peacefuljeffrey

This kind of thing is almost like when people who don't know any better say things like that a cop being threatened with a knife should shoot the person in the leg. If you're afraid for your life, don't try to shoot the leg, shoot to kill. If you're shooting for the leg, you obviously don't fell like you are going to die, so what the fuck are you shooting for? It's the same thing with these types of weapons. Their only function is to allow incapacitating force, which could be lethal or cause horrible injuries when other force would not be justified. Used to be, when a cop needed to put someone on the ground or into submission, he'd whack a quadricep or gastrocnemius muscle with a baton, and use a lock on an arm. Nowadays, according to what I've been seeing a lot lately, when a cop encounters someone who's behaving erratically, out comes the taser. Now, around here there have been two recent famous cases of people who were punched, and died specifically because their heads smashed on the concrete. It seems to me that if cops were to render someone unconscious and/or physically debilitated using electric shock, the same risk exists. The risk is an increase over that of whacking a leg and grabbing in a bear-hug, full nelson, or otherwise tackling. I think that the risk of falling from a standing position because of being TASERed is unacceptably high. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

But then, according to what I believe, neither will you know god. So then it comes down to "whose beliefs will actually bear out as true?" But as far as "you can only criticize what you don't understand" -- that's an utter fallacy. On what basis do you make that statement? One can't criticize something that one DOES understand? I thought that criticism was made MORE valid if the criticizer understood the subject matter. What if someone was watching skydivers in a swoop competition? Only someone who doesn't understand swooping can judge them and criticize them? Please make some sense out of your statement for me. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

When someone who has the proper standing finally brings it to the Supreme Court, if that person wins and the supremes find it unconstitutional, will you: a) accept their decision and grant its validity or b) claim that their finding is in error and there really is nothing in the constitution to prohibit reference to god? I mean, I will tell you right now that if the supreme court were to rule on the 2nd Amendment and say that it does not guarantee a personal right but a "collective" right, I would be among the first to say that the ruling was erroneous and they were misreading what they were ruling on. So weigh in on this hypothetical. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Because there's nothing wrong with the way it is. Very easy to say that when you're crhistian and it pleases christians. Try being on of a variety of other groups and see how fine it is. What was wrong with it the way it was before they added "under god"? According to christians, the country was still founded under christain principles, and the pledge of allegiance is not a founding document nor a governing piece of legislation, so what need was there to add a reference to god in the pledge? The answer, of course, is found in the christains' need to control everyone else and force them to swear allegiance to their god. Christians have been into forcing people to do stuff their way for 2000 friggin' years. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Yes, actually. Back to something that both sides will take fuckin' SERIOUSLY. All this touchy-feely mamsy-pamsy bullshit about attempting to do as little harm as possible ends up leading to sick shit like blinding rays, and electrical stun devices. I think that my biggest peeve about these stun/blind devices is that they make it virtually effortless to control large masses of people. Do we really want to put the power to do that into the hands of any government? I've read plenty about people dying after being shot with "rubber bullets" (which the authorities would love for the public to believe are little Nerf thingies that barely bruise you), or jolted with TASERs. These things save nothing, it seems. And yes, it seems that the police are eager to play around with them for the slightest provocation. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Most PEOPLE would rather not be blind OR dead. You seem to have missed or ignored that point. We're talking about people who started out as NEITHER. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Its an interesting point of view. We (US/UK) forces have several laser weapons in development to destroy sensors etc in aircraft, but politically we can't even think about deploying them yet because they might blind a pilot or navigator. Yet we are allowed to put a missile with 1248 tungsten cubes into their aircraft at mach 2.4 and wipe them out. I am not blind, but I figure most blind people would rather be blind than dead? I am not surprised that to the british way of thinking, blinding people in warfare (or in civilian crime control applications) is acceptable. Um, by the way, if your lasers blinded a pilot, wouldn't he fuckin' end up dying anyway?! What the fuck's wrong with fighting in the standard traditional way (if you're gonna fight at all) without all this sick macabre shit like frying people at a distance with pain rays they can't escape, or firing lasers into their eyes to leave them wandering blind?! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

And here I thought they were called televangelist. Cute. At least you do have a sense of humor, if not an understanding of the basic gyst of my point. edit: Oops, dictionary says, "GIST." - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Not laws based on religion. That's unconstitutional. I think it is one thing to "pray and ask for guidance [from god]" but it is quite another to really believe you've been answered. (As I do not believer there is a god to be giving answers, I have to believe that those who think they "hear" answers are loony.) I thought that when people pray for guidance, they are saying that they HOPE that what they choose to do ends up being a choice made because god steered them that way -- not that god actually zapped a verbal message into their head. They have a word for people like that: nuts. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Exactly... It may have been wrong all along in the opinions of some, including mine, but it doesn't become unconstitutional until made so. An aspiring attorney should realize that. I wonder who's the horse that needs to be led to water and shown how to drink? You don't draw a distinction between having been ruled unconstitutional, and having had the obvious makings of BEING "not in accordance with the rules of government set forth in the Constitution," even though the Supreme Court has not made a ruling of "unconstitutional"? You seem to draw no distinction between the constitutionality of a typical law, versus one, for example, that says that newspapers may not publish until their content is approved by government censors; as long as neither has been called unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, you would call both "constitutional"? See, I draw that distinction: I say that if a law clearly is afoul of a basic interpretation of the Constitution (yes, some principles of this are more clear than others) I say it is unconstitutional on its face. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Exactly, which is what I said, they ruled on the case that was brought before them. This is maddening. They did not rule on the merits of the case as regards whether the constitution should be read to prohibit mention of "god" in the pledge of allegiance! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

It is. Don't you ever get uneasy defending the stream of lies coming from the Bush administration? I was pushed to my limit of queasiness watching leftists continuously defending that piece of shi t Clinton. Couldn't get any sicker after that. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

It's every citizen's fault. "You get the government you deserve." If my vote cannot control the votes of others, I most certain do NOT "deserve" what the end result of the tabulation of all the votes is. What if I was the lone person who voted for a non-evil candidate; everyone else made the evil candidate win, and I didn't help that. It's MY fault when he starts eating babies during his state of the union addresses? The only way that statement works is as a virtually useless, abstract generalization. You might say that the Ukrainians deserved to be starved to death by Stalin, since they "tolerated" that kind of treatment. Well, it's hard to rise up to conquer an oppressor when you aren't sure that if YOU rise up, everyone else won't remain seated! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I'm just saying... a post like that seems to be evidence of simplistic thinking on the subject. Like Homer Simpson: "Eatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepudding..." - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Much as I WISH that were so -- I am against religion (in government or anywhere, since I think it's inane) -- I do NOT see what is written there as a prohibition against anything except making LAWS that ESTABLISH a state religion. Not sure what exactly is meant by "respecting" an establishment of religion, but I take that to mean "with regard to." Congress shall make no laws with regard to an establishment of religion. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

And to think they give you a vote... Maybe it should be "drinking age 18; voting age, one year later than whatever age you are". If this is the "reasoning" that goes into your voting decisions, woe be our system. -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Just so we're clear.

Clearly, these people HATE those they feel pollute the earth. I think that polluters should be protected under hate crimes legislation. Why should crimes based on the hatred of gays be extra-prosecutable, but not crimes based on the hatred of other groups? That in itself is discriminatory. It should be a crime to hurt ANYONE if your reason is just that you hate them. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Forget it! He just doesn't fuckin' understand, and it seems he never will. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Sickening. I've read about other "non-lethal" devices that have been coming out. All of these have tremendous potential for abuse, and the scary thing is the notion of "sweeping" a crowd -- oppressors are gonna love this stuff, because the user doesn't even have to discriminate between targets, he can just zap a shitload of people all at once! They've even had to ban the use of certain laser devices that were said to operate by fanning a laser beam (like they do at a laser show to create the illusion of a line or shape) to sweep a battlefield and BLIND the opposing forces! Think about this: it would BLIND as many people are there to be hit by it! One need not even really aim, and one's power is limitless because you don't need a ratio of one round of ammunition per victim. Blind six dozen adversaries and you can slaughter them at leisure! Now that some sick piece of shit has invented stuff like this, the bell cannot be unrung, and just because its use may be "banned," that doesn't mean that parties who don't respect the ban won't use it! We thought warfare was chilling when they started using poison gas in WWI. Imagine a generation of blind people -- living, but maimed. I honestly think that bullets are preferable to this horrific shit they're coming out with. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

It's not your Constitutional right in this country not to be offended or annoyed. If God isn't said out loud in Judaism, don't say it out loud. If you're Hindu, . . . You seem to have switched tracks, and are now admitting that the pledge does indeed cater DIRECTLY to CHRISTIANS, and everyone else has to lump it. Then why not have the pledge say, ". . . one nation, under A god. . ."? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I do like that idea! It's just that I haven't ever had my pin taken off my rig. It's still "original." The pins I use for my necklaces are genuine throwout pins ordered from Paragear. Actually, it's time for me to order more -- I'm down to my last few! Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Not complaining to you. I just suspect that a bias was held against me, personally, in the doling-out of that punishment. I don't know what the "average" ban is, but I do know that certain moderators give a warning, or edit a post and then notify the poster to tone it down, etc. I simply found myself trying to log on and Speakers Corner was simply unavailable. I had to PM just to find out what the hell had happened. I don't imagine for a second that the same moderator dishes out 2 week bans as vindictively as was done in my case, to others meriting censure. My suspicion is that personal feelings played a part, since this moderator and I bang heads on the forum quite often, ideologically and verbally. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Know what? I understand why Sparky blocked you if that's the way you talk to him. Good grief, what's with the personal attacking? Deal with the issue, and not the messenger. Ciels- Michele Well it seems to me that a reprimand is a lot more preferable than the TWO WEEKS ban I was given for simply saying "fuck you" to someone who had essentially called me a liar. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Sure, except for that whole slew of people who served with him who said he was "unfit to be commander-in-chief" -- or did you forget about that? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"