WilliamK

That's the deficit, you imbecile, not the national debt. The national debt is still growing by leaps and bounds, just somewhat smaller leaps and bounds than last year. The national debt has already grown by 379 billion so far this fiscal year, and will likely grow another 125 billion or so by the end of it. For comparison, it grew by 574 billion in FY 2006. All hail GWB and the Republicans in Congress! They've screwed us over less this year than last! It's pathetic. But I guess you have to resort to things like that when you're trying to make neocons look good.

I don't for a moment believe that you have any idea whether Paul made any phone calls, any more than you knew whether he had made any other attemp to meet with the administrators when you said this: "Paul you never attempted to meet with Somma or any administrators. You then sent your son into a meeting with the administrators and claimed they would not allow you to be present." And this: "No. Read the post again. Paul never attempted to meet with the administartors." Those are your words, are they not? Either that or we have multiple "Guests" posting with a truly remarkable continuity and consistency of style. Tell me, Guest, do you make a habit of accusing people of things that you just make up? Things that you merely want them to be guilty of, but have no indication that they actually are? Is that honest? Is that honorable? If it had turned out that he had made four phone calls instead of four letters, would you have then criticized him for not sending letters? If he had done both, would you have complained that he didn't just drop in at their offices unannounced, or stalk them while they did their grocery shopping? So, is it true that "A simple phone call would have gotten you an appointment to see Mr. Somma and anyone else you cared to discuss the situation with."? I have no way to know. And I strongly suspect that you don't know either, just like the other wishes that you've asserted as if they were known facts. But even if true, it does not change that your original accusation was false. Even one letter qualifies as an attempt. And four should be enough to meet any sane person's definition of "due diligence". How do you justify making such malicious and obviously fabricated accusations? Do you think it's ok because you judge Paul to be a bad person? Would it not be just as much of a lie even if he was the scumbag that you wish to paint him as? Are you so full of hate and devoid of integrity that you can't bring yourself to make an apology, or even just a bland retraction, now that you can clearly see that you've made a false accusation?

On your 2nd point, a former boss proposed something that I thought was pretty interesting. He wasn't advocating it, but just threw it out as food for thought. Picture a progressive income tax based on a mathematical formula such that it changes smoothly rather than in discrete steps. Further, imagine that this curve crosses zero and becomes progressively more negative below a certain income level. Those with incomes in the negative tax bracket would receive money from the IRS rather than paying in. The curve would be close to linear at the low end, but taper off towards the high end so that it can never equal or exceed someones entire income. This tax curve would be more complex than a flat tax, but still much simpler than the current complex rules. Here are some possible advantages to this: 1) It removes the disincentive that often happens with the current system, in which a person can be worse off by getting a job because of loss of benefits. In this system, loss of benefits (or increase in liability) would always be smaller than any gain in income. Conversely, to quit working and live on the public dole would always result in a loss of income. 2) It would be managed by a single entity, the IRS, and would not even be an additional job for them, but just an alteration of the tax rules. This removes the need for additional governmental entities, so should cost less to manage than current welfare programs. 3) Welfare cheating would become tax fraud. The IRS has existing methods to detect this, and formidable teeth to enforce it. This is, of course, overly simplistic. Any realistic system would necessarily be much more complex. Advantage #1, for example, has a fairly obvious flaw. That being that potential loss of welfare benefits isn't the only factor that gets people stuck on welfare. For example, a single parent can easily end up with little or even negative benefit from getting a job because of daycare expenses. And this can be a loss for both parent and child in non-monetary ways as well. This is also true for families living on a single, inadequate or barely adequate income. The one parent doesn't make enough to ensure a decent standard of living, and little or nothing would be gained by the other parent going to work. Some adjustment would be needed for such things if advantage #1 is to have any real impact. Also, it would still be good to make some distinction between those who can't support themselves and those who merely choose not to. The negative tax should provide a painful enough existence to discourage able-bodied people from slacking, just enough that they have a starting point for pulling themselves up. But for those who have genuine mental or physical disabilities and simply can't support themselves, it should be basic, but not punishing. It probably has more issues than I've thought of, but it is an interesting idea.

The key word there is "usually". There's a good discussion of this here: http://www.lib.washington.edu/southeastasi...ietnamORVN.html I've only read about 1/3 of the posts there, but that was enough to get the gist of it. Which, best I understand it, is something like this: Writing "Vietnam" as a single word is part of the Anglicization of it for use in English writing. However, In its original language, it is normal to write all syllables separately, even when belonging to a single word. Because of this, the Anglicized version is also occasionally written with the syllables separated. This is less common, probably because it confuses non-Vietnamese speakers who would normally interpret that to mean that it's two words, though it should rightfully still be considered as only one. Dropping the space and leaving the "N" capitalized is even less common, but is not unheard of. It keeps the syllables together so that it is identifiable as a single word, but still retains some sense of the Vietnamese style. Patriot's two variants are not what is most often seen in English writing, but they aren't necessarily incorrect. And, could arguably even be taken as an indication of having had a more intimate familiarity with it than those of us who have only read about it. So, sorry guys. It looks like Patriot is in the clear on this one.

Thank's Patriot! This thread was far too positive. It sorely needed an unprovoked injection of hatred to give it some balance. Lucky for all of us, you proved yourself equal to that challenge.

And if they had needed permission, it would make no sense for them to go to you for it. Would the accuser have us believe that you have a license agreement that allows you to control publication rights to Paszkiewicz' sermon outlines? That you own the copyright to the sermon? Or that you have a power of attorney or other authority to make such decisions on Paszkiewicz' or his church's behalf? Even before your denial, it was obvious that the accusation was out of whack.

My research went astray, obviously. But in the process, I stumbled upon a familiar and excellent illustration of why it is a good idea to not cite quotes that you haven't seen in context. It is also an illustration of how easy it is to perpetuate misinformation and even deception without having any intent to do so. Thus, citation of an erroneous or out-of-context quote is an indication of not having checked one's sources, but is not, by itself, an indication of dishonesty. I believe those are points relevant to this discussion, even if it isn't the same quote that started it.

Oops. I've made the heinous mistake of posting links without reading them first. I took the original poster's word that this was the letter containing that quote. It is not. It is still a good read, though. It reveals Adams to have been religious, but certainly not of the fundamentalist variety. Feeding part of the beginning of the letter to Google, I found the text of it in a much more readable and searchable form here: http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/7897401/jefferson/1817.html It does, however, contain another oft-seen quote of Adams', which is often quoted out of context by fellow atheists in a way that distorts its meaning. Even in context, it gives no credence to the idea that Adams and the other founders had in mind to create anything other than a secular government, and in the following paragraphs, suggests the opposite. But neither does it show Adams to be anti-religious, as it appears to do when out of context. Here's the isolated quote: "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if, there were no religion in it ! ! !” That sounds pretty solidly anti-religious, doesn't it? But here's the whole paragraph: "Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if, there were no religion in it ! ! !” But in this exclamation I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite society, I mean hell. So far from believing in the total and universal depravity of human nature, I believe there is no individual totally depraved. The most abandoned scoundrel that ever existed, never yet wholly extinguished his conscience, and while conscience remains there is some religion. Popes, Jesuits, and Sorbonists, and Inquisitors, have some conscience and some religion. So had Marius and Sylla, Caesar, Catiline and Antony ; and Augustus had not much more, let Virgil and Horace say what they will." So, that should be a lesson about repeating isolated quotes. If you don't check the context, someone else undoubtedly will, and you'll look pretty foolish if that context turns out to make a big difference. You may not have intended any misrepresentation, so you may not rightly be guilty of accusations of lying. But still, the blame for not checking your facts is legitimate. Then, of course, there's the other lesson about foolishly posting links without reading them first. Mea culpa.

After a bit of googling, I eventually stumbled on a message board post with links to images of the original letter the quote comes from. This proved more difficult than I expected, as most hits were just the isolated quote. Unfortunately, these are somewhat difficult to read and not searchable. But here they are: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/vc006645.jpg http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/vc006646.jpg http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/vc006647.jpg http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/vc006648.jpg

Holy cow! If I wanted to see this kind of freakish, vindictive, family dysfunction, I'd watch Springer or similar. I don't know why he didn't want you staying with his wife in his absence*, but I can sure see why I wouldn't want you spending much time around my family. * Nor do I care to hear either side of that story, nor did I care to hear anything at all about it in the first place.

Yes, indeed. And while you're at it, don't forget to pay homage to Jesus' good buddy, Hank: http://www.jhuger.com/kisshank.php

How do you know he believes that? He'd be quite justified to think that at least the most vocal core of his critics are fundamentalists. That much has been made obvious by their own words. But he has never claimed that all of them are. That idea appears to be the product of your imagination, not his.

Yes indeed, this discussion did go silent some time ago. But since it's now well past the time when O'Reilly was supposed to have talked about it, this seems like a good time to ask: Did O'Reilly ever talk about it? Anyone have a link to a transcript or video?

This is without question the most stunningly brilliant post I've ever seen from you.

Hubble Space Telescope was much too clever for San Francisco Police Department?

Then you should reveal its location. You'll be famous (though probably not quite as famous as James Cameron).

Of course. Nothing in the laws of thermodynamics requires the universe to lose energy. The first law forbids it other than by conversion to matter. And that appears much rarer than converting the other direction. Where do you get this strange idea that the universe should be losing energy? Do they now? You'll have to do much better than displaying your misunderstanding of those natural laws if you are to convince anyone but the choir.

So, are you saying that evolution causes a reduction in the total amount of heat in the universe? That's what would be required for evolution to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It rather looks to me like all these plants and animals breeding and competing and living their lives produce quite a lot of heat. Whether they came about by creation or evolution doesn't change that. Ah, but you're talking about creating "order", not reducing heat, aren't you? But that doesn't work either. If the 2nd law of thermodynamics prevented any increase in order, it would be physically impossible to organize a closet, or for a snowflake to form. The 2nd law of thermodynamics precludes a net loss of entropy in a thermally isolated system. It does not preclude a localized reduction of entropy in a non-isolated system. That's why it doesn't conflict with crystallization, turning sawdust into particle board, the construction and operation of your refrigerator, or evolution. None of those processes yield a net loss of entropy. They only move it around a bit, and create some more in the process. It doesn't matter that things like particle board and refrigerators are products of intelligent creators (us), because there are plenty of examples of non-intelligent processes that create order or reduce temperature, and because a law of physics that could be violated at will would not be a law of physics at all.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_square Your intended meaning is correct, of course. I just found it mildly amusing that when you said "square with three sides", this entirely different meaning of the word "square" came immediately to mind. You have to watch out for those alternate word meanings. Dishonest antagonists will sometimes use them to misrepresent what you say. Or sometimes even to misrepresent what they say, when it suits their purposes.

How many times have you called someone who is more credentialed and accomplished than you an idiot?

Everyone is destined for several other religions' punishment, and missing out on several other religions' reward. That being the case, the christian's odds are only marginally better than the atheist's. In other words, if Islam or some other religion were right, then the christian would have made "the biggest mistake any human can make", just like the atheist. And if we allow that the one true god, whichever one that might be, might value honesty over feigned belief, then the atheist may well have better odds than the fire insurance christian. Do you think that pretending to believe will get you into heaven, even if you don't actually believe? I don't know about you, 2smart, but I can't just choose to believe something. I'm just not built that way. I could chant "I believe" 10,000 times, and at the end of it, all that would have changed is that I would have told exactly 10,000 more lies than before. The "fire insurance" argument provides a good basis for deception of both one's self and others, but no basis at all for honest belief. This is true regardless of whether christianity is right or wrong.

Ok, then. So it's not the old chain letter, and not the Wiccan symbol thing. Could you perhaps be referring to the story cited below (or some variant of it through a different source)? http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/166056.aspx The timing is right. And it does talk about a group organizing to fight the ACLU. However, it says nothing to support BushBacker's claim that the ACLU trying to get crosses removed from graves. So, the claim remains unsubstantiated, but it's the closest fit I could find. Really guys, if you're going to float such outlandish and nasty accusations, you really need to come up with a better citation than "the 6 pm news monday night". Something that can be readily verified. In the absence of such, a retraction is in order.

If I may offer a suggestion: A simple way to deal with the 10 quote limit when replying to long posts is to split your reply into more than one post. Is there anything wrong with replying to different statements in different posts? I think it would considerably improve the flow of discussion if the splits occur between naturally separate topics, but I don't think it would hurt anything even when a single topic is split into bite-size chunks.

Indeed it does. It is much easier to attribute such things to the supernatural than to keep trying to figure it out. "God did it." The universal answer that can lay every question to rest. It has satisfied and comforted billions. And yet it has left them with no more actual knowledge, and even further from acquiring any, than if they had simply left the questions unanswered.

Looks like this'll be tough on Mr. LaClair. How do we know that we do not know unless we have some idea of the truth of the matter? Yours is a self-stultifying claim. Unless you can rule out anyone getting it right, even by happenstance, your isn't capable of any support, [...] <{POST_SNAPBACK}> A Magic 8 Ball sometimes yields correct answers, but this does not mean that it provides knowledge in those cases any more than when it is wrong. This applies as well to astrologers, psychics, prophets, and holy books as it does to Magic 8 Balls. Belief in unsupported revelation, speculation, and guesses does not equal knowledge, not even when it pans out. If all who claim to know the answer to a question fail to demonstrate a sound basis for their claimed knowledge, then it is entirely reasonable to consider the question unanswered. This is a burden of proof problem. Those who claim to know, bear the burden of proof. That they might be right isn't a good enough foundation to build on. We need some indication that they are right. In case anyone doesn't understand it, burden of proof is a purely practical matter. It doesn't posit that unproven claims are necessarily false. It claims no omniscience. It's just a sensible way to proceed in the presence of uncertainty. And this is the umpteenth time you've accused someone of a fallacy while demonstrating illogic of your own. He put it rather eloquently. Once again, Bryan, in your zeal to belittle someone else you've revealed yourself the fool and cad.