redlegphi

Matthew 6:25-34 Also, I'm curious: why does it seem (to me anyway) that evangelical "Christians" use the Old Testament and the letters as the source of most of their beliefs while largely ignoring the Gospels? You know, the books filled with stuff that Jesus actually said and did. Always seemed odd to me. As for the original post, the United States is not a Christian nation or Islamic nation or Buddhist nation. Above all else, it's a capitalist nation. If Christianity is losing followers, it's because it's failing to compete in the marketplace of ideas. You might want to think about removing the beam from your own eyes (for example, the Catholic Church might want to think about not helping to hide the fucking child molesters) before you start worrying about the motes the rest of us our rocking. Just some friendly advice.

Also, to those using the video to critique the pilots, how many times did you have to watch it to clearly identify the camera as a camera and not an RPG? Did you have those handy note things pointing everything out for you? Were you doing all of this while there was a chance that people would start shooting at you? Because the pilots only get to view it once, in real time, without notes, and in an area where people would like to kill them. I may not agree with the decision they made, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I know I'd do much better if I was in their seats. Just sayin'.

I'll start off by saying that I haven't seen the video, just some of the screencaps plus the summaries in the reports. From that alone, it seems like the justification for the pilots initially opening fire, while questionable, fell within the ROE of the time. I'd also point out that this was in 2007, not 2010. Iraq then and Iraq now are two completely different countries. That said, I'd say it's extremely sketchy to open up on the van that pulled up to help the wounded. True, it's not marked as an ambulance, but it wasn't demonstrating any hostile intent either. All of that being said, I'd like to point out that we're learning and improving our ROE to try to reduce the number of civilian casualties we're inflicting, as seen in the article below. I'd also point out that, at least in Afghanistan, the enemy are killing a lot more civillians than we are. And they aren't doing it accidentally from an aircraft at 20,000 feet. They are straight up murdering people to keep them afraid. http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=68907

Unsurprisingly, it seems that the parents and students decided to break out the old "How to keep the black people seperate" playbook and adapted it for the gays. What a bunch of bigoted ass holes. http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/04/05/ACLU_Investigating_Fake_Prom/

Granted, it's been a while since I've been a Catholic, but this "scientist" isn't even getting his religious history right. Jesus didn't dematerialize. He died and was buried (and then supposedly rose again). As far as I know, nobody has ever claimed that his physical body disappeared and then reappeared. Also, given that the only carbon-14 dating that has been done on the Shroud of Turin showed that it was likely created shortly before it was unveiled in the 13th or 14th century, I don't know if I'd be using it to support my "scientific" argument in support of Jesus.

I think part of it is that we tend to see juveniles as less responsible for their actions than adults due to lack of social/emotional/psychological maturity. And I think part of it is the fact that they're kids with their entire future ahead of them, and nobody wants to ruin that by punishing them severely for something they did as "kids".

I'm still in Iraq, so I've got an alibi. Also, I was almost certain that the joke would be about kallend executing a drive-by from his Mooney, so thank you for proving me wrong.

Did you somehow miss most of the health care debate? It was truly the time for the libertarian "fuck 'em" wing of the GOP to shine.

Honestly, if somebody called me and asked as stupid a question as "Do you think is the antichrist?", I'd have a hard time not saying yes just to fuck with their idiotic poll.

Every senator and congressman gets nasty crank calls and mail every day. To a certain extent, it unfortunately is par for the course, and comes with the territory. It's wrong no matter who does it, or who it's done to. But is there a concerted effort to physically intimidate people on the Republican side of this? How many bricks were hurled through Republicans' windows? How many Republicans were targeted with maps with "crosshairs" on them? How many Republicans were spat upon? How many Republicans' families' homes had propane gas lines deliberately slashed? All that has happened to Democrats within the past few days. http://www.startribune.com/nation/89059677.html http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2010/03/hurled_bricks_threats_surround.html Only one has been shot at that I know of recently ***Cantor Says Campaign Office Was Shot At, Accuses Dems of Exploiting Threats http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/25/rep-cantors-richmond-campaign-office-shot-overnight/ I can't believe this hasn't been corrected yet. The police determined that the round shot "at" Cantor's office most likely was a round that was shot up into the air that just happened to come down through his office window. They know this because the round itself impacted about a foot inside the window (indicating it came down from a high angle). So either: 1) The round was shot at the window by a sniper hanging from a parachute (or perhaps a passing plane) 2) The round was shot by the world's greatest field artilleryman 3) Cantor was the "victim" of random chance

I'm no mathematician, but a lot of this thread sounds an awful lot like the gambler's paradox. If the over all risk of death on a skydive is 1 in 100,000 (all other things being equal), then your risk on every jump you make is 1 in 100,000 (all other things being equal). Your risk doesn't go up with the number of jumps you make. There is no such thing as Fate that knows that you've made 99,999 jumps and therefore you're due to die on the next one. When you get down from your jump and ride up for your next one, your risk is reset to 1 in 100,000. Of course, all other things aren't equal, and you can do tons of things to increase or mitigate risk on any given jump.

OMG Spain is goin' 2 take UR GUNZ!!!111!!!one!!!eleventy!!!!!

I'm going to (gasp!) agree with you on this. I have no issue with the cops getting DNA with a warrant. I have no issue with them getting it from convicted criminals. I don't see how they have the right to take it from somebody for being arrested. Agreed I have my prints on record for two issues Once Arrested for public intox as a passenger in a car where the operator was arrested for a DUI. Subsequently thrown out by the Iowa SC (not my case specifically) and I only paid court costs and spent a night in jail and my record is supposed to have been cleared (never checked) Second set taken for a back ground check to have an on track license for the Prairie Meadows racing track in Des Monies. Got no problem if there have been a conviction or a warrant has been issued. But for just being arrested? WTF??? I also think that, if a warrant is used to get a person's DNA, if that DNA doesn't lead to a conviction then the DNA should be destroyed.

I'm going to (gasp!) agree with you on this. I have no issue with the cops getting DNA with a warrant. I have no issue with them getting it from convicted criminals. I don't see how they have the right to take it from somebody for being arrested.

It's not about winning or losing, it's about us achieving our goals. We don't have to completely destroy the Taliban to do that. All we have to do is get the Afghan government and security forces strong enough so that they can keep the Taliban in check without our help (or with less assistance from us). I think that's entirely doable. As for Pakistan, they appear to be trying to handle things on their side of the border. As long as they continue to do that, there really isn't any reason for us to intervene there.

Almost forgot. In addition to reducing the amount of hard power we're throwing around, we also need to get back to throwing around soft power. We need to work closely with countries who are doing things we like or who are on the fence to get them on our side. We need to make it clear to the countries of the world why it's a good thing to be our friend, instead of just making sure they know it'll suck to be our enemy. Spending money and time on them now could prevent much larger (military) expenditures in the future.

Close on the quote, but it was actually Teddy Roosevelt, not FDR. I agree with you that Iraq has been a large distraction to our foreign policy. However, I also think that once we invaded, we had an obligation to get Iraq back on its feet. I also think it may end up being in our best interests to have helped them get back on their feet, though that's really still too cloudy to call. As for Afghanistan, I think we were right to go in there and I think we need to keep doing what we're doing now that we're there. Afghanistan wasn't just a country full of people who didn't like us. It was a country full of people that didn't like us who helped another group of people that didn't like us kill nearly 3000 innocent people. That's not a situation we can tolerate. So we've chased the Taliban and AQ into Pakistan. Before we can leave, we need to make sure that we've got the Afghan government and security forces stable enough to prevent them from coming right back over the border and taking back over control. That takes a while, but I think it'll be worth it in the end.

If I recall correctly, Obama voted against Bush's amnesty bill. McCain was in favor. Illegals get free healthcare already - they just turn up at ERs and the rest of us pay. Yep, and for the most part, they are young and healthy. If they paid for health insurance, then they'd help reduce the costs for the rest of us. Meaning amnesty would actually reduce the amount of money we're currently spending on illegal immigrants since one has to assume that at least some of those newly legal immigrants would be able to pay taxes. Hadn't really thought about that. Interesting.

I think the problem is that the "leaderless" Tea Party movement doesn't have a very solid party. The only thing they all seem to have in common is that they're angry and they don't like government spending. However, like most libertarians I've run into, the problem comes when you start asking them what programs should be cut. Everybody seems to think that all programs should be cut except the ones they think are important. So you'll have some Tea Partiers for decreasing military spending and some who aghast at the thought, some who want to cut back on Medicaid/Medicare and some who would cut you for even bringing that up, etc. Until somebody steps up (Palin?) and sets up some kind of rudimentary platform, they're going to continue as an angry, amorphous blob. Of course, as soon as they set that platform, a bunch of Tea Partiers aren't gonna be happy with the Tea Party anymore and will either head back to their major party or will head off to whatever micro-party fits their specialty interests.

Well, I think it is the first step to chemical dependency, i.e., self gratification, self love, narcissism, ego centric behavior. I think that's a stretch. No pun intended. In drug treatment we recognize a symptom of the change from social use to dependency as that point where the individual becomes preoccupied with acquisition and maintenance of drug of choice. The mood altering chemical becomes a primary object of affection. When dependency becomes addiction it is the only object of affection. The drug of choice is referred to as "your lover." The drug rush is frequently described as an orgasm. A clinical strategy wiithin the treatment regimen is to have the client write a "goodbye letter" to his drug of choice, his lover. Therefore, IMO, chemical dependency is a form of high tech masturbation. No one is satisfied but the user. Zooming in for a tight shot on the player, the interviewer asks, given all the time you spent in the trenches of social service, do you mean to say that you never heard that analogy? And this is different from skydiving...how?

I don't really see this as a "right to know" thing. Everybody already knows what happened. And if they doubt the official story of what happened, they have the right to examine the evidence if they'd like to come to their own findings. They don't have the right to exploit the evidence to make a profit. I view the criminal records here as similar to my medical records. Just because they're owned by the government doesn't mean everybody has a right to look at them.

Why? The photo's don't belong to Hustler, they belong to the GBI. Hustler can't force you to release any of your words, photo's or other forms of speech to them for publication, so why should they be able to force the release of these photo's? The main (and only) reason I can think of is FOIA. Though, as I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea if that would even apply in this case. And it seems like even that would be covered by the GBI's offer to allow people who need to view it to do so without taking a copy.

Typically, while we're alive, we have a say over the display/taking of images of our own bodies. The only reason the victim (or her family) in this case didn't have a say on if the photos could be taken is because she was dead and they were required for the criminal investigation. Since the criminal investigation is completed, I think the right for display of the photographs should revert back to the family. I do agree that "credentialed journalists, lawyers and law enforcement" should be allowed to view the photos (though not take copies) as that can help validate/invalidate the case and help future law enforcement personnel learn from this case. such is my two cents

I can't watch the video so I'll just comment on the Afghan war in general. In my opinion, leaving there now would be making the same mistake as when we bailed on them following the Soviet war. The Afghan government is in no shape to hold territory against the Taliban in the long term. The civil war that would follow would re-devestate the Afghan nation, pushing millions of refugees back into camps in Pakistan and Iran, destroying infrastructure, allowing war lords to rise back to positions of prominence, and eventually leading to a resurgent Taliban-run state. That would be a disaster for pretty much everybody who isn't a militant fundamentalist. So the question is "Can we achieve our goals in Afghanistan for a reasonable expenditure of manpower and wealth?" I think we can. It's taken us a while, but we've gotten pretty good out counter-insurgency over the past decade. We have the Afghan security forces headed in the right direction now and we're freeing up enough troops from Iraq to head to Afghanistan to retake and hold the ground until the Afghans are fully up to holding it on their own. In short, I think our chances of meeting our goals are decent and I think the outcome of failure would have devestating long-term effects. So I'm gonna have to disagree with Ron Paul on this one.

Yeah... She has every right to file suit when she is being discriminated against. However, the class filing suit against the school for canceling prom? That's just stupid. What ought to be done is that students get together, rent a hall, ask for donations to cover the cost, find a volunteer DJ, and throw their own damn prom, school board be damned. At least, that's what I'd have done when I was a student. At least one follow-up article I've seen today notes that there's some discussion of some private sponsor(s) possibly putting on a prom for these kids; McMillen (the student in question) is quoted as saying that if that happens, she doesn't expect to be welcome... Which caused me to think of this. Of course, the fight for gay civil rights is completely different from the fight for racial civil rights.