livendive

No doubt about it. Clay is king, Remi is queen. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

How much time does it take you to type 6-10 characters on a keyboard? Between yesterday and today, there might have been a combined total of what, 30 seconds of lost, ummm, un-productivity? Jesus fucking allah! Get a rope! (that's pronounced "hey-seuss", just for Muenkel ) Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Well, if you're going to be all grammatical, a series of one sentence "paragraphs" isn't much better than a collection of issues in one paragraph and a discussion of the dilemma posed by them in another. . . . I think one function of the government is to protect its people from being harmed by others. The water we drink, the air we breathe, and the food we eat are necessary to our survival, and polluting them harms us without our consent. For this reason, I think all effluents with the potential to harm the surrounding environs should be subject to reasonable regulation. These include solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes and other by-products as well as a variety of parameters, including chemical, physical, and radiological threats. I could likely understand many of the issues, and know a fair number of them myself already, but it would take far more knowledge than I possess to write fair regulations covering these issues. I don't really have a problem with it. The 9th amendment alludes to rights that are not enumerated elsewhere and states that such omissions do not invalidate the rights. I think we all have the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and we should be free to exercise those rights however we see fit as long as such activities do not prohibit others from doing likewise. There is no right to "breast augmentation", but if a woman wants to buy herself a pair of double D's because it will make her and her husband happy, I don't think the government should stop her. We can't possibly list every single thing a person might want to do that wouldn't harm anyone else, but we can keep the general notion in the back of our minds as a concept that limits the authority of our government. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Isn't Christianity itself an "establishment of religion" and this a law respecting it? It's an honest question...I've always thought of the word "establishment" as being a noun in this context. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Like you, I said *all*, in which case who would pay for those prisons? In a more reasonable scenario, a small percentage of states might try to skip out on their debt, in which case the Republic would take punitive measures just like it does now to the small percentage of people who try to skip out on their taxes. And yes, I am in absolute agreement with you that spending must be cut to make tax cuts feasible. Otherwise we're just running up debt to pass on to future generations. As in any budget, be it personal, corporate, or government, at some point, constant borrowing will lead to an amount of debt that is unmanageable with attainable income. At that point, bills start getting skipped with more and more frequency, and eventually finances lay in ruin. I don't think we're far from such a situation. Should our government start kissing ass now to hopefully garner some forgiveness for our debts later? I'd rather we not go down that route. I'd prefer we quit spending so much fucking money and try reducing our mountain of debt rather than increasing it. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Am I reading this correctly? Age increases from left to right and the second line from the top is temperature? Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Not necessarily. Another component of his proposal was that each state "pays for their own shit", so not as many pork barrel projects would be traded back & forth as riders, and social services could be reduced in those states that chose to do so. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Let's say it doesn't happen, but all people adopt a "we're not giving the US government jack shit" policy to lead richer lives... Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

If I'm reading that correctly, the current warming trend doesn't appear to be quite as rapid as the last such warming period, approximately 130,000 years ago, and it does appear to be in line with the historical cycle. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I don't know. What did the article say? Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I'm definitely doing my part to make up for the fuckers not carrying their weight. If I remember correctly, so are you. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Preach it, brother!

Looks like fun. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Oh really sherlock so the guy who has no issue taking another’s property is not an issue at all in your book? At least now I know why we need locks in this world. I have always believed in respecting others and don’t need a lock or gun to do so. You must have missed part of my post, so I've bolded it above. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

What he said. Your car likely has several doors and windows. If you leave the windows down and the doors unlocked and someone steals it, it's your fault for leaving it unsecured and the thief's fault for exploiting your poor judgement. It's not Ford's fault that you didn't take reasonable precautions and/or buy some anti-theft device(s). Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

The plural of "anecdote" is NOT "data". Data To be fair, if gun ownership is required, then convicted felons are not allowed to live there. A reduction in crimes could just as easily be attributable to the banishment of felons as to an increasingly armed populace. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

How many times do you suppose you've consumed the saliva of someone you've never kissed? I don't generally make a fuss with servers until after I've gotten my food. If frustration boils over before then, I simply leave and go to another restaurant. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

"Inner city youth killed by rival gang member" is about as interesting as "Obese man dies of heart attack". Most of us frequent malls and churches with some reasonable expectations about our safety there. When people are shot in such settings, it's newsworthy because it can affect our perceptions regarding our personal safety. Many of us shy away from the seedier parts of town because we know we wouldn't be particularly safe there. Shootings there aren't newsworthy because they don't affect our perceptions. Although the "what bleeds, leads" thing about our media is mostly true, if Harlem or Watts went a couple months without a single shooting, I bet it'd be reported in the news. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I generally avoid debating you, mostly because I hate losing. In this case though, you still have a chicken-egg hurdle to get over. Blues, Dave Well, we know that guns had to exist before the first gun homicide, so there's no dispute over which came first in this case. Speaking of anecdotes... It stands to reason that the population residing in a high crime area would be more likely to arm themselves. While it is likely a trade-off to some extent, I suspect that increased crime leads to increased (legal) gun ownership more than increased (legal) gun ownership leads to increased crime. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Has anyone started a board for the exact minute in which JohnRich will take you to task for having such a vague title and clicky? Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I don't know if it's part of a shift in trends or simply an outlier, but I thought this was an interesting article. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/11/arctic.melt.ap/index.html Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I generally avoid debating you, mostly because I hate losing. In this case though, you still have a chicken-egg hurdle to get over. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

But I can't even make my soap float! Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I'd like to say your post represents an interesting manner of debate itself. However, people trying to pass off this and that "what if" scenario as fact is pretty commonplace in this forum and no longer all that interesting. What might have happened if Bush 1, Clinton, or Bush II had done something different is a matter of guesswork, not fact. The same is true for what Kerry or Gore might have done had they been elected President. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I am in favor of the right to bear arms. I am in favor of a woman's right to decide what happens to her body. I am in favor of the right to free speech. I don't think anyone is entitled to their job or has a right to organize in opposition to their employer without risking their job. I am in favor of protecting our environment. I don't think it's any of the government's business who you marry or, for that matter, whether you marry at all. I don't think it's the federal government's place to decide what drugs you put in your body, nor is it their responsibility to provide care for you if you are lazy, drug-addicted, injured, or just plain unfortunate. Of course, as long as they are not providing such services, they should also not being charging us for them. Leave social programs to the states and let them collect the funds necessary for whatever level of assistance they deem appropriate. I think the federal government should protect the rights recognized in the constitution, both specific and non-specific, provide for the national defense, and supply a *reasonable* infrastructure for interstate commerce. If I were in charge of the federal budget, I would probably slash spending by 80ish percent and slash taxes to a point that would simply fund current expenses and pay off previously incurred debts within 50 years. The taxes I would collect would be from the state governments themselves, and I would leave it to them to decide how to pass the costs on to the people. If a person doesn't like what his/her state does, they should be free to move to another state more in line with their thinking. My stances on things like welfare, guns, unions, and state's rights tell me I'm not one of the "liberals" constantly decried here. My stances on things like gay marriage, abortion, drugs, and the environment tell me I'm not one of the "conservatives" constantly decried here. Apparently I must be one of the other, but it sure is tough to tell which. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)