peacefuljeffrey

We could start debating the merits of throwout pins versus pullout pins... Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Welcome to skydiving! I hope you have a long and happy career at it.

Stated MUCH more succinctly than I managed to do it. Thank you. My point exactly. Blue skies, - One thing for sure; We will all find out one day. If I am wrong; oh well, I lived life in a fantasy. But What If I'm Right. If one believes in oblivion after our earthly life, then technically he believes he won't find out. You pays your money and you takes your chances. The thing is, if you live this kind of silly, restricted, religious life and you turn out to be wrong, you blew your one shot at enjoying your existence. On the other hand, if my living a fun but still good life (i.e. doing good for others, loving others, not harming others...) is not enough to get god to let me enter heaven, then fuck that god. It's far more noble to live a good life out of the realization that it's just the right thing to do than it is to live a good life because you're selfishly trying to secure a future in heaven for yourself. And any god that will not make allowances for good people who simply didn't find themselves believing in god and his petty rules is not a god worth wanting to spend eternity with. And any god who would condemn me to eternal pain in hell even though I've been a good person? That kind of god should eat shit and rot in hell himself! Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

5{It's about freedom, a concept some in law enforcement have a hard time with. It's about sacrifice, a concept a large number of Americans have a hard time with. It's too bad the terrorists aren't having a hard time with it. If anyone could demonstrate how our "sacrifices" actually purchase any additional iota of security, more of us might be in favor of making them. The fact is that the sacrifices we've been forced to make don't do shit to make us safer, but we're still making them. People tell me that I shouldn't object to gun control schemes because they "make the public safer," but the public is not in any danger if I don't have to wait through a background check to buy my sixth handgun, are they? I've already got 3 more guns than I can fire at any given time anyway! There are myriad examples of bullshit, feel-good "sacrifices" made on the altar of increased safety that have done nothing to increase safety. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Well, the huge difficulty with any film by Moore is that we were taught a lesson by his shenanigans with Bowling for Columbine: he cannot be trusted to represent things in his "documentaries" the way they really happened, in a truthful time sequence, or in an honest context. I would go into this scene that is described wondering if perhaps the "11 minutes" were not the same two minutes spliced together over and over, or were not the particular 11 minutes right after the event, etc. Moore has no credibility. Everything he says has to be examined for its veracity. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

What do you think about the age restriction for being President of the USA? - That's not about a common freedom enjoyed by the masses. And it's probably a good idea to have the president required to be 35 or older. Christ, if the minimum age were 18, we could see Britney Spears elected president. As it is, it's pretty terrifying that if Madonna were to decide to run, she could probably work up a decent percentage of the vote. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Obviously. Hence the word "most". What is it with the need to argue every little point? The word "most" clearly implies there are exceptions. _Am Anyone can qualify a statement to death until it is impossible to assail it. The point is, banning guns would not result in banning guns. That's when you'd see a growing number of "entrepreneurs" begin making them in underground shops and distributing them among those who want them ... and who do you think would be so interested in having illegal guns? It wouldn't take long for the criminal market to have all the guns it required to ply its trade. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Then you don't know enough about guns. I myself cannot manufacture a gun on my own, but there are probably thousands of people around this country who can, because they have knowledge, access to tools, and access to materials. Some of them might make very simple guns -- simple, but enough to pull off a stickup. Others can make effective multi-shot guns. Would a prohibition against guns also include internment of all people who could feasibly design and build a garage-workshop gun? Would it involve burning all books that contain the necessary information on how to do it? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Stated MUCH more succinctly than I managed to do it. Thank you. My point exactly. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

If this is so, it still proves nothing. It's relatively easy to evoke a fear reaction that overrides rational thought, conditioning, and even intense training. What you're describing could very well simply be a biochemical response to abject fear and terror. Doesn't mean there's legitimacy to some crazy notion that "at heart, we all know god exists and will pray to him when faced with death," which is what I believe to be your pet theory here. Is it? Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I disagree with both of you. Such laws can and are routinely passed and signed by the executive. It is the responsibility of the court systems to overturn those laws if they cannot pass scrutiny. If such laws cannot be passed, there is no need for a court system that revews these laws. I have been noticing a lot of legislation getting passed that clearly courts trouble being found constitutional. It seems that legislators, in bad faith, pass laws that they know are most likely unconstitutional, and then just enjoy it for the time they have it -- when they never should have passed it in the first place. There are times when laws get passed that are so clearly unconsititutional that everyone could agree -- but the legislator proposed it because it was what he wanted, constitution be damned. I think that in such cases -- when a lawmaker comes up with a law that couldn't possibly be constitutional -- that he should be held liable for malfeasance, and tried for an attempted violationof civil rights. (Maybe even a crime against humanity, or treason.) Lawmakers have been playing a game on us, pushing the envelope and just hoping no one successfully challenges their bad laws. This has got to change. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Honest question: What happens if you go into court and have to give sworn testimony on the witness stand, and they place a bible before you, tell you to put your hand on it, raise your right hand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you GOD? What can I say to that? I'm an atheist! Do I LIE, "swear the oath," and risk having someone come out later with evidence that I'm an atheist and then, there in court, he can challenge my testimony by saying, "Jeff 'swore' an oath that doesn't mean anything to him! He's an atheist!" Do I stand there and tell them, "Sorry, I won't swear your oath: I'm an atheist." What happens then? I lose the case already: the judge won't like me, the jury won't like me; there will be a bias against me right from the start. They'll all be looking at me as a godless atheist whose word can't mean anything simply because I won't swear before a god I don't believe exists. So this is a prime example of how shoving religion into government and law creates an unfair environment for those who are claimed to be free from having to adhere to that religion. The reality of it is, sure, you can choose to be non-religious, but since our system is set up on a foundation of religion, and it is not set up to cater to "you godless heathens," you're gonna face adversity in what should be a neutral, objective environment like a court. Just imagine what a jury that is made up of 90% religious people would think of a witness who disavowed a belief in god. What would they think of the truthfulness of his testimony? (As though anyone really believes that because someone swears an oath on a bible that that means he's not gonna LIE!) So in court, I'm forced to either lie an oath on that bible, or prejudice the court against me. What if I were in Roy Moore's courtroom (that judge with the 10 commandments monument) and said, "I won't swear that oath, your honor. I'm an atheist." I'm gonna get a fair trial before that pious prick? If I lie that oath, someone could introduce stuff I've written on the internet that shows I don't believe in god, and then challenge the veracity of my testimony based on the fact that I was capable of misrepresenting myself when I took the oath. I'm faced with a decision of being dishonest at the outset in order to not alienate the court, or being honest and alienating the court. Either way, I'm screwed. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

A few years ago, my gun-owning, anti-NRA friend and I did a swap: I bought him a 1 year NRA membership and he bought me an ACLU membership, since neither one would have done so on his own. They sent me renewal materials, and I stuffed it with a short letter detailing my objection to their abandonment of the Second Amendment out of the 10 Amendments in the Bill of Rights. Some membership director woman wrote me back with a packet of utter bullshit -- photocopied articles with false claims and propaganda about guns: stuff like the "10 children a day" lie, and an article about the book "Arming America" -- which had been long debunked by the time she sent me this stuff. They continue to send me begging packets every now and then, which I think is laughable: if they want to waste money mailing me shit that I'll ignore, that's fine with me. The less money they have, the less they can spend on bullshit leftist activism. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

When religious people get laws passed that govern ALL of us, in a CIVIL sense, under the rules of THEIR RELIGION, without regard for the fact that not all of us are adherents of that religion, that IS "forcing it down our throats." Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Please use "Jeffrey" instead. They have the same protection that the minority has; and theoretically it would be more difficult to strip them of the ability to enjoy that protection than it would be to strip the minority of it. The minority enjoys equal protection from the majority only as long as the majority consents to be bound by the constitution that provides for that protection. If the majority decided one day to just say, "Screw it, we have the benefit of superior numbers," they could enforce their will on the minority. Please leave me out of any discussion of "slippery slop." I just laundered this outfit! If the system is set up to make decisions based on what is FAIR and RIGHT, which side favors them becomes a moot issue. Fair and right is supposed to be minority/majority-neutral. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Only if they want to be elected again. Otherwise, I think they're pretty much free to do what wish, at least within the bounds of the law. Within the bounds of the.. la-...la-...BWA-haha-ha-ha-haaa! When the hell have they ever let that stop them?! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

But it did. Regardless if they addressed it directly or not the result is that the pledge is still intact and constitutional as it is presently written. I think this is a fallacy. "Constitutional as it is presently written"? Is it impossible for laymen to look at a law and say, "Oh, that's clearly unconstitutional"? Is it by definition that all things are constitutional until and unless the Supreme Court has said they are not? What if they passed a law that said that newspapers had to submit all their copy to government censors prior to publication? WE KNOW THIS WOULD NOT BE "CONSTITUTIONAL." Let's not argue that because we'll be wasting time. I want to ask you, then, would you say that this law was constitutional just because it had not been declared UNconstitutional by the Supreme Court? If the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to this law because of a technicality, like the plaintiff (or whatever you call the plaintiff in a Supreme Court case) lacked standing to bring the challenge, and let a lower court ruling stand, that it would mean the law was "constitutional"? I personally think that "constitutionality" is something that by its nature really should be pretty objective. When the words contained in a statute are parsed and analyzed and diagrammed, etc., and compared with what the Constitution demands, I think that there should be very little "wiggle room." - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Very good, valid points. This is why, although I am an atheist and don't like religious references in government, I took billvon to task for citing the so-called constitutional separation of church and state, which we must agree is not written there. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

You make a large number of good points, but I think I disagree with the overall thesis -- the reason being that your argument seems to be, "If you won't/can't agree to this commitment, you should not get a gun for defense." I think that the alternative would be to find yourself defenseless in a time of great (overwhelming) need. I think -- and maybe I'm naive and maybe I'm not -- that most people who own guns do not put themselves through this kind of military-level preparedness training, and when the shit hits the fan, a good number of them are actually still able to bring a gun to bear in adequate self defense and save their own lives as well as those of others. I'm thinking of the half-dozen or so reports that appear in "The Armed Citizen" every month in the NRA's magazines. I think you are overblowing the urgency of becoming some sort of tactical elite dude when all that may be necessary, in all likelihood, are a couple of shots at relatively close range. Much of this stuff just has to be intuitive, for a person who has a decent understanding ofhow to operate his gun. I personally would not dissuade someone from getting a gun for home defense just because that person won't be going to Thunder Ranch for weeks at a time. I myself do not shoot weekly, or even monthly, but I carry a Glock 27 for defense and I know that when I take it out I know how to use it adequately, even if it's been months since I've been to the range. That doesn't leave you. All that said, I see nothing wrong with getting the training you speak of; just that I don't agree with the premise of "don't get a gun unless you get such training. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

What's your beef with the Matrix, the human = coppertop thing? Yes. The idea that the machines could milk us for bioelectricity was preposterously stupid, since were so very ridiculously far from being 100% energy efficient. The machines would have been better off burning the nutritional material that they fed to the humans in those cocoons to directly turn turbines than they would have been to raise crops ofhumans and then siphon off the pittance of a return that they would get in the form of bioelectricity. Not to mention the fact that humans lying their entire lives in these cocoons would never develop properly or be healthy enough to be much good. How much strength would there be in the bioelectricity of a body that had never exercised? Think of it this way: If you were dying of thirst and had a pitcher of water, would you pour the pitcher into a sponge, and then squeeze the sponge -- which you will never get to yield all of its water, and which takes an expenditure of energy on your part just to do the squeezing -- or would you just drink from the pitcher?? This is the fundamental flaw in The Matrix, which overall was still an immensely entertaining movie -- but you'd be surprised at how few people display an understanding of it when I explain it to them. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Oh, and they never write books! I guess you expect everyone with a particular viewpoint to publish it in a book that at the same time works equally hard to tear down that viewpoint? You expect people to be their own detractors and naysayers? Otherwise they're too biased? By the way, what is so wrong with a scientist saying that there are other scientists who are using science in a biased and disingenuous way? When a judge is charged with corruption, is it not a judge who then sits in judgment of him? Should we have lay-people judge judges because a judge judging a judge impeaches the credibility of judges, by definition? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

They'd have better claim that we usurped the word "America" if it were part of the actual name of their country, like it is ours. What, they're upset that we co-opted half the name of their continent? Besides, "United States" could refer to the states that are united under any government in any nation. It's non-specific without "of America." These "offended" people should get a grip. As an aside, I've long thought that our country needs a better name. I already mentioned the non-specificity of "United States"... and "America"? Why use the name -- the FIRST name -- of some Italian discoverer whom most people don't even recognize? Amerigo Vespucci supposedly arrived here before Columbus (or was it after?) and we named the place after his first name?! How LAME that is! I think that since our nation was born of a notion of "LIBERTY," it is our country that should have taken the name "Liberia." I can't believe we gave that gem away! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I've got a question. Could you be a little more specific on the "American?" Is that North American, or South American? Does it mean you're a citizen of the United States of America, and so exclude Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, Trinidad, Peurto Rico, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, The Bahama's, Haiti, the protectorates of the Turks and Caicos and Bermuda, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela and the dependancies of the Falkland Inlands and French Guiana, or does it mean you're a citizen of the United States of America, Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, Trinidad, Peurto Rico, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, The Bahama's, Haiti, the protectorates of the Turks and Caicos and Bermuda, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela and the dependancies of the Falkland Inlands and French Guiana? Any answers?t I don't know of any other country in the Americas that has the word "America" as part of its official name. "The United States of America." There is no egotism or arrogance in calling ourselves "American" as though we're pretending the rest of North and South America don't exist. Isn't there a country called "United Arab Emirates"? How should we deal with the idea of people from Libya calling themselves "Arabs" when "Libya" does not contain the word "Arab"? I mean, geez, people, you're splitting hairs. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I guess I don't understand your argument. Essentially it seems you're saying that we use fuel to power our lives. Are you saying that we should stop cooking our food, stop doing things that are fun, like skydiving, flying, boating, et cetera, just because they cannot be done without polluting to some degree, or using fuels? I guess we should just stop living? That'd save the earth a lot of trouble, after all. Or do you advocate all the people who aren't you stopping using all this fuel? Because unless you're willing to give up this frivolous thing called skydiving -- or have the number of times you do it limited by the government, perhaps? -- you'd be a hypocrite to criticize anyone else's consumption. Is that what's coming to light here? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Because in our constitutional republic, we protect the minority, whose rights still matter no matter how small that minority is, from the tyranny of the majority. Not everything comes down to "we outvote you, so tough shit." You might see this reflected in the fact that we protect ethnic minorities, and homosexuals, from a majority that might, if unencumbered by constitutional equal protection under the law, see fit to strip them of their rights, maybe even um, enslave them... Does that answer your question? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"