The DnD Sanctuary

Anything American goes.

In 100 days, Brazil will kick off the World Cup against Croatia in the gleaming new Arena de São Paulo. Assuming, that is, the stadium is finished in time.

Amid growing excitement at the World Cup returning to the home of La Joga Bonito, there is concern at the extent to which deadlines have been repeatedly missed before being torn up altogether. "I am not a World Cup specialist but I will say this has not been easy, for sure," said the Fifa secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, one man who you might hope would be exactly that, in Zurich this weekend.

"I think things will work well but it is also true that whenever you receive something late it becomes a challenge to make it ready in time."

This thread is about what's going on...
Well, about the World Cup, that's old news. 6 years old at least. Anyone surprised?  :left:

In Illinois, the primary elections are almost two weeks away. The gubernatorial candidates are jockeying for position, trying to convince us that the guy paying for the ad is our savior while his opponents will undoubtedly turn this state into an economic desert that would make Detroit look overpopulated and safe by comparison. I have a suspicion it doesn't matter which corrupt politician gets in, that the end result won't be much different.

Anyone surprised? Yes, Barulheira.

Quote from: Jimbro3738 on 2014-03-06, 16:20:30

Anyone surprised? Yes, Barulheira.

I'm sorry. We rarely see anything being finished in time here.
Works aren't going on well here. As usually. :down:

And of course the law drama.

Rachel Canning: Judge rules parents don't have to pay university fees of daughter who tried to sue them

What’s worse, the dumping was done intentionally to cut corners and save an estimated $3 per barrel.
source (http://ran.org/chevrons-toxic-legacy-ecuador)

Is there anywhere worse in the Americas as Mexico? What a hellhole of murder and mayhem.

Is there anywhere worse in the Americas as Mexico? What a hellhole of murder and mayhem.

A study has discovered one in ten Americans think HTML - the name given to the code that makes up websites - is a sexually transmitted disease, while almost a third think a gigabyte is an insect.

Other terms that confused the participants included software, which was mistaken from comfortable clothing, and USB, which was mistaken from the acronym of a European country.

Quote
A study has discovered one in ten Americans think HTML - the name given to the code that makes up websites - is a sexually transmitted disease, while almost a third think a gigabyte is an insect.

Quote

A study has discovered one in ten Americans think HTML - the name given to the code that makes up websites - is a sexually transmitted disease, while almost a third think a gigabyte is an insect.

All the Germans that were ... the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people and that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.

Hillary Clinton

it could came up with the same results anywhere in Europe too

Quote from: krake on 2014-03-10, 18:00:08

it could came up with the same results anywhere in Europe too

Could it?... I doubt it very much (except if you ask people about historical facts and figures)

Course the "study" was an anecdote as such, what's funny is that a real study would have given even worst results.
That explains the entire American policy and politics, basically "what's going on" there.

What explains the " entire American policy and politics"? A "real" study that wasn't actually made?

Are you rjh in disguise?

Forget what?

Actually I have a bunch of pictures and cards behind me, not in front of me.

He's left handed, so the coffee cup....

Nope, to enjoy your coffee in a coup is the courtly way to do it.

Quote from: Frenzie on 2014-04-11, 10:27:03

Actually I have a bunch of pictures and cards behind me, not in front of me.

Well, then you might have much in common with Obama. :devil:
Normally, people put the picture of someone dear on the desktop so he/she can sometimes look at it and not behind his/her ass on a radiator or whatever.
Only a showman will pile up such (and so many) pictures that way :)

He's left handed

Indeed he is left handed. So you have been right about the telephone even so it wasn't what I had in mind. I hope he won't strangle himself with the phone cable during work

Normally, people put the picture of someone dear on the desktop so he/she can sometimes look at it and not behind his/her ass on a radiator or whatever.
Only a showman will pile up such (and so many) pictures that way

What are you expecting from someone that is a Nobel prize just because he's black?

I thought it was just because he's not Bush.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?action=reporttm;topic=230.43;msg=17066)

Quote from: Frenzie on 2014-04-11, 20:08:02

I thought it was just because he's not Bush.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?action=reporttm;topic=230.43;msg=17066)

:lol:

What are you expecting from someone that is a Nobel prize just because he's black.

I had my phone on the left side of my desk when I still had one. :P

Jay Carney is Obama's spokesman and quite often he make remarks on Russian propaganda. So far so good.
The funny thing is that his kitchen (http://www.washingtonian.com/mom/features/balancing-act/) is decorated with Soviet propaganda of the 20ies and the 40ies.

(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonian.com%2Fmom%2Fimages%2Fshipman-lead-04102014.jpg&hash=aac3770feb896b15832afc742487190c" rel="cached" data-hash="aac3770feb896b15832afc742487190c" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.washingtonian.com/mom/images/shipman-lead-04102014.jpg)

How about old Soviet propaganda adapted to US needs?

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BlNe_37CUAA-zqQ.png)

Della is not easily swayed. She hates pink. Nor does she like to brush her hair. The daughter of Shipman and Jay Carney, President Obama’s press secretary, isn’t the kind of young girl interested in pleasing her Washington-power-couple parents, or any of the adults around her on the photo shoot for that matter. She is funny, sweet, and obviously smart, but she’s not going to budge for braids and patterned shirts.

The explanation might be a perfect storm of social, economic, genetic and environmental factors, said epidemiologist Mandy Stahre, who is assigned to Washington state by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

They’re not focused near the Hanford site

"We're really concerned about the fact that the anencephaly rates are still so high," said Mandy Stahre, an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention based in Washington state. "We were sort of hoping that this may have been a statistical anomaly or would go away."
source (http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/rare-birth-defects-still-spiking-washington-state-n86916)

I seem to remember saying, in another thread, that Josh should step away from the vodka-- he'd obviously had too much, or words to that effect.

And my Boyne annual commemoration on Saturday. Will be in my best atire of course along with 8,000 others parading. By all means enjoy your day and I forgive you for your mistake over 2 centuries ago and how you ended up.  :D

The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist

The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/)

Quote

The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist

Take care  :devil:

Yes, it is sad that the word terrorist is overused

Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich is telling the people of Florida about his plans for a permanent base on the Moon, and suggesting it may be possible for the satellite to become the 51st US state.

What is this, the 1960 election campaign? :right:

I wonder for how long people will continue accepting everything. Probably indefinitely and then they will complain "ohhh how could this happen..."
Idiots. Being slaughtered will be the final act.

If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent.

The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, is a huge, classified database of people known to be terrorists, those who are suspected of having ties to terrorism, and in some cases those who are related to or are associates of known or suspected terrorists. It feeds to smaller lists that restrict people's abilities to travel on commercial airlines to or within the U.S.

source (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/08/05/watch-commander/)

Seems to me a very naive report. and probably made by demand with provided misinformation, those numbers are ridiculously low.

Everybody is suspected

In a fascinating new paper, researchers at the Brookings Institution look at exactly that question and come up with some potentially shocking findings, albeit ones that come with plenty of caveats attached.

According to their calculations as many as 12 million Americans were living on $2 per day or less in 2012. That equates to one in four of the 46.5 million people in the US who were surviving below the official national poverty line of around $16 per day in 2012. It also amounts to 4 per cent of the population, a figure that the researchers point out is not flattering for the US when you compare it to Russia (with 0.1 per cent of the population living on $2/day or less according to the World Bank), the West Bank and Gaza (0.3 per cent), Jordan (1.6 per cent) or the urban populations in Argentina (1.9 per cent) and China (3.5 per cent).

The new study by Laurence Chandy, a Brookings fellow, and Cory Smith, a PhD candidate at MIT, is not the first to tackle the subject. It deliberately builds on another published last year which found that the US had seen a sharp increase in the ranks of its extreme poor since introducing welfare reforms in 1996. That study by Luke Shaefer of the University of Michigan and Kathryn Edin of Harvard found 1.65 million households with 3.55 million children in them – or 4.3 per cent of all American households with kids – were living on $2 per day per person or less in the US in 2011. [...]

Estimating the number of extreme poor in the US, it turns out, is just as complicated as it is in the rest of the world.

Once you account for tax credits and in-kind benefits like food stamps and housing subsidies Chandy and Smith found that the number of Americans living on $2 per day falls to 3 per cent of the population, although the vast bulk of those people still shockingly live on less than $1.25 per day, the World Bank’s line for extreme poverty. [...]

In fact, when they applied the strictest potential criteria, which turn out to be those used by the World Bank in its assessment of developing countries, they found that there were arguably no Americans consuming $2 per day or less. “In other words,” they write, “if we measured poverty in the US as if it was a developing country, we would conclude that no-one falls under the $2 threshold”. [...]

The main reason for the divergence is simple: America’s poor report earning significantly less than they report spending and that has a lot to do with the structure of the US welfare system, the researchers argue.

Since the 1990s the poor in the US have received far fewer cash payments and far more in-kind benefits like food stamps than they used to.

But that isn’t necessarily positive, Chandy and Smith argue. Because of that structure in many cases America’s extreme poor are excluded from its cash economy, they say. The consequence is that those who are most poor in the US are consigned to “a state of purgatory where relatively robust levels of consumption ensure many of their most basic material needs are met, but the absence of a reliable source of income … makes it extremely difficult or impossible to cope with unexpected needs”. [...]

By using tax records the French economist Thomas Piketty and others have started publishing forensic analyses of the incomes of the richest 1 per cent, he points out, and triggered a global debate on inequality.

Much less reliable data is available, however, on the poorest in America and other developed economies, who often don’t file tax returns or pay taxes. And that, Chandy says, means that these days we know far less than we should about the lives of the bottom 15 per cent in America than we do about the top 1 percent.

The Minuteman Project’s “Operation Normandy” has been launched as of 1200 hours today (Monday, July 7). This event will dwarf the original Minuteman Project of 2005. I expect at least 3,500 non-militia volunteers to participate, plus uncounted groups of militias from all over the country.

If you are familiar with the Normandy invasion of France in 1944, then you have an idea how large and logistically complicated this event will be. However, there is one difference. We are not going to the border to invade anyone. We are going there to stop an invasion.

[...I]t will cover the porous areas of the 2,000-mile border from San Diego, Ca. to Brownsville, Texas.

Swat team burst into Peoria house looking for source of parody Twitter account that had upset town’s mayor

(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.guim.co.uk%2Fsys-images%2FGuardian%2FPix%2Fpictures%2F2014%2F9%2F19%2F1411147339457%2F225a6496-1002-4a45-8def-5a616b74c8bc-460x276.jpeg&hash=931a939c62f17cda32645d478d8797a0" rel="cached" data-hash="931a939c62f17cda32645d478d8797a0" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/9/19/1411147339457/225a6496-1002-4a45-8def-5a616b74c8bc-460x276.jpeg)

The police hadn’t even come for him. When four fully-armed officers of a Swat team burst into Jacob Elliott’s house in Peoria, Illinois in April they were looking for the source of a parody Twitter feed that had upset the town’s mayor by poking fun at him.

It transpired that one of Elliott’s housemates, Jon Daniel, had created the fake Twitter account, @peoriamayor, and so incensed the real-life official, Jim Ardis, with his make-believe account of drug binges and sex orgies that the police were dispatched. Elliott was just a bystander in the affair, but that didn’t stop the Swat team searching his bedroom, looking under his pillow and in a closet where they discovered a bag of marijuana and dope-smoking paraphernalia.

Elliott now faces charges of felony marijuana possession. He has also become the subject of one of the more paradoxical – if not parody – questions in American jurisprudence: can a citizen be prosecuted for dope possession when the police were raiding his home looking for a fake Twitter account?

A Peoria judge this week ruled that the police were entitled to raid the house on North University Street on 15 April under the town’s “false personation” law which makes it illegal to pass yourself off as a public official. Judge Thomas Keith found that police had probable cause to believe they would find materials relevant to the Twitter feed such as computers or flash drives used to create it.

Must say that Smiley does have a very good point in the usual patter dished out that everything is Bush's fault.

.......Now the economy improving (4.2 percent second quarter 2014) and deficit shrinking in no way can be blamed on Bush.

Those figures are way out of date........

It is my sincere wish that the entire corrupt US healthcare system falls and burns. The Republicrats and Demoteas have failed.

As I openly stated in my prior post, & the figures for unemployment are getting better........due to the American People, & not by any activity --- on or off the golf course --- of the present failed presidency.

Damned optometrists are the most corrupt of all, as "you have to have an eye exam before we can give you your contacts". WTAF is that shite? My damned prescription hasn't changed any, and just because I now don't have health insurance, that lot want's me to pony up $166.75 for just the stupid-arse "examination" (once again, my sight hasn't changed) and then an additional $66.58 per bloody box for both of my contacts?

The latter for not even trying to go anywhere near far enough. Then again, the republicans are still busy freaking the fuck out over romneycare ( because fuck that black guy  :rolleyes:  )

Damned optometrists are the most corrupt of all, as "you have to have an eye exam before we can give you your contacts". WTAF is that shite? My damned prescription hasn't changed any, and just because I now don't have health insurance, that lot want's me to pony up $166.75 for just the stupid-arse "examination" (once again, my sight hasn't changed) and then an additional $66.58 per bloody box for both of my contacts?

This thread is about what's going on...
Well, about the World Cup, that's old news. 6 years old at least. Anyone surprised?  :left:

.....My damned prescription hasn't changed any.......... (once again, my sight hasn't changed) ..............

Here, such an "examination" it's offered for free included in the price of your glasses or contact lenses regardless health-care system or insurances. Optometrists are mere shop attendants raised to the class of technicians by way of stupefying and stupefied societies that calls "cleaning technicians" to mere house cleaning women.

Around 60 or 70 dollars it will be the cost of contact lenses around here, I suppose. 160 dollars for "examination"?? less than that you'll pay for a private ophthalmologist, a true doctor, not a farce. One hundred euros is the average price for a specialist doctor consult outside any healthcare system.

Quote from: Colonel Rebel on 2014-09-24, 17:39:51

.....My damned prescription hasn't changed any.......... (once again, my sight hasn't changed) ..............

Well, may I suggest, if you know your prescription, you click the pic & check out    (https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FucqEHKA.gif&hash=b37c9850c577f4e290cb7e9e1d6bfabe" rel="cached" data-hash="b37c9850c577f4e290cb7e9e1d6bfabe" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://i.imgur.com/ucqEHKA.gif) (http://www.1800contacts.com/lenses)

There are many other online Contact Lens distributors (http://bit.ly/1v18lmI) too, & many offer free shipping like 1800Contacts do.....seek & ye shall find.

Not into online distributors?? Check out Walmart (https://www.walmartcontacts.com/) too. I think you can walk in, & hand them your hand written (in your handwriting) lens prescription, & then check-out.......simples, no?

(https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/cheerskj4.gif)

If a Republican bucks the trend towards political suicide and becomes the next president

By remarkable coincidence, he and I seemed to have the eye exams within a few days of each other.

Perhaps this is linked the low IQ of conservatives (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/01/social-conservatives-have-a-lower-i-q-probably/#.VCLwLt_09Ec)

Perhaps, now since you can see reasonably well, you'll read the article you linked to…?  :)  (Nah! Some things never change.)

The next election cycle for this office is in two years. Maybe I should run.

Quote from: mjmsprt40 on 2014-09-27, 17:14:29

The next election cycle for this office is in two years. Maybe I should run.

Office of what? Doesn't matter, run anyway.
You'll be the only one that can say he has international support on all five continents. :)

See, a problem with your reading is you pick up details great, but miss things such the author's "tone of voice." For instance, you didn't understand that my "tone of voice" wasn't entirely serious.

Your tone of voice is usually second-hand snark (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=snarky&allowed_in_frame=0), and bungled, mangled and myopic — even then…

Ask Macallan if he now accepts the validity of g, as promulgated by, e.g., Jensen… He'll of course say no! But he'll chortle -along with you- when "conservationists" are tagged as low IQ, and that's why they're not as "liberal as us." (But maybe he's finally done some homework! He might recant. IAPA!, and you know it.)

You're just "quote mining" there; and you got caught doing it — for your usual reason!

First of all, I wasn't actually arguing conservatives are less intelligent.

IQ doesn't necessarily indict a person's intelligence, and often shows little more than the test-takers ability to take the test.

Now if you notice how conservative is described within the studies, the word bigot is probably a more appropriate term.

Why would is be surprising that racists, etc might be less intelligent than the general population?

(Of course, I know Obama probably never said "behind the times"… He's got highly paid speechwriters to euphemise for him!)

One thing is going on in the Americas for sure. Oakdale and Sanguinemoon are squaring off against each other on a forum yipping "You're wrong!" at each other.

They may be right.

. Intercourse with a Republican runs the risk of contracting whatever disease seems to be eating the GOP's collective brain.

So THAT'S where their brains are.

With this issue dead, maybe their better candidates can focus on issues more people care about:taxes, the deficit, etc.

Yanks just come on and talk straight away about their own internal issues as if this is an American forum.

your fellow countrymen come on here and act as if this was purely an American forum

Thoughts are fine

Oh, as a postcript have you taken a look at the same thread title? It doesn't say America fulls top but the Americas. Tut, tut boy you slipped.

Quote from: rjhowie on 2014-10-12, 00:37:18

Oh, as a postcript have you taken a look at the same thread title? It doesn't say America fulls top but the Americas. Tut, tut boy you slipped.

So-- if our Brazilian guy wants to post something about what's happening in Brazil, nothing's stopping him--- since, last time I looked, Brazil is part of the South American continent. We had a fellow-- don't know if he's still around, haven't seen him for awhile-- who coulda told you all you ever want to know about Mexico. I seem to recall that you and that guy didn't get along well though, and if anything you had even nastier things to say about Mexico than you do about the States. Now, I'll admit that my own knowledge about Mexico is somewhat weak. I know there are some "party places" that the well-to-do from up here like to visit, and a whole lot of poverty, and a whole lot of them trying to get here because of the whole lot of poverty there--- but beyond that, what I know could be put in a gnat's eye and still leave room for my van to park in the gnat's eye. Sooooo-- if he wants to tell us what's really going on there,-- Mexico is part of America, it belongs in this thread.

Happy now? OK, that was a stupid question, I should know nothing on this side of the Atlantic makes you happy, RJ.

So-- if our Brazilian guy wants to post something about what's happening in Brazil

We used to be one of the leading producers of wears

Past glory frays and fades. Threads unravel…
 The cloths that clothe and keep us warm may not
 survive a cleansing — water, soap, what's wrought
by agitation — aren't meant to travel

long, on the roads we take or in the climes
 we frequent. (We used to don the furs of
 animals better suited than us…) Glove
the hand that reaches out to the Sublime,

and it will never touch it! 'Though frost-bit
 fingers hardly care and scorch-abraded
 extremes of interest become jaded…
The taste for ash and sulphur doesn't fit

the old-fashioned way of making sense. But
modern sense is cruel. And there is a glut…

We used to be one of the leading producers of wears, but these days most wears are made in Asia. Just look at the labels.  :lol:

So, how about starting a thread about what's happening in Scotland?

Quote from: mjmsprt40 on 2014-10-12, 20:45:09

We used to be one of the leading producers of wears, but these days most wears are made in Asia. Just look at the labels.  :lol:

Yes, but I think he's mad because so many brands still have headquarters in the USA. American Apparel, for example must really get his haggis.

I'm voting for Rousseff because I favor female candidates.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fa4.files.biography.com%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fc_fill%2Cdpr_1.0%2Cg_face%2Ch_300%2Cq_80%2Cw_300%2FMTE4MDAzNDEwMDU4NTc3NDIy.jpg&hash=0a7da92e2a21d8368a2799ec2b5c8680" rel="cached" data-hash="0a7da92e2a21d8368a2799ec2b5c8680" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://a4.files.biography.com/image/upload/c_fill,dpr_1.0,g_face,h_300,q_80,w_300/MTE4MDAzNDEwMDU4NTc3NDIy.jpg)

Quote from: Jimbro3738 on 2014-10-13, 12:57:14

I'm voting for Rousseff because I favor female candidates.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fa4.files.biography.com%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fc_fill%2Cdpr_1.0%2Cg_face%2Ch_300%2Cq_80%2Cw_300%2FMTE4MDAzNDEwMDU4NTc3NDIy.jpg&hash=0a7da92e2a21d8368a2799ec2b5c8680" rel="cached" data-hash="0a7da92e2a21d8368a2799ec2b5c8680" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://a4.files.biography.com/image/upload/c_fill,dpr_1.0,g_face,h_300,q_80,w_300/MTE4MDAzNDEwMDU4NTc3NDIy.jpg)

And she is 20 percent butcher than the male candidates.

Maybe we should have a thread on this, the awsomesauce of/what is going on in the fashion industry?

Quote from: Jimbro3738 on 2014-10-13, 12:57:14

I'm voting for Rousseff because I favor female candidates.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fa4.files.biography.com%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fc_fill%2Cdpr_1.0%2Cg_face%2Ch_300%2Cq_80%2Cw_300%2FMTE4MDAzNDEwMDU4NTc3NDIy.jpg&hash=0a7da92e2a21d8368a2799ec2b5c8680" rel="cached" data-hash="0a7da92e2a21d8368a2799ec2b5c8680" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://a4.files.biography.com/image/upload/c_fill,dpr_1.0,g_face,h_300,q_80,w_300/MTE4MDAzNDEwMDU4NTc3NDIy.jpg)

And she is 20 percent butcher than the male candidates.

Doesn't matter who is elected you will still have tens of millions of poor, homeless.....

Doesn't matter who is elected you will still have tens of millions of poor, homeless, strain to maintain a massive army and military expenditure not needed. Kind of sad in a way.

Quote from: Jimbro3738 on 2014-10-13, 12:57:14

I'm voting for Rousseff because I favor female candidates.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fa4.files.biography.com%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fc_fill%2Cdpr_1.0%2Cg_face%2Ch_300%2Cq_80%2Cw_300%2FMTE4MDAzNDEwMDU4NTc3NDIy.jpg&hash=0a7da92e2a21d8368a2799ec2b5c8680" rel="cached" data-hash="0a7da92e2a21d8368a2799ec2b5c8680" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://a4.files.biography.com/image/upload/c_fill,dpr_1.0,g_face,h_300,q_80,w_300/MTE4MDAzNDEwMDU4NTc3NDIy.jpg)

And she is 20 percent butcher than the male candidates.

Quote from: Sanguinemoon on 2014-10-14, 07:10:28

Quote from: Jimbro3738 on 2014-10-13, 12:57:14

I'm voting for Rousseff because I favor female candidates.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fimgur.com%2FO0vBEYJ.jpg&hash=dfcd9768b70f00bf416a8952a4c7a6b7" rel="cached" data-hash="dfcd9768b70f00bf416a8952a4c7a6b7" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://imgur.com/O0vBEYJ.jpg)

And she is 20 percent butcher than the male candidates.

30% baker and 50% candle-stick maker.

30% baker and 50% candle-stick maker.

65% Lying Sack of Shit, 15% Ego & Testosterone Driven Shemale, & 20% Murderous Bitch

Quote from: tt92 on 2014-10-19, 22:33:11

Quote from: Sanguinemoon on 2014-10-14, 07:10:28

Quote from: Jimbro3738 on 2014-10-13, 12:57:14

I'm voting for Rousseff because I favor female candidates.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fimgur.com%2FO0vBEYJ.jpg&hash=dfcd9768b70f00bf416a8952a4c7a6b7" rel="cached" data-hash="dfcd9768b70f00bf416a8952a4c7a6b7" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://imgur.com/O0vBEYJ.jpg)

And she is 20 percent butcher than the male candidates.

30% baker and 50% candle-stick maker.

65% Lying Sack of Shit, 15% Ego & Testosterone Driven Shemale, & 20% Murderous Bitch

Now I'm curious what kinda closet activities she'd partake in. Just got my vote.

Quote from: ensbb3 on 2014-10-19, 23:12:36

Now I'm curious what kinda closet activities she'd partake in. Just got my vote.

I agree. At least she's honest about being a vampire, unlike the rest of those leeches in DC.

I agree. At least she's honest about being a vampire, unlike the rest of those leeches in DC.

Quote from: Sanguinemoon on 2014-10-20, 00:48:54

I agree. At least she's honest about being a vampire, unlike the rest of those leeches in DC.

Besides, ol' Slick Willy would make a hella first lady gentlemen(?).

:faint: :faint: :faint: Now, back to Palin, the Republican answer to Hillary. :lol: :lol: :lol:

but if you've seen the condition of this town's streets you understand that they sorely need repair, and this IS the proper responsibility of government to raise money to repair the streets.

Quote from: mjmsprt40 on 2014-10-25, 13:13:20

but if you've seen the condition of this town's streets you understand that they sorely need repair, and this IS the proper responsibility of government to raise money to repair the streets.

Yes, it is! And, as a Californian, I feel compelled to warn you that - while both state and federal gasoline taxes are supposed to accomplish such - neither has done so: Nail down that "tax" to the specific purpose by statute or referendum… Or accept your potholes and such as your due, from politicians wanting more taxes, more money to spend. (Their priorities are probably not yours… :) )

but if you've seen the condition of this town's streets you understand that they sorely need repair, and this IS the proper responsibility of government to raise money to repair the streets.

So, how comes it you actually admit that at least on the local level-- which is where Villa Park's village board would be-- honesty might be in short supply? So, if honesty is hard to find locally, where the politician lives in town and actually has to deal with his constituents every day across the back-yard fence, we can somehow find these honest politicians to send to state and federal offices, where his/her constituents are hundreds or thousands of miles away?

I did vote for a local bond issue which will likely raise taxes--- but if you've seen the condition of this town's streets you understand that they sorely need repair, and this IS the proper responsibility of government to raise money to repair the streets.

Here they seem to "repair" perfectly good roads at random.

We have roads in this town that haven't been maintained since I was a boy-- and I'm 59 now so that gives you an idea of just how bad it can get here. The main drags are OK-- the side streets are in real trouble.

In this town, repair of perfectly good roads doesn't seem to be a problem. Finding roads that aren't reverting back to the days when they were mud trails that a team of horses would have difficulty pulling the cart on--- that's the problem.

We have roads in this town that haven't been maintained since I was a boy-- and I'm 59 now so that gives you an idea of just how bad it can get here. The main drags are OK-- the side streets are in real trouble.

Here are the results, from ranked from worst to best:
1. Bogota, Colombia
2. Mexico City
3. Lima, Peru
4. New Delhi
5. Jakarta, Indonesia
6. Buenos Aires
7. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
8. Bangkok
9. Moscow
10. Manila, Philippines
11. Paris
12. Seoul
13. London
14. Beijing
15. Tokyo
16. New York

You come back a couple days later, the dust is gone, as are the workers, and there is shiny new tarmac as far as your somewhat nearsighted eyes can see.  Half the construction in the world happens in China, and it shows.

Meanwhile, church groups and others feed the homeless all the time. Any good sized city has soup kitchens as well social services to help them.

STILLWATER — Covered in blood and still holding a large knife that police say he’d used just minutes before to nearly decapitate his brother’s roommate, Isaiah Zoar Marin dialed 911.
...
At a news conference earlier in the day, Stillwater police Capt. Randy Dickerson said Marin admitted to authorities “that he had fantasized recently about committing multiple homicides” and that the victim was “one of his intended targets.”

“The conversation was that he had planned to to do it all at one time,” the police captain said.

The victim’s brother, Jesse Crockett, told police Marin is a “religious zealot” and “heavy drug user,” according to a court affidavit.

Police confirmed there was evidence at the scene that Marin might have been involved in the use of some illegal drugs.

The defendant’s brother, Samuel Marin, said “in the past Jacob and Isaiah had disagreements because Jacob and Jesse were practicing witchcraft and Isaiah had strong Christian beliefs,” a Stillwater police officer reported in the affidavit.
...

The 43 Mexican students who disappeared in southern Mexico in September were abducted by police on order of a local mayor, and are believed to have been turned over to a gang that killed them and burned their bodies before throwing some remains in a river, the nation's attorney general said Friday.
This is the conclusion that investigators have reached, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said, though he cautioned that it cannot be known with certainty until DNA tests confirm the identities.

I forgive everyone, and I ask everyone to forgive me. May my blood which is about to be shed, be for the good of the country. Viva Mexico, viva la independencia!

I wouldn't send my worst enemy to Me-hee-co it is a hellish, corrupt and dastardly place.

Also: Let us know, RJ, how you determined who was your worst enemy! (Put yourself at the head of the queue, boy-o! :) You've earned it!)

he will surly naturally die very soon anyway.

. (https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smiley-lol.com%2Fsmiley%2Fheureux%2Flollarge.gif&hash=cc78d35b88dd655637714b01138a1063" rel="cached" data-hash="cc78d35b88dd655637714b01138a1063" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.smiley-lol.com/smiley/heureux/lollarge.gif)

Personally, I like RJ.  I do not consider him my mortal enemy.

Bill Foley is trying to bring an NHL expansion team to Las Vegas, and so far he's marching in step with Commissioner Gary Bettman.

"I'm an ex-Army guy. I follow orders," Foley told The Canadian Press by phone over the weekend from his home in Northern California. "We've been very careful in our meetings with the NHL administrative staff, just trying to make sure that we do things in the proper fashion. We're not pushy, we're not demanding."

So far, the 70-year-old millionaire businessman has received permission to run a season-ticket drive and isn't pressing for anything more.

"Nevada and Las Vegas in particular are no longer what they were 50 years ago or 40 years ago: a gambling city, kind of a weigh station in the desert," Foley said. "A number of software companies, development companies have located in Las Vegas. ... Those companies and those people who work for those companies, that's our target. Those are the people that we want to have come to these games."

Foley said that after two days of an initial website launch that 1,500 people had expressed interest in buying season tickets.

In hockey circles, the prospect of a Las Vegas team adds a touch of glamor. Locally, the notion of finally attracting a team in one of North America's major four sports leagues is enticing.

US and Cuba are to start talks to normalise diplomatic ties in a historic shift in relations between the two countries, US officials say.

The US is also looking to open an embassy in Havana in the coming months.

The moves are part of a deal that saw the release of American Alan Gross by Cuba and includes the release of three Cubans jailed in Florida for spying.

US President Barack Obama will later hail the "most significant changes in US policy towards Cuba in 50 years".

Mr Obama and the Cuban leader, Raul Castro, are expected to make simultaneous announcements at 17:00 GMT.

Hip-hop-hooray and a pat on the back for Obama and Castro!   :happy:

Quote from: rjhowie on 2014-12-18, 16:06:22

Hip-hop-hooray and a pat on the back for Obama and Castro!   :happy:

I second that ---   (https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/cheerskj4.gif)    ---   [glow=blue,2,300]  :no: Guantanamo Bay Forever!  :no: [/glow]

And when chums is the Imperial power going to clear out of Cuba? So much for respecting rights, sovereignty, etc.

The Scottish Government published their latest report on poverty and income inequality in Scotland  in July 2014.   The key findings for Scotland were:

a sharp rise in the number of individuals living in relative poverty in 2012/13 - up to 820,000;

rises in the percentage of children in relative poverty (up from 15% in 2011/12 to 19% in 2012/13)

rises in working age people and pensioners in poverty, 15% of adults in each are now defined as living in relative poverty

median income in Scotland in 2012/13 was £23,000, equivalent to £440 per week. This is the third consecutive annual fall in median income in Scotland

the proportion of people in poverty who live in working households increased in 2012/13 - in 2012/13, 52 per cent of working age adults in poverty were living in households where at least one adult was in employment

In this section a range of summary indicators are used to illustrate poverty in Glasgow, including access to a bank account, child poverty, and relative deprivation.  The children's indicators section of Understanding Glasgow contains more detailed information on child poverty within Glasgow.

As for the £23,000 point it is perfectly possible to live on that and having done much voluntary work in so-called deprived areas (my education job took me into them too) the population was saturated with Sky tv aerials  more than one tv set, pc's.One part even had two McDonalds!

There are a number of threads from the Old World, any news from the New? Anything American goes.

Well you keep up the Smiley idea of ex-colonist land Sanguinemoon

Britain will not charge pedophiles that possess child abuse images because of the high volume of people engaging in such activities.

According to the head of the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), Keith Bristow, it was "not realistic" to prosecute the 50,000 people in Britain who have viewed and shared child abuse images.

"Our responsibility is to focus on the greatest risk and tackle those people," he said.

The British Labour party labeled the NCA’s inactivity as "disgraceful" and said that the NCA was not fit to deal with the problem.

“This is a disgraceful policy from the National Crime Agency and the Home Secretary which sees the vast majority of people downloading vile child abuse images not investigated, while children remain at risk,” said Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.

She went on to say that the NCA has details on tens of thousands of offenders who have accessed images of child abuse, but has only made 600 arrests...............

Quote from: jax on 2014-03-06, 15:39:46

There are a number of threads from the Old World, any news from the New? Anything American goes.

It's raining in Spring Hill, Tennessee, this morning.

Tomorrow we're going to our daughter's house in Franklin, Tennessee, for Christmas dinner...a hearty bowl of chicken gumbo soup.

3 chicken breasts, deboned, cooked, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 onion, diced
4 cups chicken broth
1 (16 ounce) can tomatoes, undrained
2 teaspoons salt
1/3 cup green pepper, diced
1/3 cup long grain rice, uncooked
1 cup frozen okra
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
1 bay leaf
1 dash Worcestershire sauce
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.sndimg.com%2Ffood%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fw_266%2Fv1%2Fimg%2Frecipes%2F36%2F87%2FpicH2ZEea.jpg&hash=e7d95c55a13945352aee96bb2e12369a" rel="cached" data-hash="e7d95c55a13945352aee96bb2e12369a" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://img.sndimg.com/food/image/upload/w_266/v1/img/recipes/36/87/picH2ZEea.jpg)

BTW, Merry Christmas DnD folks!

They're calling for up to three inches of snow in Las Vegas on Wednesday, (http://www.intellicast.com/Local/Weather.aspx?location=USNV0049) with the white stuff starting after midnight.

I don't care about the weather, I just want to be an Administrator! :drunk: :wine: :beer: :cheers:

I think it must be the liqueur stealing gnomes again, damn them to bloody hell :irked:

If you think I would have a heart attack you are so wrong there Macallan as it would take more than an ex-colonist or any hoi-polloi here. If on the other hand someone from Edinburgh that could be different but with free health care for all here not a worry.  ;)

Have you any idea what hoi polloi means?

Have you any idea what hoi polloi means?

Actually Mike, 'hoi polloi'  is  the  'Common People',  the masses, the herd, the rabble, the riffraff. 

The 'hoity-toity' is what I believe you defined -- the upper class, the superior sect, the rich, the successful.

(https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/cheerskj4.gif)

Republicans and Democrats

Yep, he had a few sweet choice words for our NYC friends, who, to say the least, found him a tad bit 'different'.

We need a separate topic entitled People in DnD Who Bother Me.
Rj has opinions that I don't agree with, but that's true of a number of posters.

I can't promise the thread would live long

Quote from: Jimbro3738 on 2015-01-01, 16:29:06

We need a separate topic entitled People in DnD Who Bother Me.
Rj has opinions that I don't agree with, but that's true of a number of posters.

What's stopping you? I can't promise the thread would live long--- a thread with a title like that promises to have the kind of trouble that gets it dumped-- but if it can be kept reasonably clean maybe-- just maybe...

(https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/clapping.gif)   ........... let's all get behind RJ, & wish him all the best in this Wonderful New Year!  (https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/clapping.gif) 

Oh for the love of Mike -Smiley trying to show how reasonable he is and i am some kind of gnome.

Oh and he was also once praised by a priest would you believe

Interesting that you spent time searching and only find positives.

I know him.

And from a country where cities go bankrupt?

watch televisio,n given links and so on and the fact that you try to isolate me shows how stretched you are in grey cells and sense.

imperial empite

Why you wanted to go in that direction is something else.

At the same time there are those over the water I have a personal regard for and not politically motivated and perhaps not touched by the state of the place financially or indeed politically

Chinese Communists for keeping you afloat!

Then the additional guff about our days of Empire which we eventually gave upo but you lot have got yourselves hooked up to trillions in debt to try and show that your empire will be more brilliant than any previous one. Why you wanted to go in that direction is something else. Soldiers everywhere in hundreds of camps that you cannot really afford, war creating for the benefit of the Pentagon and it's military corporate pals. If you got rid of this global paranoia the American population (especially tens of millions) vould have a Health Service and a far better internal situation but nope you are hell bent on wanting to control the world instead.

I recently moved to Tennessee. That's our state flag.

Quote from: Jimbro3738 on 2015-01-03, 10:38:02

I recently moved to Tennessee. That's our state flag.

Welcome to Redneckistan :cheers:

I was going to say something about it this morning but I passed out instead.

I think it would lead to more confusion. Plus, my phone is psychotic this morning. Notifications about stopped updates keep popping up.   :o

They should push 5.0 to your device any day now. But that usually comes if wifi signal gets lost while the market app is trying to batch update.

Quote from: Jimbro3738 on 2015-01-03, 10:38:02

I recently moved to Tennessee. That's our state flag.

Welcome to Redneckistan :cheers:

No clue as to it's function but the NSA doesn't need an app for that.

The New York Times continues its slide into becoming little more than a neocon propaganda sheet as it followed the Washington Post in publishing an op-ed advocating the unprovoked bombing of Iran

source (https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/28/nyt-publishes-call-to-bomb-iran/)

Don't worry, Krake. I have doubts that even the most drunken denizens of the Pentagon and the alphabet soup of spy-guy agencies think that any good could come from an unprovoked attack on Iran-- or anybody else for that matter. If the US did that, it wouldn't be just you and RJH saying bad things about the US. No way to win the bad-press war an unprovoked attack would cause.

Critical voices, like France's, were attributed to their traditional martial cowardice (which, in the case of France, was ironic; it is as bellicose a nation as Europe can muster). These were the days of Freedom Fries.

Leaving the US bashing aside for a second, there is a cautionary tale embedded in that question. Before the run-up to the invasion, and then several years after, US and European popular opinions on the sensibility of an/the invasion broadly coincided....

Saddam Hussein was subtly and not so subtly conflated with the attacks on September 11, .... The propaganda worked.

It happened in the US of A, but could happen in any democratic country with surplus war machinery. Had the US had real worries about a Canadian-Mexican invasion the Iraq war would never happened. Similarly, Europeans has spent the last 3000 years fighting each other. Now that that spat is over, limited global reach is what stops "peaceful" Europeans from doing the same. Democracy would be no deterrent here either.

What you call "propaganda" is intel that you don't understand… That's understandable: Sadam's Iraq -given the short tussle after his invasion of Kuwait- led to our "invasion"… Others agreed, that was justified.
What you must mean is that you'd prefer thugs and bullies be — un-molested!
That's all well and good, for someone who flits across borders, and ideologies… And seems to have no allegiances.

What? You genuinely believe that? Whatever sympathy the United States had for September 11 attacks, it managed to squander all of it already by the start of Afghanistan war. People in Europe were near-unanimously against the Iraq war. The governments who participated in the Iraq "effort" did not ask the people.

an invasion could be considered some form of preventive self-defence.

an invasion could be considered some form of preventive self-defence.

Ironically after the invasion the country grew ripe for Al Qaeda-affiliated brands like Al Nusra and ISIL.

Quote from: jax on 2015-04-02, 11:28:13

an invasion could be considered some form of preventive self-defence.

Could it? If the invaded country is thousands miles away from your borders?
Nice spin even though it's a rotten one.

I wouldn't want to be thought I was America bashing but it is the most regular country to sanction, de-stabilise or invade more than anyone else.

Seems the West and it's leader picks and chooses which dictatorship to be hand in hand with and more glaringly immoral!

Yet another two wide flaws in the principled claims of the world's greatest democracy […]

Wish it were not so.   :(

Why can't you even grudgingly accept that Eisenhour was correct and at a stroke be honest for a change!   ???

Nice try laddie but people outside the controlled country see things better than those befuddled by years of being brained! You DO need a new revolution.

You looked that up about Eisenhower and thus allow yourself to avoid the hypocrisy charge!

Quote from: rjhowie on 2015-04-07, 12:16:33

Nice try laddie but people outside the controlled country see things better than those befuddled by years of being brained! You DO need a new revolution.

You jumping on the boat with Smileyfaze means we can at least call it a draw. Constitutional structure makes that unnecessary.

that lowlifed, lily-livered, Putin lovin' black hearted Scot couldn't & wouldn't be worthy of licking the bilge on any boat I'd serve on!

Oh I wouldn't want to be on your terrorist boat. The bilge is not just below but weighs the craft down. Other countries have grown up but your is taking a heck of a long time. By the time your country does grow up it may be bankrupt.That would be good news for the world so keep going.

Oh I wouldn't want to be on your terrorist boat. The bilge is not just below but weighs the craft down. Other countries have grown up but your is taking a heck of a long time. By the time your country does grow up it may be bankrupt.That would be good news for the world so keep going.

RJH-- you might want to look up just what the bilge is. It doesn't weigh the boat down---- ballast does that. Ballast may be placed in the bilge for stability. There is a difference.

A funny video with John Oliver and Edward Snowden about government surveillance and American perception:

"The uploader has not made this video available in your country"

Somebody probably wasn't very amused about it. It's the only feasible explanation that comes to my mind.

Quote from: krake on 2015-04-11, 07:37:46

Somebody probably wasn't very amused about it. It's the only feasible explanation that comes to my mind.

I can't tell if you're joking or not. :P

More news from The Donald at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/us/politics/trump-belittles-mccains-war-record.html?_r=0 (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/us/politics/trump-belittles-mccains-war-record.html?_r=0).

Sez Trump: "Quit you like men: be strong".

Donald Trump should shut his #@%^&^$ mouth. That's impossible, I know, but still he should do that.

Have already stated my opinion on McCain never mind the Vietnam matter. He would have been a disaster as President. Trump is another one who would be a disaster pal too. Mind you as it is the corporates who really run the ex-colonies he is flinging his hat in!

Your nation repeatedly rejected Winston Churchill — including after WW II! Of course you have no inkling… :)

He apart from being Knighted was accorded an impressive State funeral Oakdale.

What's Going on in the Americas?

Quote from: jax on 2014-03-06, 15:39:46

What's Going on in the Americas?

Did I already said that the American continent is drifting away from Europe?
That's the only good thing I can see happen there. Soon they will meet our Chinese friends face to face. That will be funny to watch. :)

One theory I've heard is that it already happened---- millenia before Europeans ever stumbled across the place. The "Native Americans" had to come from somewhere--- and the theory I read is that they came by way of land-bridge from the area now known as Siberia, crossing the present Bering Sea to Alaska, then down into the rest of the continent.

HARTMANN: Our Supreme Court has now said, “unlimited money in politics.” It seems like a violation of principles of democracy. … Your thoughts on that?

CARTER: It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over. … The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody’s who’s already in Congress has a lot more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody who’s just a challenger.

Jimmy Carter: The U.S. Is an "Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery" (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/30/jimmy-carter-u-s-oligarchy-unlimited-political-bribery/)

The primary responsability of government is "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."
Constitutional Convention 26. Juni 1787 - James Madison

The idea of democracy is one of the "necessary illusions" which the ruling elite has to produce in order to secure the stability of the present status
Reinhold Niebuhr 1892-1971

Opinion management is cheaper than violence, bribery or other possible control techniques.
- Harold D. Lasswell (1930). Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

The effective operation of a democratic political system usually require some measure of apathy and noninvolment on the part of some individuals and groups.
- Report of the Trilateral Commission, 1975

Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street layers and bankers.
Samuel Huntington (1975). The Crisis of democracy

A democratic society once established, destroys a free economy.
Milton Friedman, 1990

The USA is reigned by 200 families and we want good contacts to them.
Arndt Oetker - CEO of the Atlantic-Bridge / Berliner Zeitung, 17.4.2002

Opinions of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non- significant impact upon policy.
Policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of afluent Americans.
70% of the population on the lower revenue and estate spectrum have absolutely no leverage on political decisions.
- Gilens & Page (2014) Testing Theories of American Politics

If some of the quotes have a strange wording, it's because I've translated them from German. I'm still working on my English.

The goal of the hitchhiking trip was to see how humans would interact with hitchBOT. And apparently the answer was “not well.” HitchBOT has been around the world, including trips across the entirety of Canada and Germany without major incident. But America is clearly a hard land for our robot brothers and sisters.

The statement is true but somehow funny to hear it from Jimmy Carter. At his time as president it wasn't much different, neither was it at the time of his predecessors.

(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fimages2.fanpop.com%2Fimages%2Fphotos%2F3300000%2FBender-futurama-3365346-1024-768.jpg&hash=284bf6f107ce4500f215b6a7496d71bc" rel="cached" data-hash="284bf6f107ce4500f215b6a7496d71bc" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/3300000/Bender-futurama-3365346-1024-768.jpg)

Richard Nixon was pretty much middle class far from ruling classes.

Quote from: jax on 2015-08-03, 19:35:46

(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fimages2.fanpop.com%2Fimages%2Fphotos%2F3300000%2FBender-futurama-3365346-1024-768.jpg&hash=284bf6f107ce4500f215b6a7496d71bc" rel="cached" data-hash="284bf6f107ce4500f215b6a7496d71bc" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/3300000/Bender-futurama-3365346-1024-768.jpg)

That's what robots dream of.

"The general aim of these science fiction writers is to frighten the people into a state of paralysis or psychological incompetence bordering on hysteria"

Science fiction - a commie plot to undermine American values? It's an idea that the FBI was strongly considering during the height of the Cold War, as their lengthy investigation into acclaimed author Ray Bradbury shows.

The files released to former MuckRocker Inkoo Kang document the decade the Bureau spent trying to determine if Bradbury was, if not a card-carrying Communist, as least a sympathetic "fellow traveler."

There's an article here about what Trump was up to in his early 20s.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/20/what-donald-trump-was-up-to-while-john-mccain-was-suffering-as-a-prisoner-of-war/

:whistle: ??

Some local "do" in the poor hinterlands of the ex-colonies?!

Quote from: rjhowie on 2015-09-14, 19:00:46

Some local "do" in the poor hinterlands of the ex-colonies?!

Maybe y'all oughta get on over there and partake? You just might find the local ex-colonists (which, incidentally, Mississippi never was a British colony, just so's y'know) are more highly "cultured" than you are.

Downside of going there: Those tamales will likely go through your un-prepared Scottish system like Sherman going through Atlanta. Except that Sherman did less damage. You really DO need some time to get used to that kind of food.

The Pope rules the place. Total apotheosis, full subordination. :)

Pope Francis will make a few speeches, eat with homeless people, smile for the cameras--- and then board a plane for home. The US will continue "business as usual" government, and a week after the Pope's visit it will be hard to tell that he was ever here.

countries that had large Protestant or majority such grouping were the most progressive.

The Pope rules the place. Total apotheosis, full subordination. :)

Pope Crush Blues: Liberals swoon, pundits pontificate, and the media marvels as Pope Francis puts a happy face on the morally bankrupt institution that is the Catholic Church.
The current celebration of Pope Francis in America has been a depressing exercise in media spin. Focusing on the persona of the pope, the ugly truth that is the Catholic Church is whitewashed and sanitized so as to not interrupt the “feel good” moment.
Pope Francis is a marvelous showman – a genius at public relations and media manipulation who has successfully hustled the media, and the public at large. He says nice things like all animals go to heaven; he chastises creationists and other science deniers by noting that God is not a magician; and in a good natured gesture he asks atheists for good vibrations.
Recently Francis has seduced many progressives and liberals with calls to action on climate change, immigration, and poverty. In so doing he has alienated many conservatives, who find themselves in the odd position of rejecting the pope’s progressive politics.

Pope Francis is a man who holds views that should be repugnant to all reasonable people. Yet many reasonable people, including progressives, refuse to acknowledge these hard truths about Francis. The denial, and the excuse making, is depressing.
Bottom line: Pope Francis may be likable, even lovable, but that is no excuse to celebrate the leader of a repulsive and morally bankrupt institution like the Catholic Church.

@jax
I respect your ideas and the right you have to express it, I find the quotes you chose to attack the Pope vile, sordid and low.
If that is "progressive secular humanism" I consider it moral excrement.
But of course, for any action there's always a reaction. The dogs bark and the caravan passes...

Nice try for creating content, but useless. :)

I got the feeling you really don't get American politics

Of the 301 Republicans in the new Congress, only one – freshman Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York’s 1st District – is not a Christian. Zeldin, who is Jewish, will have far less seniority than the one Jewish Republican to serve in the 113th Congress, former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., who was defeated in his district’s GOP primary.

Fully two-thirds of the Republicans in the 114th Congress (202 members, or 67%) are Protestant, about a quarter are Catholic (81, or 27%), and 5% are Mormon (14).

Democrats in the new Congress are somewhat more religiously diverse than Republicans, though not as diverse as the population as a whole. Of the 234 Democrats in the 114th Congress, 104 (44%) are Protestant, 83 (35%) are Catholic, 27 (12%) are Jewish, two (1%) are Mormon, two are Buddhist, two are Muslim, one is Hindu and one does not identify with a particular religion.

Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public's view of other institutions.
source (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/35c595900e0a4ffd99fbdc48a336a6d8/poll-vast-majority-americans-dont-trust-news-media)

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
- Abraham Lincoln

A kind of roundabout and maybe not harmfully intended claim on Belfrager. Our outpost on the Inerian Peninsular is intelligent but apart from thatand in general, American politics is in essence a hypocritical joke never mind kindergarten mind level.  :(

(Insert joke about Cameron and a Swine here)

At least we can vote on staying ir leaving and if you tried that over the pond there would be a civil war......

Like the usual ex-colonsist on this forum you follow the traditionof always ignoring what you cannot answer or are guilty of Southern infant. You know that a referendum would not be allowed anywhere in nutjobland if there was a strong calle from a State.  I am a Bexit fan but I think that jimbro is probably correct in that we will see the Referendum won by the In lot. As for that Obama character coming over here and sticking his neb into our business I would chase the fool. Americans would go bananas and being told what to do on sovereignty. The EU is a mess and been in a financial one for about 6 years and no sign of improving. And it is corrupt as well as not being democratic (a bit like the US)and the books have not been cleared by auditors for 18 years. Disgraceful.

I hope that Trump wins.
It would clarify many things.

I would like to say dissolve NATO entirely as a coldwar relic. but with a resurgent Russia and increased instability in the Middle East, that doesn't seem possible.

All of those excellent healthcare systems nearly all of Europe has? They'd be decimated under a President Trump.
He has stated repeatedly that regarding European defense, he wants Europe to foot most of the bill for NATO. That would take away a lot of funds for keeping up such magnificent healthcare systems.......

All of those excellent healthcare systems nearly all of Europe has? They'd be decimated under a President Trump.
He has stated repeatedly that regarding European defense, he wants Europe to foot most of the bill for NATO.

Russia poses an existential threat to the United States.
- Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter

President Obama and Donald Trump rarely agree on foreign policy. Yet they share one core belief: Our closest allies in Europe are exploiting U.S. military might.
Trump says NATO should be renegotiated: It is “obsolete (http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/274175-trump-doubles-down-on-doubts-about-obsolete-nato)” and “unfair . . . to the United States . . . because we pay a disproportionate share (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/30/trumps-claim-that-the-u-s-pays-the-lions-share-for-nato/).”
Obama has criticized Trump’s stance. Yet for years the president has been conducting his own NATO renegotiation — including demanding European leadership in the Libyan operation and telling Prime Minister David Cameron that if Britain wants to maintain the Anglo-American “special relationship (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/barack-obama-and-david-cameron-the-us-and-britain-still-enjoy-special-relationship/2012/03/12/gIQABH1G8R_story.html),” it must increase defense spending to the recommended NATO minimum of 2 percent of gross domestic product. His explanation? “Free riders aggravate me (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/world/middleeast/obama-criticizes-the-free-riders-among-americas-allies.html?_r=0).”
But Trump and Obama are both wrong. Although more foreign policy spending is always welcome, Europe already assumes more than its fair share of the regional security burden. It invests not only in its military but also in crucial geo-economic and institutional instruments that the United States does not possess — but needs. In this respect, the United States freerides on European power.

Consider the facts.

Quote from: Colonel Rebel on 2016-05-11, 02:14:12

All of those excellent healthcare systems nearly all of Europe has? They'd be decimated under a President Trump.
He has stated repeatedly that regarding European defense, he wants Europe to foot most of the bill for NATO. That would take away a lot of funds for keeping up such magnificent healthcare systems.......

Did I miss a sarcasm tag?

• Brazil's equivalent of the speaker of the house, Waldir Maranhão, basically calls backsies on an impeachment vote his predecessor in the house held against President Dilma Rousseff. I mean that literally: He said the vote to impeach Rousseff was "annulled."
• The leader of the senate, Renan Calheiros, then rejects Maranhão's annulment, and says he's going ahead with a senate vote on Rousseff's impeachment anyway.
• Maranhão's party threatens to kick him out (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/brazils-president-rousseff-faces-likely-impeachment-after-house-speaker-changes-mind-on-key-vote/2016/05/10/75ccdee3-eddc-47c9-8b9a-cae049ea4c84_story.html), as they support Rousseff's impeachment.
• Maranhão sends a letter to Calheiros saying he has canceled his annulment, and that the old house impeachment vote stands. He gives no explanation as to why he changed his mind.

Or one take on this: The United States is riding Europe's superpower coattails (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-united-states-is-riding-europes-superpower-coattails/2016/04/14/90b3dd98-0193-11e6-9203-7b8670959b88_story.html)

When Americans think about global influence, they tend to calculate only military power. Yet in world politics, nonmilitary instruments are often more effective. And Europe is the world’s preeminent civilian superpower.

Can you detail a little more on that matter/

There was something on our news about a State that decided that public toilets should be restricted to people who were physically of one sex or another and anyone who felt they were mentally something else should get lost but the Federal government has stepped in.  There was a school here which felt that should be the norm so if you were a boy but felt like a girl (uhh) you should use the girls toilets and so on. One mother who had s son at primary school felt that he should be treated as a girl as he too felt like a lassie. Seems that at 5 at home he wears pinafores, etc. Damn daft the whole thing and the world is getting worse. Anyway it gives me something to mutter about until dear Southern laddie you tell us more.

Here you have Republicans inventing an issue,

BTW- the constitution has been interpreted to mean that there is no right to privacy...

Of course, only the "feelings" of the mentally deranged need to be protected... What could go wrong? (http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/Man-Beat-9-Year-Old-Girl-In-Jacksonville-Best-Buy-Bathroom-Police-220944391.html)

Do you think the "letter" sent out by a bureaucrat referencing Title IX, Title VII and the VAWA is rational? Really??

No the queer lobby gets too over the damn top.

Imagine having to explain to a little 6 year old girl why her being forcibly molested in a Unisex Toilet

Yes, I know you mean multiple person restrooms. But if you people will calm down and take a breath, you'll see the problem has already been solved with a row of individual washrooms and it doesn't matter who goes in.

The problem will be solved, if everybody begins building washrooms the way you suggest, but there's no reason why that should be the only way.

Everybody has it's share of suffering in life. But there are categories of people that think their kind of suffering is special and so they deserve special protection. And damn the rest.

At what point did I say it was the only way? What's your idea to keep everyone safe? At no point did I say to legislate it like this, either. Who's legislating?

About the LGBT being "harsh." The religious lobby got legislation passed amendments against us, we fought back and now they're crying like any other defeated bully. Don't like that same sex-same marriage is legal in all 50 states?

What I find amusing is that appeals to tradition so often fall completely flat, even if you ignore whether or not such an appeal holds any merit at all.

But you of course don't ignore the merit and you acknowledge it, right? Or, you can demonstrate how there is no merit, so that "appeal to tradition" indeed falls flat.

Now let's hear how "appeal to tradition" falls flat.

An appeal to tradition is correct if the justifications for said tradition were correct to start with...

...and if those justifications still apply to the present.

Equal rights to marriage, during marriage and to dissolve marriage are words from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Article 16.

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

Was marriage somehow unequal? Well, that depends on the country. Given that in some countries a spouse can or could be literally property, or how people might've previously only been allowed to marry within their class or race, I think the answer is obvious.

But going back to your simple proof that a right isn't a right, that falls flat because it's a simple case of conflicting rights.

One person's right to get married doesn't override another person's right not to.

This applies to any and all appeals and justifications.

Why such delimitations, what do you think? Are they merely some traditional ballast that should be discarded because the time has moved on and we should be over those barriers? Do they represent only false shame that is unbecoming to modern times?

I didn't argue that it's a right that is not a right. I argued that it's not the kind of right that can be applied universally whether the subject likes it or not.

When marriage is understood any other way, the concept of marriage becomes void and any associated right also becomes void - due to definitional clash of natural concepts, not due to imaginary nostalgia for tradition.

Here you somewhat engage in what I mentioned above. Traditionally one entered adulthood between 13 and 16 years (cf. Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah). You have already swept aside that ballast. In any case, I already said free and informed consent.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-26, 10:01:29

I didn't argue that it's a right that is not a right. I argued that it's not the kind of right that can be applied universally whether the subject likes it or not.

Just a quick reminder, you wrote this: "It's easily demonstrated that marriage is not a right."

The concept of rights associated with marriage is void either way. It's a personal union between two people. All of the state-imposed nonsense is just that.

And, incidentally, this is the traditional view of marriage. It was sufficient to speak the right words in the presence of two witnesses. The Catholic Church butted in on the process and that's how we acquired our current mess.

NB This does not imply a case for gay marriage, ...

...although iirc the Romans claimed the Gauls were too tolerant of it.

In any event, the anti-gay lobby didn't really get started until Late Antiquity.

It seems the only thing going in the (Northern) Americas is where transgenders (?) should piss.
Excellent, maybe now we can start talking about Southern America, a much more interesting place with so much more going on.

The Catholic Church butted in on the process and that's how we acquired our current mess.

Tradition is a buffet with no need to fantasize.

Yup, here's an article when same-sex marriage was a Christian rite (http://jdstone.org/cr/files/whensamesexmarriagewasachristianrite.html).

I think what's going on in Southern America is as baffling as what's going on in Northern, ...

Are you saying that you reject the "full age" delimitation in UDHR?

So, again, you actually reject the UDHR definitions? Because, in UDHR, marriage is not reductive the way you present it here. It's not between two people. It's between man and woman. And "equal rights" in the relevant article are obviously meant to emphasise women's equal rights to marry and divorce as freely as men do.

Romans claimed that Gauls were too tolerant of gay marriage? Any source to this?

Marriage was always understood as inapplicable to gays by definition. There was no gay marriage movement in Antiquity, late or otherwise, nor later in history, until very recently. As far as I know, "gay rights" even just a century ago only meant a modest request to be free from persecution, without any claim to right to marriage. Feel free to correct me on this point by providing an Antique Roman or Renaissance or any pre-WWII source that argues how gays have right to marry among themselves like heteros.

Yup, here's an article when same-sex marriage was a Christian rite (http://jdstone.org/cr/files/whensamesexmarriagewasachristianrite.html).

The Bible is against same-sex marriage, most clearly perhaps in 1. Cor 6:9-10.

² I say completely, but actually they were successful in Portuguese if I'm not mistaken.↵ (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=230.msg62054#ref2_0)

People entered into cohesive same-sex unions. You can either say that they're not marriage by definition or you can acknowledge that it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, much the same as our the present-day cohabitation agreements.

A loving, dedicated same-sex couple seems to do more to restore my faith in the institution than to break it down.

The Bible as well as early Christianity are in favor of polygamy — only for the men, of course, because the Bible is deeply sexist.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-26, 18:09:53

The Bible is against same-sex marriage, most clearly perhaps in 1. Cor 6:9-10.

Wasn't Paul talking about pederasty?

Arianism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism) was a particularly important one.

It wasn't. This controversy started with Boswell. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelphopoiesis#.22Same-sex_union.22_or_.22brother-making.22.3F) Had it been a real thing, it would have been a notable issue during the Catholic-Orthodox schism and Reformation, but there's no trace of that.

Look at the dates. This predated the reformation.

This is impossible, if Romans 1:27 is about the same thing. "And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another..." Clearly mutual and consensual, not one making use of another. Besides, the specific Greek word choice in 1. Cor 6:9-10 seems to refer back to Leviticus 20:13 as given in Septuagint. If so, then no.

No. Admittedly, Bible describes polygamy as if common practice (which it was in every culture in Middle East, so call them all deeply sexist for fairness' sake), but it never praises it and there's absolutely no question what the ideal was. The ideal is presented in the creation story.

As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you. Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession. You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves.

And Moses said to them, “Have you spared all the women? Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.

When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself, then you shall bring her home to your house.

What about them? Did they bless homosexual couples?

In my reading of the Bible, almost all of the great patriarchs that are held up as shining examples had multiple wives...

You are in a particularly blessed situation, because there's a Greek-Dutch interlinear NT online. Take this file (http://www.scripture4all.org/pdf_interlinear/gnt_nl.php?cs=e4f6b9ccf4968479f737d9734f3d7fdf&t=406763&b=1co&c=6) and locate the last word in verse 9. It's αρσενοκοιται - I trust you can read this. It's a noun.

It's αρσενοκοιται - I trust you can read this. It's a noun.

Yes, the patriarchs are shining examples, but I never got the feeling that their polygamy was upheld as a shining example. Of course I grant that poygamy was not condemned either, just  like slavery was not condemned. Those were inevitable aspects in social order at that time and place.

At the same time, I don't think anyone can question the ideal example set by the creation story. In every religion I know, the human problem is seen as a fall from original grace and the solution is to reinstate it. Except maybe in Islam where every good man is promised a bordello of virgins (not directly in Koran though).

Do you have any indications as to its trustworthiness as a scholarly work?

It's clear from the accompanying writings that it must be a work planned and executed by Protestants, but the site itself gives no indications that I can find.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-27, 09:54:13

It's αρσενοκοιται - I trust you can read this. It's a noun.

I can read the Greek alphabet as well as the next guy, but that doesn't change the fact that the word means nothing to me. :)

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-27, 09:54:13

Yes, the patriarchs are shining examples, but I never got the feeling that their polygamy was upheld as a shining example. Of course I grant that poygamy was not condemned either, just  like slavery was not condemned. Those were inevitable aspects in social order at that time and place.

That's the thing though. The slaves are obviously there but barely mentioned, besides a few rules on how to treat them *ahem* right. I've always seen the overt inclusions as meaningful.

I do question Augustine. I'm not convinced that the state of sublime ignorance constitutes an ideal, but perhaps that's just because I find it an utterly repulsive one. Besides, there are two Eves — one out of dust and one out of a rib. :D

And how's that different from wives/concubines? Aren't they too barely mentioned?

in churches locked them in chains to the lecterns.

Less barely. The slave thing is easy to miss while the multiple wives thing isn't, even though I naively may not have been expecting either when I first read the Bible as a child.

In any event, since your quibble seems to be specifically about the word support, let's just say that if the Bible doesn't implicitly support polygamy, at the very least it explicitly condones it.

Church tried to avoid people reading the Bible and in churches locked them in chains to the lecterns.

That be gigantic naivete.

Or "The Bible condemns homosexuality, but that's old. Times have changed."

Marriage is a multifaceted concept with many features. Since this is so, it's possible to alter several features of it while preserving the core essence. Polygamy works like that. But "same-sex marriage" does away with the core essence and is therefore not marriage at all. You either perceive the core essence or you don't. The core essence is revealed in the creation story.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-28, 13:39:44

That be gigantic naivete.

Well, excuse me for not knowing all about polygamy, homosexuality and the Marquis de Sade when I was 8-10. :lol:

The Bible is almost invariably irrelevant to our current social and political issues. I'm surprised you would dispute that.

A very confused core it is.

In any case, there's obviously neither support nor tacit approval of gay marriage in the Bible.

The arguments against the so-called "clobber passages" in bible are numerous, including that much of the Bible appears to be have mistranslated.

There's even the issue of picking and choosing what parts of the Bible to enforce. There's what, eight passages or so in the entire Bible that have anything to do with homosexuality?

But the fact is in the United States the bible is not the law of the land. Every time people take a "holy" book and try to make the law of the land, you wind up with the harshest interpretation of becoming the foundation for a dictatorship. Historically, this even includes Christianity.

That's well into school age. You didn't have to know all about them, but you should have known about them.

Idolater Christian movement

Thieves Christian movement

"Homo" was a hurtful insult, but I didn't know what it meant.

In any case, remember I was talking about expecting whether to come across such things in the Good Book.

I don't think you understand how things are in a Christian nation. Heck, I think only Americans truly understand, but it's possible they also do in northern Germany and Scandinavia.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-29, 06:28:37

Idolater Christian movement

Aka Catholicism, the biggest of them all.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-29, 06:28:37

Thieves Christian movement

TV preachers. :)

What specifically do I not understand? I understand a society under institutionalised pressure towards a common doctrinal denominator (Gleichschaltung), if that's what you mean. Or if I really don't understand, now's the opportunity to tell me.

You are saying that you honestly did not expect the Good Book to deal with such matters? I honestly expect the Good Book to give all the answers imaginable.

Otherwise what's the book good for?

Logic led me to some kind of agnostic deism until I educated myself about evolutionary theory. For example that it doesn't mean "right of the strongest" and that "social Darwinism" has bupkis to do with it.

That's rather the point. It's presented as being good for everything, but it's good for nothing except cultural-historical understanding. And as a child in a Christian nation, that's a surprise.

This is why so many more intelligent children/teens can be drawn so strongly toward Buddhism, Taoism, Platonism, etc.: those texts are what we were promised in the Bible. They have meaning and purpose and logic.

We were given the book we were given. Perhaps we didn't deserve any better. I believe that's how it is.

This cannot be an argument. It can only be somebody's delusion. The Bible text is the closest-studied text of antiquity. Not just for word by word, but also letter by letter.

The hard conservative type of it that flourishes in the States and deeply involved in politics the way it is  rather unique in the West and not typical.

The context in Leviticus is immediately surrounded by rulings on incest and bestiality

Which is why so many scholars know that the translations people normally get a hold of are incorrect in many areas....

In fact, in the Romans passages all you really need to do is read the entire chapter to see something else besides same-sex love was going on. It was most likely a pagan fertility ritual or temple prostitution.

The bible seems to be the only book in the world (besides maybe the Quran) in which people think they understand what it says on any given subject based on a couple sentences, keeping in mind that Bible is becomes a maze of self-contradictions if you look at close enough. 

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-29, 06:28:37

The context in Leviticus is immediately surrounded by rulings on incest and bestiality

And not eating meat and drinking milk at the same time, or wearing clothes of different fabrics, or eating shell fish. C'mon bro.

The world changed a little in the past several thousand years (not sure if any knows exactly since that was oral tradition long before it was written down.)

Oh and you feel adulterers need to be stoned?

Yes, the world has changed and soon there will be yet another turn for the worse.

Bekhor Shor himself notices the changed context and gives a very different explanation for the phrase here.

It is forbidden to cook meat in milk. The Torah specifically forbids the cooking… It is also forbidden to eat or derive any benefit from meat [cooked] in milk. The inclusion of the term “its mother” comes to teach us the reason [for the law], for it would be cruelty to cook the flesh of a kid in the milk of [the mother] which raised it. [Therefore, all milk is forbidden,] for perhaps the animal from which this milk came was its mother… This mitzvah is similar to “do not take a mother[-bird] with its chicks” and “an animal and its offspring [should not be slaughtered in one day].”[11]  [/url]

So what? It's still bad business to pick and choose passages from a "holy book" and try to make it the law of the land.  Witness Cromwell's oppression of the Catholics, the Catholics burning people for heresy, the Salem witch trials, modern day Iran, Isis, etc.

The fact that your oppositors are so bad should not make you think that religion can be achievied trhough philosophy and rational thinking Ersi.

[Westboro Baptist Church] see the discontent over Trump and Clinton as their big chance and they might be right if they can get the word out.

Westboro Baptist Church is somewhere in his neighbourhood, if I'm not mistaken

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-30, 04:07:49

Westboro Baptist Church is somewhere in his neighbourhood, if I'm not mistaken

Lol, no. And Europeans complain that an American might mistake. say the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Google informs me that Westboro Baptist church is a little under 1,300 miles (2029 km) from here.  Else where in the world, Europeans are feeling superior to Americans because we might misidentify their countries while forgetting one one those nations is the size of one of our states :left:

You're the closest we have to a radical in this thread that we have on queer issues.

All I said was that the bible possibly doesn't say what you think it does.

Oh yeah, I also noted the queers were not even agitating about the stupid bathroom and that it was certain nutty sects of Christianity and the GOP that invented this whole "issue" and the LGBT just wanted to be left alone. What kind of person even sits around all day thinking of idiotic, spiteful laws like this anyway to address no-issues like this. They're the ones with mental problems.

don't know in what state you are. I don't mix up American states. I assumed you were somewhere South, but I was mistaken. I even explicitly allowed myself the chance to be mistaken.

This despite the fact that I have read it, even looked into some scholarly textual criticism, and you haven't? Frenzie here has commendably read it.

In what way am I radical? Is it radical to identify queerhood for what it is?

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-31, 07:23:51

don't know in what state you are. I don't mix up American states. I assumed you were somewhere South, but I was mistaken. I even explicitly allowed myself the chance to be mistaken.

Nope, Las Vegas. Don't be so defensive, bro. On my part, I thought it was common knowledge in these forums so maybe I was mistaken. (in fact, Kansas is quit far from the South as well)

I made one mistake on the context meat and milk, but for the rest I was correct.

I didn't bother offering the full rebuttal because this thread is about what's happening in the Americas. It's not about the Bible.

The Bible itself has been argued over by people with more knowledge of it than both of us put together. Different equally knowledgable scholars read the bible in the original Greek and came to different conclusions.

As far as the Hebrew OT, the oldest very partial copies are from 600 BC and that's recent by biblical standards. More complete is the Nash Papyrus containing the Decalogue and Deuteronomy. You think it hasn't been altered the thousands of years prior to that?

Quote

In what way am I radical? Is it radical to identify queerhood for what it is?

Because you're blathering about how oppressive queers supposedly are.

So now with the ridiculous "bathroom bills" they're throwing rocks at him and will cry when they're in the hospital getting treated for snakebite again. And will even be surprised when that happens.  I think it was Einstein that said doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. That's what's happening between the GOP and LGBT in America.

the gay lobby either demands the removal of "heteronormativity" or they try their best to teach "alternative family models" in schools and kindergartens.

marriage law itself was changed to specifically suit the gay lobby.

Of the religious right lobby that dwarfs the "gay lobby?"

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-31, 11:38:15

the gay lobby either demands the removal of "heteronormativity" or they try their best to teach "alternative family models" in schools and kindergartens.

In other words, understand not all families are the same. A few percentage of kids might have same-sex parents and understand how to deal with it. Oh and the kids in those arrangements shouldn't be bullied because of it. Oh the horror :cry: This is not oppression by any reasonable stretch of the imagination.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-31, 11:38:15

marriage law itself was changed to specifically suit the gay lobby.

In America the solution was obvious except to the religious right. I mentioned the constitution, but there was also the idiocy of being married in one state, cross state lines and no longer being considered married (which is problematic for a variety of legal reasons.)

In America what you're talking about was called civil unions. The problem with that was also crossing state lines in that states didn't have to recognize them.

But neither civil unions type arrangements nor marriage oppress those that are offended by them. I do think clergy should be able to refuse to marriage the same-sex couple but a judge, as civil servant of ALL the people, should not be able to.

In America, religious right is at least putting up a semblance of a fight.

Ever considered it from the children's point of view? You know, they are supposed to learn in biology how kids are born, that everybody has a mother and father, biologically

So, now you call them civil unions. There should be no problem, as long as you don't mix them up with marriage.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-05-31, 15:38:19

Ever considered it from the children's point of view? You know, they are supposed to learn in biology how kids are born, that everybody has a mother and father, biologically

Wow is this getting silly. Sally being raised by Sue and Mary does not interfere with biology class. Grasp at straws much?

The idea of civil unions was thought up as an alternative to calling marriage. But there would be no requirement to recognize "civil unions" at the Federal level nor across state lines.

Further, it was questionable what a "civil union" was even supposed to be, ie would it have really granted equal protection under the law.

Another huge problem was also that the wording of the state amendments would have also outlawed "civil unions" not to mention deny protections for many heterosexual couples.

Not just biology class, but biology itself. There is no Sally born of Sue and Mary. You are presenting an impossibility as if it were a reality.

Equal to what? And why should it be equal?

Hence Germany (and Estonia) instituted additional laws called "cohabitation law" which gave a chance for same-sex couples under a different name, duplicating a bunch of regulations about marriage

You are not even attempting to show how they are the same or why they should be the same.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-06-01, 03:02:10

Not just biology class, but biology itself. There is no Sally born of Sue and Mary. You are presenting an impossibility as if it were a reality.

This is beyond silly. By the time biology is even taught, the students already know this. There are a number of ways Sue and Mary could be raising a child together. And it doesn't even necessarily mean one had sex with a man, although one might have (possibly one's a little sexually fluid, or she was attempting to have sex with a man before realized it wasn't for her keeping in mind to get pregnant a women just needs to lay their and doesn't even have to enjoy what's happening...) Or the child might have been adopted. You're presenting situations as impossibilities when their are multiple ways it could have happened (and does...)

Quote from: ersi on 2016-06-01, 03:02:10

Equal to what? And why should it be equal?

To remain in compliance with the constitution, which is the supreme law of the United States. No state, county or city law may violate the constitution.

If all the rights and protections are duplicated, I don't see a problem.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-06-01, 03:02:10

You are not even attempting to show how they are the same or why they should be the same.

Of course not. Everyone is supposed to be subject to the same rules. Nor am I attempting argue in favor of civil unions.

You did not even begin to tell how a Sally could be born of Sue and Mary. But I knew you wouldn't.

In what rational case is there against equal marriage.

There's the "think of the children" argument. The studies conclude the children are fine. All it boiled down to was that people's precious little religious feelings were hurt.

Are you saying it's rational to keep inventing new and redundant laws just because somebody's feelings are hurt. That's the moral equivalent of making new laws just for the sake of PC, just for the Right instead of the Left. 

Quote from: ersi on 2016-06-01, 09:18:11

You did not even begin to tell how a Sally could be born of Sue and Mary. But I knew you wouldn't.

Have you never heard of artificial insemination? Do I have to spoon feed you everything?

Can you point to one such study? I'd be interested in seeing their definition of "fine".

Abstract

Background
It has been suggested that children with same-sex attracted parents score well in psychosocial aspects of their health, however questions remain about the impact of stigma on these children. Research to date has focused on lesbian parents and has been limited by small sample sizes. This study aims to describe the physical, mental and social wellbeing of Australian children with same-sex attracted parents, and the impact that stigma has on them.

Methods
A cross-sectional survey, the Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families, was distributed in 2012 to a convenience sample of 390 parents from Australia who self-identified as same-sex attracted and had children aged 0-17 years. Parent-reported, multidimensional measures of child health and wellbeing and the relationship to perceived stigma were measured.

Results
315 parents completed the survey (completion rate = 81%) representing 500 children. 80% of children had a female index parent while 18% had a male index parent. Children in same-sex parent families had higher scores on measures of general behavior, general health and family cohesion compared to population normative data (β = 2.93, 95% CI = 0.35 to 5.52, P = .03; β = 5.60, 95% CI = 2.69 to 8.52, P = <.001; and β = 6.01, 95% CI = 2.84 to 9.17, P = <.001 respectively). There were no significant differences between the two groups for all other scale scores. Physical activity, mental health, and family cohesion were all negatively associated with increased stigma (β = -3.03, 95% CI = -5.86 to -0.21, P = .04; β = -10.45, 95% CI = -18.48 to -2.42, P = .01; and β = -9.82, 95% CI = -17.86 to -1.78, P = .02 respectively) and the presence of emotional symptoms was positively associated with increased stigma (β =0.94, 95% CI = 0.08 to 1.81, P = .03).

Conclusions
Australian children with same-sex attracted parents score higher than population samples on a number of parent-reported measures of child health. Perceived stigma is negatively associated with mental health. Through improved awareness of stigma these findings play an important role in health policy, improving child health outcomes.

Claims that children need both a mother and father presume that women and men parent differently in ways crucial to development but generally rely on studies that conflate gender with other family structure variables. We analyze findings from studies with designs that mitigate these problems by comparing 2-parent families with same or different sex coparents and single-mother with single-father families. Strengths typically associated with married mother-father families appear to the same extent in families with 2 mothers and potentially in those with 2 fathers. Average differences favor women over men, but parenting skills are not dichotomous or exclusive. The gender of parents correlates in novel ways with parent-child relationships but has minor significance for children's psychological adjustment and social success.

Watched a passing news item on the Libertarian Party. I know they only get 1% and it was curious they are in fact the only third party in every election area. The item also mentioned a poll saying that  - can't recall the actual figure but was over 40% of people would like more than a two party choice.

The gender of parents correlates in novel ways with parent-child relationships but has minor significance for children's psychological adjustment and social success.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-06-01, 13:35:45

Can you point to one such study? I'd be interested in seeing their definition of "fine".

Oh, there are lots of them. Let's take one at random (http://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-14-635).

There have been people executed for less than that "study".
"Social success" must mean being the drag queen at the queer club.

Oh please. Your fluffy "rationality" of "nature" can't withstand real rationality that can be quantified. Multiple studies of indicated that children raised by same-sex parents do as well as opposite sex. In fact, the first article breaks down exactly what it means.

Quote from: midnight raccoon on 2016-06-02, 23:51:21

Oh please. Your fluffy "rationality" of "nature" can't withstand real rationality that can be quantified. Multiple studies of indicated that children raised by same-sex parents do as well as opposite sex. In fact, the first article breaks down exactly what it means.

You have no idea what was being quantified there and how. It did not measure children's wellbeing at all, but adults' opinion of it. Moreover, the results were enhanced by clearing away something called perceived stigma.

Under the heading "Perceived stigma" it says, "Parents were asked to indicate how often in the past year their family had experienced stigma related to the their same-sex attraction (eg have people gossiped about you and your family, have people excluded you and your family?)" How are the questions in parentheses related to sexual orientation? They are not. They are related to nothing. Gossipers gossip just for the joy of gossiping, bullies bully just for the joy of bullying, everybody experiences being "excluded" and nobody is exempt from it.

Were the hetero studies similarly enhanced by clearing away the stigma measure? Was it quantified how gossiping etc. correlated with wellbeing of heteros? I know, it simply assumed that nobody gossips heteros. So much for quantification. It's a very delicate matter what exactly is being quantified.

Some problems.
- It's not really about children's health or wellbeing. It's a survey where only parents are questioned, so it's more about how children's wellbeing is viewed by the parents.

In January, researchers from the Columbia Law School examined 76 studies published after 1985 and found that only four of them concluded that children raised by gay couples faced additional adversity as a result of having same-sex parents. To be considered, each of the studies had to meet established guidelines that accounted for credibility and relevance.
More recently, researchers from the University of Colorado Denver and the University of Oregon used the tool Web of Science to examine the ways in which scientific papers analyzed children of same-sex parents over time, and how each paper cited others to back its analysis. They found that over time, more and more papers cited other research that highlighted that there’s “no differences” in the outcomes for children based solely on whether they were raised by same-sex, heterosexual, or single parents.

(...or is it 57?  :)  )

Oh yes, let's do dismiss parents' reports of their children's outcomes. The fact remains that what matters in parenting is not what's between a parent's legs but what's in their hearts and parenting skills.

That's right, it's the family environment that determines a child's outcome, not what the family consists of.

There's plenty of the data, Belfrager. It's just that the analysis and results of it is contrary to what some people would hope for.  Multiple studies show this and some do include the adult children raised by same-sex couples.

Anyway, when Ersi complains of a "gay lobby" it tends to provoke laughter on my end because Republican Party (the majority party in congress) and the religious lobby are often one in the same.

1. "Same-sex marriage" results in a biological impossibility where no children can be born.

3. Therefore, there's a gay lobby. Unless you think that you don't need a lobby to institute laws that favour a narrow percentage of population while brainwashing many to believe as if it were good for everyone.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-06-08, 03:59:13

1. "Same-sex marriage" results in a biological impossibility where no children can be born.

So what?

We've moved long past the stage in which having children is the only reason for marriage.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-06-08, 03:59:13

3. Therefore, there's a gay lobby. Unless you think that you don't need a lobby to institute laws that favour a narrow percentage of population while brainwashing many to believe as if it were good for everyone.

At what point did I say there wasn't?

It is implicit in the ten commandments: Thou shalt not commit adultery.

And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

Quote from: ersi on 2016-06-09, 11:03:09

It is implicit in the ten commandments: Thou shalt not commit adultery.

I thought you liked to quote Leviticus, which is very specific (20:10)

Quote

And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

King James, just for kicks.

Any man having sex with a wife married to someone else than him, and the wife, should be killed. Any woman having sex with a wife or man having sex with a husband, or any woman having sex with a husband (unless she herself is married with someone else, in which case death does apply) will get off scot-free.

Any man having sex with a woman in such a manner that death does not occur was expected to marry the woman in question. Failure to do so did not seem to be fatal.

Nobody gets off scot-free: "...the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death."

But you have clearly not gone through the cases carefully:

Woman, having sex with a married woman: Scot-free
Man, having sex with a married man: Scot-free
Woman, not herself taken and having sex with a married man: Scot-free

Man, having sex with a woman not taken: Unkilled

There's a consistent recognition of sanctity of marriage in the Bible and there are regulations for all kinds of failure to uphold it, including your kinds.

Christians are supposed to be free of the law.

Modern society takes this to be a license to do and say whatever they please without any responsibility, i.e. they disregard NT along with the OT.

sanctity of marriage in the Bible

Quote from: ersi on 2016-06-09, 14:58:12

sanctity of marriage in the Bible

The sanctity of property rather.

Quote from: jax on 2016-06-09, 20:06:03

Quote from: ersi on 2016-06-09, 14:58:12

sanctity of marriage in the Bible

The sanctity of property rather.

Good point, Jax.

BTW, the Bible was written by humans. As we know humans have their own motives if they do something...
Furthermore for example, the neanderthals had another world outlook than most people today.

As for sanctity - did anyone saw a Bible signed by God?

My society is and always has been deeply pagan.

The sanctity of property rather. It shows a preoccupation with purity of essence, anything that dilutes the society, particularly any form of foreign culture, is harshly punished.

To take the Leviticus verse you were quoting: If you rape a taken woman that will be punished with death for you and death for the raped woman as well, unless she were in the countryside, and thus helpless.

If the raped woman is not also a taken woman, then that can be solved with a fine and you having to marry the raped girl.

If the woman in question is loot, then there is no punishment involved at all. She's your for the taking.

This isn't about sanctity of marriage, this is about the necessity of control. This is an aggressive culture with aggressive neighbours, this is kill or be killed, control or be controlled. You are right that love has nothing to do with it.

Furthermore for example, the neanderthals had another world outlook than most people today.

Quote from: Belfrager on 2016-06-09, 23:09:13

Furthermore for example, the neanderthals had another world outlook than most people today.

Have you been reading Neanderthal literature?