Tuesday: ... the old law.. as in the rule of might?

Artful Dodger: The Bible is not just the teachings of Christ.. if it was.. it'd just be the 4 Gospels. Nothing before.. nothing after.

It is not. To take stuff away just because you don't like it is a sin.

Tuesday: Nope.. when they think the world is going to end and choose to be Christians just because of that.

Sad that some pray the world will end just to be in heaven.

Artful Dodger: Aye... And the Samaritans story helps to reinforce your neighbour is EVERYONE.. even your enemy.

Tuesday: Revelations... but it's all in the end down to interpretation. That bit of Romans was more about those who call themselves Christians who are not. A problem even back then

Jim Dandy: neither am I... just I'm use to using the Bible with one core teaching in mind all the time.... "love"

Tuesday: So.. he slipped back to his old ways even after converting... figures!!

Übergeek 바둑이: Yes it does. But a realistic Christian will appreciate they will not go away overnight... unfortunately.

Tuesday: As I said, Romans was written by one of the followers of Christ. Paul.

Jim Dandy: Dogs will eat anything!!

Tuesday: Romans in the NT, written by the Apostle Paul.

The world was violent in those times full stop.

Jim Dandy: Can't watch it.. Sony are blocking it from being shown in the UK

Kill Your Neighbors
(Moses) stood at the entrance to the camp and shouted, "All of you who are on the LORD's side, come over here and join me." And all the Levites came. He told them, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Strap on your swords! Go back and forth from one end of the camp to the other, killing even your brothers, friends, and neighbors." The Levites obeyed Moses, and about three thousand people died that day. Then Moses told the Levites, "Today you have been ordained for the service of the LORD, for you obeyed him even though it meant killing your own sons and brothers. Because of this, he will now give you a great blessing." (Exodus 32:26-29 NLT)

Death for Blasphemy

One day a man who had an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father got into a fight with one of the Israelite men. During the fight, this son of an Israelite woman blasphemed the LORD's name. So the man was brought to Moses for judgment. His mother's name was Shelomith. She was the daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan. They put the man in custody until the LORD's will in the matter should become clear. Then the LORD said to Moses, "Take the blasphemer outside the camp, and tell all those who heard him to lay their hands on his head. Then let the entire community stone him to death. Say to the people of Israel: Those who blaspheme God will suffer the consequences of their guilt and be punished. Anyone who blasphemes the LORD's name must be stoned to death by the whole community of Israel. Any Israelite or foreigner among you who blasphemes the LORD's name will surely die. (Leviticus 24:10-16 NLT)

Kill the Entire Town if One Person Worships Another God...

Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him." ....Deuteronomy 13:13-19

Infidels and Gays Should Die

So God let them go ahead and do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other's bodies. Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies. So they worshiped the things God made but not the Creator himself, who is to be praised forever. Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relationships with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men and, as a result, suffered within themselves the penalty they so richly deserved. When they refused to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their evil minds and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, fighting, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They are forever inventing new ways of sinning and are disobedient to their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, and are heartless and unforgiving. They are fully aware of God's death penalty for those who do these things, yet they go right ahead and do them anyway. And, worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too. (Romans 1:24-32 NLT)

God Will Kill Children

The glory of Israel will fly away like a bird, for your children will die at birth or perish in the womb or never even be conceived. Even if your children do survive to grow up, I will take them from you. It will be a terrible day when I turn away and leave you alone. I have watched Israel become as beautiful and pleasant as Tyre. But now Israel will bring out her children to be slaughtered." O LORD, what should I request for your people? I will ask for wombs that don't give birth and breasts that give no milk. The LORD says, "All their wickedness began at Gilgal; there I began to hate them. I will drive them from my land because of their evil actions. I will love them no more because all their leaders are rebels. The people of Israel are stricken. Their roots are dried up; they will bear no more fruit. And if they give birth, I will slaughter their beloved children." (Hosea 9:11-16 NLT)

God Will Kill the Children of Sinners

If even then you remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey, I will inflict you with seven more disasters for your sins. I will release wild animals that will kill your children and destroy your cattle, so your numbers will dwindle and your roads will be deserted. (Leviticus 26:21-22 NLT)

Kill Women Who Are Not Virgins On Their Wedding Night

But if this charge is true (that she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night), and evidence of the girls virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her fathers house and there her townsman shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against Israel by her unchasteness in her father's house. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst. (Deuteronomy 22:20-21 NAB)

Tuesday: Unfortunately just like with those who claim they are Islamic and then break basic Islamic laws on respect to fellow Islamic folk and folks of other faiths.

... despite false claims. The Qur'an is quite specific on respecting others and true believers of God/Allah. The Qur'an makes quite specific comments on not attacking civilians.

A recent program on some of the African churches spreading in the UK, comments on how they are perverting the Bible regarding the so called 'witch' text to abuse children. Preachers saying a child is a witch then beating the 'demons' out of them.

Yet in the NT there is some quite specific text on how those who do such things to children will not find a good reception in front of God.

A certain commandment says to not say God made me do this (take name in vain) but people will. It has been an easy cop-out to justify hate and anger for thousands of years and I don't see it changing over night.

I remember seeing on the IYT Christian board a few years ago that if anyone disagreed with one persons ideology they were all going to 'hell'.. didn't matter that they were part of a main faith within Christianity.

I've seen a certain Christian sect on TV hating and condemning the soldiers who died fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Crazy American Fundamentalist Christian "Thank God for dead soldiers"
Christian pastor prays for death of Obama
Public display by church: "Islam is of the Devil"

A Christian based church says... http://www.godhatesamerica.com/

Artful Dodger:

1992-1995 Bosnia

The genocide of over 300,000 Muslims and systematic rape of over 100,000 Muslim women by Christian Serbs

German is the only nationally official language, and the language spoken by the largest proportion of Austrians. A number of dialects are spoken. Austrian German is the catch-all term for German in Austria, which can differ from Standard German to the many local vernaculars.

Alemannic

Alemannic dialects are mainly spoken in Vorarlberg, and are quite divergent from Standard German. The Alemannic spoken in Vorarlberg can be further divided into the High Alemannic variety.

Austro-Bavarian

The majority of Austrian German-speakers speak dialects belonging to the Austro-Bavarian group, and there is little linguistic barrier between Austrians and those living in southern Germany.

[Artful Dodger, United States, Brain Rook (forever), Male] Artful Dodger (hide)
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Subject: Re:Gonna blame that on liberalism??
(V): "And as for the courts, judges do have the right to argue about the law, sentences and the like.. over here in poor ol' 'liberal' UK. Some do, some will also do in cases where it's more of a matter of personal feeling and not as such an illegal activity."

Yes, they interpret the law, often based on precedent. But the courts are not to make laws. The legislature makes the laws. And the courts don't legislate. They ought not to usurp constitutional authority. If they do, they are renegades and should be shot. At least ousted from the bench. They work for me by the way.
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[Artful Dodger, United States, Brain Rook (forever), Male] Artful Dodger (hide)
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Subject: Re:On top of tht they passed some new taxes, including now I cant take a tax break for the interest on my two mortgages or the insurance for them, my two biggest tax breaks I have!
Czuch: I know. I can't believe how much money the government rips off on us. It's extortion. We have no choice but to pay for their stupid spending habits. They are reckless with our money. Most people just are uninformed and don't give a rip.

My son loves Obama. But he can't tell me why other than to say Bush was an idiot. That's what we're dealing with. I don't dislike Obama. But he's a bad president. His policies are bad. And if things keep progressing as they have, he will trample on the constitution. Big government is well on its way.

Bush messed up big time with big government.
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Tuesday: Trouble is for bloggers nowadays is that some are getting lazy and not double checking what they are saying. If they do.. they get pounced on and declared to be crazy.

... crazy does not mean stoopid!!

Tuesday: Pretty standard in politics, especially in a two party system. The Labour party was making out both the Tory's and Liberal Democrats were a dangerous element to elect and were point blankly using fear and half truths as a means to stir up votes for them.

Guess for those like me (as many others did feel) fear used as a means to gain votes is not a good sign, it shows how weak they feel their case is and how lost their cause is.

Artful Dodger: Quite frankly.. alot of the posts you have been posting from various 'blogs' ... "are dishonest and self-serving."... they hark at the tea party/right wing conservative cause without presenting a true statement of the facts.

Most Americans (59.3%) receive their health insurance coverage through an employer (which includes both private as well as civilian public-sector employees) under group coverage, although this percentage is declining. Costs for employer-paid health insurance are rising rapidly: since 2001, premiums for family coverage have increased 78%, while wages have risen 19% and inflation has risen 17%, according to a 2007 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The health care system in the U.S. has a vast number of players. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of insurance companies in the U.S.[74][146] This system has considerable administrative overhead, far greater than in nationalized, single-payer systems, such as Canada's. An oft-cited study by Harvard Medical School and the Canadian Institute for Health Information determined that some 31% of U.S. health care dollars, or more than $1,000 per person per year, went to health care administrative costs, nearly double the administrative overhead in Canada, on a percentage basis.

Health care costs rising far faster than inflation have been a major driver for health care reform in the United States.

As a condition of accepting the job, Paulson demanded to be President George W. Bush's chief economic spokesman. But Paulson, a halting public speaker, wasn't particularly good at constructing narratives about what was happening in the economy—leaving the public and his boss continually shocked at the succession of failures. In late April 2007, he said subprime mortgage problems were "largely contained." In March 2008, as Bear Stearns was about to implode, Bush asked: "We're not going to do a bailout, are we?" The response: "I told him I wasn't predicting one and it was the last thing in the world I wanted."

When the bailouts began, Paulson took charge, acting as investment banker in chief. He personally replaced the management of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and put the government's credit behind the faltering mortgage agencies. "We had, I thought, just saved the country—and the world from financial catastrophe," he writes.

But just as one crazy caper ended, a new one was about to begin. The reason: The Wall Street banks were royal screw-ups. Without passing judgment on them—these were members of his former fraternity—Paulson treats us to a parade of big shots asking the government to save their banks from their own incompetence. Here's Chuck Prince, Citigroup's hapless chief executive, at a dinner in June 2007: "Isn't there something you can do to order us not to take all of these risks?" Lehman Brothers chief executive Richard Fuld calls from India to ask if Paulson can get him flyover rights from Russia to get home more quickly. Then on the day before Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, Fuld pleads: "Hank, you have to figure something out." John Mack of Morgan Stanley begs: "Hank, the SEC needs to act before the short sellers destroy Morgan Stanley." "On the Brink" will do little to dispel the notion, which Paulson acknowledges, that some Republicans believe him to be a closet Democrat. His wife, Wendy, held a fundraiser for her fellow Wellesley classmate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in 2000, and the Paulsons are big-time tree huggers. His mother, a once-staunch Republican, had so soured on Bush that she urged her son not to take a job in his administration. Paulson love-bombs Barney Frank as "scary-smart, ready with a quip, and usually a pleasure to work with," praises Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and notes that then-Sen. Barack Obama was "always well informed, well briefed, and self-confident."

But while Bush ("admirably stalwart") comes in for similar praise, Paulson has little positive to say about other Republicans. Sarah Palin annoyed him from the get-go. When he spoke to House Republicans about efforts to help Fannie and Freddie, he was chagrined that many responded with speeches about ACORN, the low-income housing activist group. House Minority Leader John Boehner was ineffectual. John McCain comes off worst of all: impulsive, ill-informed and counterproductive. "This was crazy," Paulson writes of McCain's decision to suspend his campaign in late September 2008 and demand a White House meeting on the bailout. At the climactic meeting in the Cabinet room, Obama spoke for the Democrats, delivering a "thoughtful, well-prepared presentation." But McCain? "When it came right down to it, he had little to say in the forum he himself had called."

Thanks largely to Republican recalcitrance, the $700 billion legislation authorizing the bank bailout was one deal Paulson couldn't close. To get the job done, the former lineman was ultimately forced to hand the ball to White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten.

As the narrative lurches from crisis to crisis—TARP, AIG, GM—the reader, and Bush, are continually presented with bailout moves as unavoidable faits accomplit. Bush was "visibly shocked" when Paulson told him in November 2008 that Citigroup was in big trouble. "I thought the programs we put in place had stabilized the banks," the president said.

Alistair Darling: RBS 'two hours' from collapse in 2008..

Alistair Darling, chancellor of the exchequer at the time of the financial crisis, has described a "frenzied" phone call with a senior RBS executive as the bank teetered on the brink of collapse.

"It was quite clear the bank was going to fail in a couple of hours and he said 'what are you going to do?'," he told Today presenter James Naughtie.

"Happily we did have a plan, and we stopped the bank from closing," he said. "If RBS had gone down the rest would have gone with it"

Germany seems to be ahead in methane/biogas fuelled cars.. with over 400,000 in use. The cars are dual fuel as in being able to run on methane and petrol giving a range of about 450 miles on one 'tank'.

.. the waste from 70 households in enough to provide enough fuel for 10,000 miles.

From a UK article..

To use biogas as vehicle fuel without affecting vehicle performance or reliability the gas needs to be treated to remove the carbon dioxide content. GENeco, part of Wessex Water, imported specialist "cleaning" equipment to treat the raw methane generated at the sewage treatment works in Avonmouth.

The spokesman added: Our site has been producing biogas for many years which we use to generate electricity to power the site and export to the National Grid. "With the surplus gas we had available we wanted to put it to good use in a sustainable and efficient way.

"We decided to power a vehicle on the gas offering a sustainable alternative to using fossil fuels which we so heavily rely on in the UK."

Jim Dandy: Let's just say I think they want to operate in high density population areas.

And the neo-conservative right wing are looking for what then if they are opposite ends??

Total anarchy and chaos?? Hardly good for a prosperous America... only good for fear and profit from such.

btw folks.. the UK has started using plants that convert solid human waste into methane that can power cars fitted with a lpg converter.

So.. in the UK if you hear of such a plant in your area.. support them

But what about illegal workers?

After hearing of Juan’s success, Juan's brother Raul decides to come over as well. Raul wants the same minimum wage his brother Juan is making but realizes that obtaining citizenship is difficult and he cannot do so at this time, so he opts to go illegal and work under the table. Raul makes $17,000 a year, cold hard cash, baby! Raul does not pay a dime in taxes, and we hate him for this. But should we really hate Raul? From my point of view, being an economist, I hate Juan. Well, I don't hate hate him, but I hate his status as a taxpayer and I’ll tell you why.

You see, someone has to pay Raul $17,000 a year in cash. Is John Smith going to pay him, with his meager salary of $50,000, almost a quarter of which has gone to taxes of his own, and now he is left with a mere $24,076 to live on all year? No way. John just bought a pretty sweet ride. He probably pays over half that alone in car payments and insurance. John, rightfully so, needs his bling.

Luckily, he doesn't need to hire an illegal immigrant, at least not full-time at $17,000 a year. But who does? Typically, in more than two-thirds of the cases, the answer is someone making a $150,000 and up income, oftentimes with their own business. Sure, you can deduct for small business taxes, etc., and do all these fancy loophole things, but if we assume that on a tax bracket scale when all is said and done these guys are generally paying anywhere from 24% - 33% in taxes each year. Let’s assume that Mr. Fatcat has a business and pays 25% a year in taxes on his total income of $175,000, and he hires Raul for $17,000 a year.

Well, well, well. Where does this $17,000 come from? It's not tax deductible because Mr. Fatcat really doesn't get any of the special privileges for payroll to an employee because he can't report Raul. That $17,000 cash given to Raul has been taxed already, at the fantastic rate of 25%. Raul doesn't notice, but his salary has already been taxed for $5,666.67 because it is derived from the post-tax income of Mr. Fatcat's. The reason it's so high is because you can't just calculate 25% of $17,000 and end up with $4,250 in tax revenue, but in order to get $17,000 you must start out with an original amount of $22,666.67 of pre-taxed income. After taxes this now equals the $17,000 Mr. Fatcat has left over in cash for Raul. (Taxing Raul's money again would be taxing that money twice, a big no-no to the IRS, surprisingly.)

So here we have two brothers. Juan is legal, and pays the government $2,159 every year in taxes. Raul, on the other hand is illegal. And yet we all hate Raul because he doesn't pay us $2,159 in taxes. Yet it seems as if people are often too quick to judge. When we examine the numbers we realize that Raul has, in essence, paid us almost two and a half times his brother's taxes - $3,507 more, to be exact. We never stop to think that the under-the-table employees in our country are already being taxed, at incredibly higher rates than if they were working legally.

So by now I hope we can see a different situation. An amazing group of laborers paying well over what they would pay in taxes as full citizens is still far too frequently the target of our hatred. At times their inability to learn English results in more anger, yet we don't even give them the credit they deserve for knowing more English than we know of their language. They work long, hard hours in conditions other people wouldn't tolerate. They deal with problems that all of our forefathers faced coming to this country, and they're paying heavily for that privilege. Since they don’t file for returns, or are paid cash in hand, there are very little bureaucratic costs. Yet all many people can do is blame them for our problems.

Immigrants of all status are the bedrock of this country. It’s easy to criticize them, or view them as scapegoats as to why our economy’s going down the tubes, but it is entirely unfair to do so. It is a human right to be able to seek a better life for oneself and your loved ones. The system as is may not be perfect, but one’s status as an illegal immigrant does not automatically mean that they get a free ride without buying into the system like the rest of us.

There was a time when immigrants sought out a better life for themselves. Many of them were illegal, and they faced intense prejudice and insufferable conditions. These ranged from New England paper mills, Midwest steel factories, and building railroads. Imagine what our country would be like today if the Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian, etc. unwanted illegal immigrants had all been deported. Would you be here today?

The net benefits of illegal immigration.

A recent study (PDF) has the xenophobes in a dither. The Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, at the University of Arizona, looked at the full balance sheet to see what immigrants put into the economy and what they take out. In particular they studied the impact of immigrants, mostly illegal, on the economic conditions in Arizona.

On a whole they found immigrants contributed more to the economy then they cost. No surprise there. Where the racists concentrate on only cost, this study also considered benefits. For instance, “non-citizen households” in Arizona had consumer spending, in 2004, of $4.41 billion. That created an estimated 28,000 full-time jobs. In addition that spending “generated tax revenues of approximately $318.6 million.

But then these illegals “steal jobs” as well. Supposedly “skilled” jobs according to the email I got. The Udall Center found that 14 percent of the Arizona workforce is made up of immigrants but they held a disproportionate number of “low-skilled” positions in agriculture, construction, manufacturing and some areas of the service industry. Almost 60 percent of agricultural workers were immigrants. About 22 percent of food preparers and servers were immigrants. About 35 to 41 percent of construction workers were immigrants. The same for 46 percent of textile workers, 51 percent of landscaping workers and 38 percent of maintenance workers.

There were some high skilled immigrants in particular professions but these were legal immigrants who are targeted by the US government for preferential treatment. So 19 percent of physicians in Arizona were immigrants, along with 36 astronomers and physicists and 16 computer hardware engineers. But, the typical “illegal immigrant” takes jobs that don’t pay as well and which, for the most part, are shunned by the native born.

I think one of the great absurdities in US immigration policy is that they ignore the need for people to mow lawns and sweep hallways. Working contributes to the economy of the state and the Udall Center found:

Non-citizens, for their part, contributed $28.9 billion, or eight percent of Arizona’s economic output, resulting in 278,000 full-time equivalent jobs. Their output included $10 billion in labor income, and $3.3 billion in other property income. The state tax revenues resulting from this economic activity were approximately $1.08 billion.

They also looked at what would happen if the illegal workers were removed from the workforce.

Agriculture: A fifteen percent workforce reduction in the agriculture sector would result in direct losses of 3,300 full-time-equivalent jobs, and losses of $600.9 million in output including lost labor income of $198.6 million, and lost other income of $116.1 million. The lost direct state tax revenue would be approximately $24.8 million. Construction: A fifteen percent workforce reduction in the construction sector would result in direct losses of 55,700 full-time-equivalent jobs, and $6.56 billion in output including lost labor income of $2.59 billion and $450.5 million in other lost income. The direct lost state tax revenue would be approximately $269.2 million. Manufacturing: A ten percent reduction in the manufacturing workforce would result in direct losses of 12,300 full-time-equivalent jobs, and $3.77 billion in output including lost labor income of $740.8 million, and lost other income of $286.1 million. The lost direct state tax revenue would be approximately $104.4 million. Service industries: In the service sectors analyzed, a sixteen percent reduction in the labor force would translate to direct losses of 54,000 full-time equivalent-jobs, and lost output of $2.48 billion including reduced labor income of $901.3 million, and reductions in other income of $273.0 million. The lost direct state tax revenue would be approximately $156.9 million.

I hope Governor Napolitano is realizing what a mistake she made pandering to the bigots.

The study concluded that the state of Arizona took in tax revenue of $1.64 billion from immigrant workers while the amount the state spent on immigrants was approximately $1.41 billion leaving a net benefit of $222.6 million to the state coffers. But that is only what they contribute to Arizona’s revenue. They also pay national income taxes and social security taxes. As Shikha Dalmia, a senior analyst at the Reason Foundation noted: “A stunning two-thirds of illegal immigrants pay Medicare, Social Security and personal income taxes.” And while they pay in, under US law they are forbidden to receive the benefits for which they pay. “The only services that illegals can still get are emergency medical care and K-12 education.” She writes:

What's more, aliens who are not self-employed have Social Security and Medicare taxes automatically withheld from their paychecks. Since undocumented workers have only fake numbers, they'll never be able to collect the benefits these taxes are meant to pay for. Last year, the revenues from these fake numbers — that the Social Security administration stashes in the “earnings suspense file” — added up to 10 percent of the Social Security surplus. The file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year.

Tuesday: Lot's.

Bill O'Reilly is an idiot.

rod03801: Sounds like the companies are trying to do some daylight robbery in the mean time till they enter into a market where they will 'miraculously' find they can lower prices.

Pretty standard from what I gather from your country's insurance companies. Try asking them for what reason have the plans been going up way above the rate of inflation in the USA for years and years!!

Übergeek 바둑이: They ought to watch this...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023790698427111488#docid=2864871032688882557

It's called "The War Game" made in 1965.

Tuesday: Cute does not cut it when coming to nuclear weapons. Obama is right to think that taking advice from the Secretary of Defence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is going to give him a more informed decision then listening to Sarah Palin.

Palin, the former vice presidential candidate, has not been shy about criticizing Obama's policies and this week weighed in on his revamped nuclear strategy, saying it was like a child in a playground who says 'punch me in the face, I'm not going to retaliate.'

"I really have no response to that. The last I checked, Sarah Palin is not much of an expert on nuclear issues," Obama said in an interview with ABC News.

true.. nuking someone is not like a playground fight. Anyone who thinks it is ought to visit and talk to the people of Hiroshima who recently marked the 60th anniversary of the death of over 100,000 people by one 20 kiloton atomic bomb. Now we have megaton+ hydrogen bombs.

Mr Reagan gave the impression of knowing little of what was going on. The Tower Commission report on the scandal absolved him from deliberately lying to the American people but criticised him for being out of touch.

Later the final Congressional report laid the blame squarely on the president. It declared: "If the president did not know what his national security advisers were doing, he should have."
The report was seen as a devastating indictment of Mr Reagan's style of government.

Mr Reagan's eight years in office spanned triumphs and disasters. He left office with a budget deficit larger than the combined total of all of his 39 predecessors.

The correctional response to HIV and other infectious diseases has improved over time. During the early years of the HIV epidemic, correctional systems were far more likely to impose mandatory HIV testing of inmates and to segregate inmates who had HIV.38 Currently, about 18 state prison systems, but no large city/county jail systems, make testing of inmates mandatory, and only 2 state systems still segregate inmates who have HIV.39 Before the advent of effective antiretroviral treatment, mandatory HIV testing and segregation were adopted primarily to prevent HIV transmission, although there were serious shortcomings in this regard, including the harmful effects of stigma, discrimination, and mistreatment.

Today, mandatory testing is usually justified as a means of identifying inmates who need HIV treatment. This is the basis of a routine testing policy in Rhode Island, where few inmates refuse the testing.40 Braithwaite and Arriola argued for mandatory HIV testing as a way of overcoming racist withholding of medical care from inmate populations dominated by Blacks and Hispanics.41 Nevertheless, the ethical problems and potential detriments of mandatory testing seem to outweigh the advantages. As articulated in the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines and elsewhere, correctional practices should reflect as much as possible those followed in the general community.42,43 People in the general community are not subjected to mandatory testing, and inmates should have the right to make their own informed choices. Creating a distinction on the basis of being incarcerated further stigmatizes inmates and undermines the important principle that correctional facilities are in fact part of the general community.

Within correctional facilities, the best policy is to offer and make readily available voluntary counseling and testing, with assurances that the results will remain confidential. Additionally, voluntary counseling and testing should be “marketed” to encourage people who have risk factors to take advantage of the service. However, uptake of voluntary counseling and testing may be a challenge because of concerns about confidentiality and discrimination44 and administrative and staffing problems.45
All testing and diagnostic programs for HIV, hepatitis, and STDs should result in appropriate treatment.36,46–49 State-of-the-art treatment for inmates is available in some US jurisdictions and in some other countries. However, despite the progress that has occurred, there is substantial room for improvement. In 2005, the New York Times documented very serious abuses in facilities where the for-profit organization Prison Health Services had contracts.50 This finding has renewed calls for correctional health services to be placed under the control of public health departments. Many factors beyond fiscal resources and the moral commitment of correctional departments (or lack thereof) influence treatment, including the quality and training of staff and restrictions on activities imposed by the correctional environment itself.

Theodore M. Hammett, PhD
Theodore M. Hammett is with Abt Associates Inc, Cambridge, Mass.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Theodore M. Hammett, PhD, Abt Associates Inc, 55 Wheeler St, Cambridge, MA 02138–1168 (email: ted_hammett@abtassoc.com).
Accepted July 21, 2005.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470637/

Bwild: Yes he did as did many now recognised big names (or in a single store)... but the tech and resources needed to set up a modern car plant is more than a few bucks. As for the exec's... standard. I still remember the CEO of one company I worked for and the extras the company was paying for.. nice life is all I say.. plush car, plane. Yet the company was living on loans which when we had the 80's crash caused severe financial difficulties.

Without a handout.. the unemployment levels through direct and indirect redundancies would have gone up by how much?

As for donations.. no campaign can afford to run without donations, especially in the USA as much of the campaigning I hear is TV based. Here in the UK that is not allowed. We have a system where parties can make a limited number of election broadcasts.

Bwild: I think under the neo-cons it'd be worse.. they'd let the car industry go under for a start. And you don't suddenly pull out of a major economic collapse in an instant. It (as anyone who's studied to any degree of economic history) takes time.

Unemployment has gone up in ALL of the western world. Just because it's happening in the USA does not make you guys special and immune to the current global economic crises.

Tuesday: Pringles here advertise they have 90 in the stack... they don't say there use to be 99!!

Artful Dodger: So.. in this imaginary world of tea party politics you can suddenly pay off trillions of debt in 1 year??

.. It took the UK about 60 years to pay off the loan to the USA that we incurred through WWII.. It'll take years for our CONSERVATIVE led government to get the money back we've put into the banking system to hold it up... and to reverse years of bad management. And it is something their coalition partners the Liberals fully agree with.

Anyone with even a tiny amount of economic sense knows that. It's not hard to understand.. the debt to the Chinese has to paid back, also the fact that defence spending went through the roof under Bush, is now a debt that has to be paid off.

It seems looking back through records, in the Raygun & Bush I years public debt quintupled.. and under Bush II doubled.

Under Raygun the banking regs were changed..
Medical charges in the USA are out stripping inflation like a bat out of hell.

N' this is all ok???

This is the header to the copy I got of this email:
"The Prager Zeitung is a German newspaper in the Czech Republic issued weekly in Prague. It is the largest non-Czech newspaper published in the Czech Republic ."

And in addition was this:
" This quote was translated into English an article appearing in the Czech Republic as published in the Prager Zeitung of 28 April 2010 . "

If you search using the Prager Zeitung, all the links you get to Sean Hannity say the article was published on 4/28, but if you search just the quote, the quote shows up on the respectable periodical, gunbroker.com, in January. Did the "anonymous" author send it telepathically to some dude on gunbroker.com or something??? It then appears on godlikeproductions.com in February in a slightly modified form.

You can't even find a link in translated German anywhere, or anything remotely close to it on pragerzeitung which you should be able to easily detect even with German language skills as retarded as mine.

Sorry. Someone pulled this article out of their ***. This article doesn't exist and isn't even information. There should be no more responses to this thread except to ridicule the author.

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It really doesn't matter if a Czech paper, Hannity, Rush, Maher, or Fox News wrote the quote in MY OPINION it hits the nail on the head.

Only leftist fools educated in government schools think otherwise.
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Yes, it does. It matters very much. Falsifying information sources is a big deal.

You can't pass something like this off, praise the specific source, then backpedal and say the source doesn't matter when it's shown to be false. It shows whatever sources you are relying on are, at best, it's really, really bad journalism. At worst, they're willing to put their ideology above the truth and intentionally falsify facts to further their agenda.

Bernice: He is a man?

Artful Dodger: Uhhh no they are not. Voting seems to be pretty split down the middle. It seems to be known (so I read) ....


..."Missouri has been known for its population's generally "stalwart, conservative, noncredulous" attitude toward regulatory regimes, which is one of the origins of the state's unofficial nickname, the "Show-Me State."".........

40,000 is one in eight?? Over 1.4 million people voted for the Democrats in 2008, just a few thousand less then the Republican party got.

rod03801: Not as much from what I've seen. The style of political banter seems to be less aggressive and also less about fear and more about policy.

You've got to understand Rod I live in a country where buying a Cuban cigar is not illegal. We were not taught to fear a USSR missile attack, but nuclear war full stop whoever started it. As we in the UK and Europe were screwed whoever started it. Europe especially was toast through short range and tactical nuclear weapons.

Communism was never made illegal here. We didn't have a McCarthy. Political freedom has and is protected as long as you do not break the law.

Ferris Bueller: Interesting in Palin's/tea party talk it's about "conservatives" seemingly like being a Republican has gone out of fashion. Also that Palin is aiming at "conservative women" .. implying that "conservative" children are at risk if they don't act. The target (as in the government) gut reaction probably dates back to us British and other European govs reinforced by years of brainwashing over communism through incorrect and distorted facts, yet easily absorbed fear.

... I saw on the GOP site they are blaming Obama for the oil disaster, again relying on the BiG GoVeRnMent big bad wolf subconcious conditioning to carry the message despite that it is a lie.

Propaganda is a dangerous and risky political tool. It has a tendency to backfire and create pockets of extreme emotional responses. In the end.. who will define what is a "conservative".. that no-one of the conservative element on this board can or will define that suggests that they are being led rather than free thinking and why some just don't and cannot get the "conservative" message.

.. We can feel our guts being manipulated.

But Kansan voters, particularly Republican ones, should have the hottest fire under their feet on primary day. In the land of sunflowers and prairie dogs, Republicans outnumber Democrats two-to-one, which often makes July's GOP primary winner a near-lock for victory in November. Case in point: the Senate seat up for grabs has been held by a Republican since 1932 -- i.e., the days when Joan Rivers was in utero. With Sen. Sam Brownback giving up his spot to go gubernatorial, Congressman Todd Tiahrt--who, despite the troubling lack of vowels in his name, managed to get the Sarah Palin stamp--squared off against fellow congressman Jerry Moran, who joined Rep. Michelle Bachmann's caucus. Moran pulled through with the win, 160,000 to 140,000 votes, showing again that neither Tea Party-backing nor the wave of the Alaskan wand are infallibles.

Other Kansas highlights including the primary success of Democrat Stephene Moore, a nurse and the wife of retiring Rep. Dennis Moore, who seems set to face Kevin Yoder (the expected winner out of nine GOP hopefuls) in her attempt to be the first wife to survive a living member of Congress. And Brownback predictably won his gubernatorial primary, with a more-than-healthy 82% of the vote.

In the neighboring state of Missouri, voters weighed in on Proposition C, the first state challenge to the individual mandate contained in the new health-care reform law. Although the vote was more about political bragging rights than anything, given that the courts will have to decide on whether the referendum can trump federal law, the anti-“Obamacare” contingent got a big win. Only 29% voted that the state have to comply with the federal mandate, while 71% percent voted to exempt the Show-Me state. (As per the nickname, they clearly don't take things lying down.) The amount of voters casting a ballot for this -- nigh 1 million -- by far dwarfed the amount coming out to have a say in any other contest, by a margin of hundreds of thousands.

Other Missouri highlights: veteran Rep. Ike Skelton won his primary in Missouri's Fourth District, though the tough part will be keeping his seat in November. His opponent, state Rep. Vicky Hartzler, emerged from a field of nine candidates, though Ike must like that she'll be damaged a bit from all the infighting that led up the primary. Rep. Roy Blunt and Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, the two political-family candidates expected to win their senate primaries, did so, both with more than 70% of the vote. It should be a fiery match up, like two families in The Godfather going to the mattresses -- though Carnahan should be concerned that she racked up far fewer votes (265,000) than Blunt (410,000)

Read more:
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/08/04/heartland-primary-watch/?xid=rss-topstories#ixzz0vfdwi72J