cause that's what's gonna happen. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Since I live in Canada it is "honourable" for me. I know, it is hard to fathom there is actually something outside of the US. Yes, there are places that produce oil, there are places where they hand-make rugs, there are places where we can hunt big game, there are places where lumber comes from -- you live in the big place that makes ice, for instance, that is sold in the Kwik-E-Mart... - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Dude, please don't put words in my mouth. Where did I say that I don't care about torture and treat it as a "remote political issue"? Isolating the different issues about which I care for a moment is not unreasonable. In this thread, in this instance, I was not remiss to speak only of this specific subject, leaving out what I think about torture, abortion, gun control, tariffs, immigration... ad nauseum. Or do you think that every post by every person ought to contain an encyclopedic listing of all the issues and that person's ideological statement on each? AS FAR AS DOMESTIC POLITICAL DISCOURSE is concerned, I find this ADVOCACY of belligerent, disruptive behavior is deplorable. It's my personal perception that this is relatively new. I am not convinced that major national parties used to be backed by people who attempted to organize such ignorant behavior. I think that we are entering a brand new era of "anything-to-win politics" and even though we've seen "anything-to-win politics" before, I think we're seeing a new breed emerging. And I don't like it. I deplore it. edit: And since this story is widespread at this point, Kerry surely knows about these groups and these plans. For him to not come out and specifically ask people NOT do to this on his behalf against his opposition is to tacitly APPROVE it. It seems, from his silence, that he is all too happy to have these juvenile idiots pulling for him. I think that speaks volumes about him and how fair he wants to run this campaign. To be sure, I have NOT heard anything remotely similar planned or engaged by supporters of the Republican candidate(s) in this year's election. -

Hmmm. What's that thing the state of California made me get before I could buy guns there? Your California card is redundant, since each purchase is checked against a national database anyway. Therefore, no one should need a special card. The FBI personally approves every gun purchase at a gun shop. AND every purchase from a federally licensed firearms dealer at a gun SHOW. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Yes it would HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA And coming from MA I have the RIGHT to laugh at Kennedy. Friggen 'US Royalty' my ass. Let's hear a joke about how incredibly fuckin' HUGE Ted Kennedy's HEAD is. THAT would be based on truth for sure! Ted Kennedy's head is so fuckin' huge, they put hairstylists in orbit around it to cut his hair. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"