StrangeSox

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jun 12, 2014 -> 02:32 PM) If the economy is getting better then that will help us greatly. Might even help me not get laid off. Hopefully that is happening. You know my feelings on No. 2. As far as the Christian thing, cmon Quin. You know Christians have been silenced effectively. Yes by the mass media mainly but tons of believers can't even say they go to church on Sunday without getting looks of disbelief or getting mocked. I know. People around here think I'm an idiot for going to church every week.

Tesla announces that it's turning all of its patents over to open source http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-pa...-are-belong-you

It's not just that ridiculous time period that no one, public or private, ever has to follow, it's also that Republicans mandated that the funds for the 70 years be built up over a pretty short period of time. An overwhelming majority of the USPS's budget shortfalls are due to the pension pre-funding. The rest can be attributed to the same people that forced that funding scheme also blocking the USPS from actually competing with private companies in offering new services.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jun 12, 2014 -> 01:11 PM) USPS has to raise all of the money for those pensions/benefits, yes? That's the whole issue with their budget - they have to have over 70 years of retirement benefits in the bank at all times. The USPS represents, to me, the thing I hate most about today's mainstream conservatives. They want USPS run like a private business because they think that works better. We see a degradation in an essential service because of this. However, because they are a government organization and must be (nobody would serve those remote areas otherwise), they still have to take directions from Congress, who does not fund them. It's like a stupid mixture of free market conservatism and authoritarian conservatism - I want free markets and I want to tell them what to do! It's about crushing the sizable public union that represents postal workers first and foremost imo.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Jun 11, 2014 -> 03:19 PM) Lolz at the cherry picking and misconstruing of quotes. Pretty clear to me that he did not say stoning homosexuals was ok or agreeable. The quote sounds more like he believes in the death penalty, but it read more like a general quote that he believes in the death penalty than if he thinks homosexuals should be executed for being gay. Go read the totality of his facebook posts, which are available from links within the original link. This one in particular reinforces the idea that he's a-okay with stoning gays to death, but it's just not feasible in our current "moral climate": He's lamenting that it'd be politically damaging to pass that bill. Anyone who's response to "are you okay with stoning gays to death" isn't along the lines of "the f*** is wrong with you? of course not." is a horrible person. He follows that post up with this one, again stating support for the idea of killing people for being gay but laments that it's not a popular position.

I wouldn't take it quite that far. Even if spending lots and lots of money isn't the single key to winning, many politicians and political strategists may still believe it is, which still leaves the door wide open for all of the corruption. Even if that extra $1M donation isn't going to swing the campaign, you might think it will and will still craft policy in order to get it.

Oklahoma GOP Candidate: OK with stoning gays to death

It's not Y2HH's position, it's empirical fact that violent crime is down substantially from it's 80's/early 90's peak.

Nope, D for effort. edit: but it does highlight that regardless of what proposals anyone comes up with, they'll be decried as ineffectual and needless by people who oppose gun restrictions.

No, you're missing the point of my responses.

What I personally want isn't the issue. You were criticizing Obama for not making a policy speech and for not offering anything. witesox was criticizing him for pointing fingers at an unwilling society. But Obama and Congress made proposals after Newtown in early 2013 that were shot down by the gun lobby. As your link notes, there have been 1500 state-level gun laws proposed, some which are more restrictive. We had the whole Manchin-Toomey bill. It's not like ideas aren't out there and haven't been presented.

lol, pretty sure we settled the whole nullification thing a while back.

Total number of gun bills doesn't say anything one way or another. One of those in that count would be Illinois' CC bill. Another would be Georgia's "Guns Everywhere" bill. As the graphic in your own link shows, it's almost a 2:1 ratio of loosening gun laws. And when states like Colorado passed some tightening measures, the small-but-intense pro gun groups launched successful recall campaigns. And if you'll notice, at least one of your examples isn't an enacted law: This is marked as "vetoed" on the interactive graphic. New York did pass some relatively strict laws, but overall, we haven't done s*** since Newtown to restrict guns. More often than not, we've made it easier to get and carry them. I found this one odd, though: So if some security force for say a nuclear facility wanted to equip their force with .50 caliber rifles, would some individual within the company need to get a permit? What happens if they leave? Why not just let the company get the permit?

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jun 11, 2014 -> 10:32 AM) That is a total crock of s***. I hate nothing more than condescending people in power pointing fingers and saying "IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT." Eh, we haven't done s*** since Newtown. It's not for lack of proposals from Obama and others in Congress or overwhelming popular approval; it's because of a small but intense guns rights lobby and backers.

One completely non-partisan aspect of that race that should make "get money out of politics" people happy is that Cantor lost despite outspending his opponent 20:1. Cantor's campaign spent more money just at steakhouse dinners than David Brat spent on his entire campaign.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jun 11, 2014 -> 08:49 AM) The country is much less violent than 10-20 years ago. Much of that is due to the explosion in violence in inner cities in the 80s & 90s due to the crack epidemic. NYC hit nearly 2,000 murders a year, now they are around 500. Even Chicago had nearly twice as many murders in the 90s than they do now. If you simply compared the 10 most populous cities in America, I'm sure that makes up the bulk of your murder rate decrease. While the large cities are becoming much, much safer, these random mass shootings in low crime areas might be becoming more commonplace. To be honest I don't have data to know if these shootings happened as much in the 90s and they just weren't talked about as much, but I wonder. there's a pretty good case to make that the main driver of the crime wave was actually lead exposure

Eh, Cantor was the one who kept egging the Tea Party on into "no surrender!" over a national default. It's not like this seat is going to flip (D) now, it's more 1) f*** Eric Cantor and 2) it messes up the GOP leadership structure. Also, so much for all of those "the tea party is dead" articles written a month or so back after the last set of primaries.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor loses in his primary.

thanks for the heads up

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 9, 2014 -> 04:45 PM) Come on, you guys keep using these terrible analogies to topics that have nothing to do with the origin of man. That's a huge component of what is/is not "religious." The origin of the universe, of life on earth or of homo sapien sapiens are not inherently religious topics, nor does atheism have anything specific to say about them other than maybe "they weren't supernatural events." edit: Answering "how did the universe start?" with "I don't know" isn't a religious answer. You can answer "why is man here" with a philosophical answer.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Jun 9, 2014 -> 04:28 PM) How does trying to change peoples' minds make it a religion? To use my example earlier. A geologist would surely try to change the minds of the Thor worshippers and get them to accept the scientific explanation for earthquakes in favor of their religious explanation, but that doesn't make the geologist religious himself. Hell, to make it completely non-religious, there's often very strong disagreements and differing interpretations at the edge of all fields. Look at plate tectonics as an example. Wegener came up with the theory in the early 20th century, but the idea was largely ridiculed and dismissed until the 1960's until we had a better understanding of the sea floor. Were the beliefs of either side "religious"?

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ May 25, 2014 -> 10:25 AM) Probably top 2 show I have ever seen. I don't think I have ever heard such a clean sound at a show, they were absolute perfection. If anyone is going to Riotfest this summer, I recommend finding them and watching their show are they going to sell single-day tickets at all?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 9, 2014 -> 04:12 PM) You're ignoring that people like Dawkins want to change people's minds. It's not just what he personally believes, he's trying to start a movement (and has for a while). That's my point. In that sense, it's just as much of a religion as Christianity. It's going beyond a mere belief into something of a practice based on those beliefs. 1) Your definition proves far too much. Philosophers form beliefs and arguments about morals, ethics, aesthetics etc. and attempt to put those beliefs into practice through philosophical arguments. Proponents of competing anthropological or historical analyses have beliefs and attempt to put them into practice by presenting papers, writing text books, etc. All sorts of political, economic and social ideologies follow the same pattern. They are not all a religion unless you broaden the definition of what a religion is to the point that it essentially becomes meaningless. 2) Dawkins does not represent the entirety of what atheism is. Plenty of people are atheist or agnostic without being activist about it. The particular way that movement atheists act may resemble a religion, but many more atheists don't give much of a f*** either way. I am no more religious about my lack of belief in a god than I am about my lack of belief in say the superiority of soccer over baseball.

That's fine but that still doesn't make every belief (or lack thereof) a religion.

All religion is a belief, but not all beliefs are a religion. Religion is a subset of the broader set of "beliefs"