Vikings: So your are saying that thanks to the banking crash, various bank frauds and various other white collar crime our countries are screwed up?

Lets not forget, this is a problem that is world wide thanks to the financial institutions. With various banks needing help, or going bust....

.. Over here, the Iceland banks going belly up cost various authorities authorities here millions from lost investments.

.. Shall we blame it all on Obama? Isn't that getting a little cliché?

Iamon lyme:

The reason why I drew a comparison between war and abortion is because there is an interesting thing that came to my mind.

I noticed that some of the people who detest abortion (pro-life) sometimes also defend the right to own guns, the right to fight pre-emptive wars, and the use of the death penalty. This is more prevalent among what we call the "right wing ".

By the same token, among the "left wing" you will find the "pro-choice" argument among people who want gun control, who protest against pre-emptive wars, and who want to put an end to the death penalty.

It is interesting that on both sides we see people wanting to defend life, whether it be an unborn child, victims of violent crime or both civilians and military involved in a war.

"I believe that we should protect the life of an unborn child, just as much as I believe that the constitution guarantees people's rights to own potentially lethal weapons, and that our nation has the right to fight pre-emptive wars in which thousands of people will die. Furthermore, the state has the right to put an end to the life of a dangerous criminal."

"I believe that we should limit the ownership of lethal weapons only to law enforcement agencies, I believe that we should never fight pre-emptive wars that kill thousands, I believe that it is wrong to kill a criminal regardless of his crimes; but I also believe that a woman's choice takes precendence over the life of her unborn child."

To me this is an interesting contradiction. As with many other aspects of human nature, we are riled by contradictions.

> If you want to draw comparisons between war and abortion you are not
> helping the pro abortionist argument.

Of course it does not help the argument. From my point of view, if you believe in pretecting human life, should you not protect ALL human life? Unborn children, victims of crime, victims of war, prisoners on death row, etc. The truth is tht the situation is never simple and each case is so different.

> Wars are usually fought for one of two reasons. Depending on which side you
> are looking at, wars are fought to get something or to defend something.
> Sometimes both sides are aggressors who are out to get something, but you'll
> never see two defenders going at it... why would they?

Since our mind finds a contradiction between our beliefs and our actions, we must justify ourselves in how we act. We tell ourselves that we are defending something. I am defending an unborn child, I am defending my family from a criminal who broke into my home, I am defending my nation from hostile forces external to my nation, I am defending society from a dangerous criminal, etc. It is the only way that we can justify our actions. To me the contradiction just lies in how we defend one human life, and yet have no problem taking another (or letting somebody else take another on our behalf).

> And since you are comparing abortion to war then let me ask you who you
> believe the aggressor is. Is it the baby, or the adult(s)? What are adults who kill
> babies defending, their right to not take care of a defenseless little person, or
> maybe the abortionist's right to earn a living?

One can make the same argument about a war. When a plane drops a 2,000-pound bomb, can the people on the ground defend themselves? The military might if they have guns aimed at the planes, but what about the thousands who die under the bombs? Can civilians really defend themselves? What about a baby who dies in war because of either bombs, or the destruction of infrastructure such as hospitals, water treatment plants, etc.? In the Gulf War 500,000 civilians died, plus 250,000 Iraqi military. In the aftermath of the war the United nations estimated that a further 1,000,000 prople died because of lack of clean water, hospitals, medicines, etc. War is a terrible thing, and most of the people who die are defenseless, even when the military claims to have "smart bombs" and "satellite guided missiles". The only reason why the military always claims to try to protect civilians is because public opinion forces them to say so.

> Adults can defend themselves if they need to. Babies can't. If you can convince
> me that babies are not completely defenseless and have done something
> (anything) to deserve being killed, then you might have a valid argument.

Of course babies are defenseless, as are many vicitims of violent gun crime. At the time of execution, the prisoner is defenseless. Yes, he has committed terrible crimes and he is being executed for them, but can he really fight the lethal injection and the gas chamber? Somehow we tell ourselves that he is not defenseless and that he deserves to die.

Then does anyone really DESERVE to be killed? If that is the case, who decides? A serial killer is easy to justify. A terrorist is easy to justify so long as we ignore some of the motivations behind his actions (such as western empires invading their countries for the last 400 years.) What about a political prisoner? Is it justifiable to kill a communist? Western empries certaily thought it was justifiable during the Cold War. We all find certain forms of killing justifiable. It is human nature, and our nature is conflicted.

Something that the pro-life people sometimes forget is that the pro-choice people do not go around killing babies willy nilly. Most pro-choice people I have met actually hate abortion, but they justify it in terms of somehow saving a woman's life, and sparing an unwanted child what otherwise would be a bad life. To the pro-life people that is weak argument, but then, if society is going to ban abortion, then society has to provide every tool possible to avoid unwanted pregnancies. That means solid sexual education since childhood and easy availability of contraceptives. Will all pro-life people accept easily available contraceptives to teenagers and adults alike? Probably not.

Iamon lyme: for sure - don't make em mad! But laughter is best. (except there are a few here I do laugh at but it's more like I'm making fun of them!)

rod03801: I suspect pictures with short captions will make more of an impression than anything I can say. *sigh*

I'm probably wasting ink doing all of my talkingusing only words.

rod03801:

Iamon lyme: lol.. that sign is EXACTLY the truth though

Iamon lyme:

Vikings: true

Artful Dodger: Flip Wilson is prettier

Vikings: that lady reminds me of this lady: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ-E4bvrA1U

Iamon lyme: Ugh. Okay, maybe not so much... what was I thinking?

I don't care what anyone says, I think she's a cutie.

total months that the unemployment level was above 8% from 1948 to 2008 (40 years) = 38
Total months that the unemployment level was above 8% during the Obama administration (45 months)= 43 months

http://mittromneycentral.com/2012/09/27/must-see-videos-paid-protesters-at-romney-event-admit-obama-will-give-them-a-free-phone-if-they-vote-for-him/

By the way, NICE TEETH

Iamon lyme: The squirrel knows - it's with his toes.

Artful Dodger: LOL You know, there could be someone at this board who believes there really are soldier squirrels... and is now covering his most precious possession with both hands.

Typing is hard enough using only one finger, but how is he supposed to type any messages now?. With his nose?

Übergeek 바둑이: I suspect you will want to come back to complain that I didn't answer your question... here was your question:

"If you are a person who supported any of these wars, do you have blood in your hands? Is believing in war different from believing in abortion?"

If you want to draw comparisons between war and abortion you are not helping the pro abortionist argument. Wars are usually fought for one of two reasons. Depending on which side you are looking at, wars are fought to get something or to defend something. Sometimes both sides are aggressors who are out to get something, but you'll never see two defenders going at it... why would they?

If I ever support a war effort, then that support would fall to the defenders side. Anything wrong with that? If so, then according to you the little girl who killed two guys breaking into her home has blood on her hands too.

And since you are comparing abortion to war then let me ask you who you believe the aggressor is. Is it the baby, or the adult(s)? What are adults who kill babies defending, their right to not take care of a defenseless little person, or maybe the abortionist's right to earn a living?

Adults can defend themselves if they need to. Babies can't. If you can convince me that babies are not completely defenseless and have done something (anything) to deserve being killed, then you might have a valid argument.

The Conservative Squirrel will EAT YOU FOR LUNCH!

He thinks they are all nuts!

Do NOT mess with the Conservative Squirrel

Iamon lyme: Guys like Sharpton and Jackson have to keep the slave complaint alive or else they are out of a job.

Iamon lyme: well said

Artful Dodger: "The Civil War was so long ago I don't even remember it happening."

I wouldn't be surprised if some people are still fighting that war. "The war is over great great grandpa, and I don't even know why I'm talking to you about it because you died a long time ago."

There are times I feel like I'm talking to people who believe brains are fertilizer for their hair. One day when I was walking to work a white racist stopped to talk to me, and he assumed I would agree with him because we are both white. Then half a block down the street from him a black guy stops me to complain about me enslaving his people. At that point I coudn't take it anymore, so I told him that I freed all of my slaves over 15 years ago and got them all jobs at the buggy whip factory... he thought I was just as insane as the white guy thought I was for not agreeing with him.

Übergeek 바둑이: She asked me a loaded question, and probably didn't expect me to answer. I don't care if it was intended as a rhetorical question or not, liberals have their own way of showing aggression and I have my own way of dealing with it. So sue me.

Your question is even sillier than hers, but I'll answer it anyway... yes, I believe there are wars and I believe there are abortions. Hey, you asked.


I don't get to decide who is a real person and who isn't, that's for liberals to decide. Slaves weren't real people, so it was okay for biggots to have them as slaves. Jews were not real people, so it was okay for the nazis to abuse and kill them. And today (according to liberals) babies are not real people... until they manage to get outside of the womb, then they magically become real people. So the little guber better hurry to get outta there, before someone decides to kill him/her. Until he/she pops outta there, he/she is not a real person... according to liberals like you.

Übergeek 바둑이: Romney protested the anti Vietnam war protests , but chose to go to Paris instead of Vietnam.That takes stones

Iamon lyme:

> If you support abortion then yes, at least indirectly if not directly, you have blood on your hands. You are not only responsible for what you do, but also responsible for what you encourage other people to do.

Does that apply to wars too? I mean, the USA and its allies killed 300,000 people in Afghanistan; 750,000 in the Gulf War; 400,000 more in the Iraq war; 6,000,000 in Vietnam; 3,000,000 in Korea, etc.

If people voted for those governments that went to war, do those people have blood in their hands? If you are a person who supported any of these wars, do you have blood in your hands? Is believing in war different from believing in abortion?

Iamon lyme: The Civil War was son long ago I don't even remember it happening.

mckinley: [ "I didn't say slavery had nothing to do with the war. I said it was about economics and not morals." ]

The only way that can make sense is if you meant the war was lost because of economics, and not because of morality. I assumed you were talking about why there was a war to begin with.

No one in the North is judging y'all for losing the civil war. lol

After Barack Obama told Martin’s parents “if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”, blogs and websites surrounding key conservative figures like Glenn Beck and Dick Cheney began calling for the country to ‘wait for the facts’ and respect ‘due process’, rallying on Twitter around the #teamdueprocess hashtag. They did this by implying that Martin was a criminal.

On March 19, Beck’s website, The Blaze, speculated without much evidence that Martin could have been suspended from school for drug possession, “sexual harassment”, or “arson”. The Miami Herald spent four paragraphs listing ‘suspicious’ facts about Martin’s bags (like “women’s jewellery” and a “burglary tool”) and on the same day, The Daily Caller, co-founded by Dick Cheney, published a compilation of tweets reportedly culled from Martin’s deleted Twitter account, by an ‘undisclosed source’. The Conservative Review immediately branded the teen “a criminal thug on his way to a life in prison”.

The campaign of character assassination didn’t stop with the right wing media. On March 25, a Twitter news site run by another Fox News contributor, Michelle Malkin, posted a picture of an entirely different Trayvon Martin which had appeared one day before on the neo-nazi website Stormfront.

On March 29, a white supremacist hacker called ‘Klanklannon’ took up the work of Cheney’s Caller and leaked private messages he claimed belonged to Martin. The hacker invited people to log into Martin’s gmail account and see for themselves, having helpfully changed the password to ‘n*****************’.

Meanwhile, the conservative National Review had the nerve to fire contributing editor John Derbyshire on April 8 for looking beyond the controversy to the wider issues at stake. “Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally,” he wrote in an article for Taki’s Magazine, responding to Trayvon-inspired race debates by describing ‘the talk’ he gives to his kids. “Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks,” he went on (each point was backed up by a link to a crime or scandal which happened to involve an African-American). Avoid amusement parks if they are “swamped with blacks,” he warned; “Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.”

In the Fox-News-o-sphere’s focus on Trayvon and its implication that Zimmerman needed “protecting” from a dangerous thug is the germ of the idea that brought Nazis to Sanford. Anything in Martin’s life that was remotely ‘suspect’ (or, often, youthful) became evidence that he was a threat – better evidence, apparently, than prosecutors could ever provide.

‘Protection’ has served as a worse excuse before. In his terrifying expose of post-Katrina killings in New Orleans, AC Thompson shows how a white militia group described as “the ultimate neighbourhood watch” attacked black citizens with impunity. 32-year-old Donnell Herrington was shot in the neck by vigilantes – he claimed there was no warning – in affluent Algiers Point, which one militiaman gleefully described as “like pheasant season in South Dakota”. “I’m not a prejudiced individual,” said another, “but you just know the outlaws who are up to no good. You can see it in their eyes.”

Then, as the New Statesman notes, there was Camp Grayhound, a “facsimile of Guantanamo Bay” built in two days by prison labour where the militias brought ‘arrested’ citizens to be thrown in outdoor cages and repeatedly pepper-sprayed. One was Syrian-American Abdulrahman Zeitoun, the subject of a non-fiction book by Dave Eggers, who spent three days there for no particular reason (“you guys are al-Qa’ida,” he was told; “We’re taking our city back”). According to the Statesman, police had claimed that babies were being raped in the refugee camps and that officers should “shoot looters”. Last year the entire New Orleans Police Department was placed under judicial supervision as a threat to the public.

For the Katrina militias, as for the Sanford neo-Nazis, protecting white America meant threatening blacks; for the conservative blogosphere, protecting George Zimmerman means dirtying the name of a dead youth. This uneasy parity in logic reveals the racist undertones of a campaign to thugify Trayvon which writers have shared with white supremacists. Zimmerman will be tried by the courts, now, and not by the media – which is all the protesters ever wanted. But in the meantime, the American far right must take a serious look at the company it keeps.

Iamon lyme: you didn't post that!

Artful Dodger: America... a disgruntled ex employee shoots his boss killing 4 and 3 serious.

Gun nuts thinking they can fix a problem with a bullet, that vengeance is their right. Shocking!!

It was a suicide attack, as the guy then shot himself!!!

Those knickers twisting in the wind yet?

http://youtu.be/RkUsCG-feRk


They ARE savages: http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/213740.php

It's best to remember where you planted the bombs.
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/213746.php

Islam's Latest Contributions to Peace

"Mohammed is God's apostle. Those who follow him are harsh
to the unbelievers but merciful to one another" Quran 48:29

2012.09.30 (Narathiwat, Thailand) - Islamists fire grenades into a local fair.
2012.09.29 (Yala, Thailand) - Brave Mujahideen shoot a 72-year-old man to death.
2012.09.29 (Narathiwat, Thailand) - A 42-year-old Buddhist woman is machine-gunned by Runda Kumpulan Kecil while riding with her husband.
2012.09.29 (Yala, Thailand) - Muslim 'separatists' shoot a married woman in the back as she is riding a motorcycle with her husband.
2012.09.28 (Karachi, Pakistan) - A prayer leader is sprayed with bullets by sectarian rivals.
2012.09.28 (Yala, Thailand) - An elderly couple is slain outside a plantation by Muslim militants.

The Col: Children do have all the answers. I know this because I was once a children myself. You wouldn't know it looking at me now (Don't look at me!) but it's true.

Adulthood had more heachaches waiting for me than I had ever guessed. It never occurred to me that anything I did would ever come back to haunt me, until it started coming back to haunt me. The guy who wrote Amazing Grace had more coming back to haunt him than I ever did, but he turned out okay. So maybe I'll be okay too... that's the sort of thing I will invest my hope in. I won't "hope" because of some cheesy political campaign slogan, because that kind of emotional pandering is about as empty as it gets.

The Col: It's not an easy transition. Everyone likes the idea of having rights and freedoms reserved for adults, and most can't wait to be old enough to have and exercise those rights. And then (why only then?) we find out about the other side of that coin... dare I say it?


*responsibility*

The Col: Especially it seems when it comes to history. An old saying regarding history is that we are here because our ancestors were victors.

... ie they killed.

N' sometimes believing they were doing Gods will.

Even now there are instances of a literal evangelical style Christian belief system that teaches that children can be 'witches' that was spread in various African countries by missionaries...

http://www.christianpost.com/news/child-deaths-on-rise-in-uk-linked-to-fundamentalist-african-churches-70946/

The recent case of a couple convicted in the witchcraft-related murder of a teen girl in London sheds light on a larger problem affecting Britain and other Western countries that has its origins in fundamentalist African churches, according to observers.

Magalie Bamu, 29, and her boyfriend Eric Bikubi, 28 were found guilty of torturing Bamu's 15-year-old sister and then allowing her to drown, in an apparent attempt to rid her of the evil spirits they believed she was possessed by, The Telegraph reported. Cases like this are becoming more common in England involving immigrants from Central Africa, where children are often accused of witchcraft, are settling in and bringing such beliefs with them.

There are apparently no less than 84 child abuse cases linked to witchcraft that have been investigated in the past 10 years in the U.K., the Metropolitan Police revealed.

Witchcraft has been present in the Central African region for centuries, but it has recently been integrated with Christianity – pastors in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria often take money from parents to perform exorcism rituals which they claim will rid their children of demonic possessions. The belief that children can be possesed by spirits has its roots in traditional African practises, but many of these churches have tried to connect those traditional beliefs with passages in the Bible that say Jesus healed people posessed by demons.

According to The Telegraph's report, there are more than 20,000 children in DR Congo who are forced to live homeless on the streets of the capital Kinshasa because they have been accused of sorcery.

Iamon lyme:re : Being an adult sucks, doesn't it? "

Actually , "being an adult" is ever elusive for some .Children think they have all the answers don't they