ParanoiA

Incidentally, this is also what drives me nuts about conservative radio. Over and over again, they prove their ignorance to the scientific method AND they confuse scientists agendas with science. They love to lump the two together and claim they're being "attacked by science".

Yeah, like forcing others to live up to some utopian puke. Children need adversity, fear, pain, injustice, and etc. These are useful concepts. Violence is still necessary to survive.

What about the abuse of over-protection? What about the abuse of lack of diversity in culture and lifestyle, and therefore closed minded judgement? What is really abusive about it? Why is it that children are so "fragile" they should be spared the benefit of fear? Isn't that why you don't put your hand on hot coals? And how about when global warming gets so bad we're looking at becoming toast inside of a few decades - are you still going to claim abuse when they step up the fear campaign? The only abuse I see here is the abuse of intolerance.

Yes, what can we do about people who exaggerate what "abuse" is and use it to promote ignorance in legislation? As rational people who care about society and reducing ignorance, what can we do to keep your agenda out of my life? You're right it is really frustrating to watch you throw a fit over an evangelical horror show while you make NO mention of violence or horror in general - just the evangelical kind. I guess if you throw god in the mix, suddenly it's abuse? I just watched 28 Weeks Later last night - kick ass movie by the way - and it was far more horrifying and realistic, not to mention prophetic in a way, than anything I've seen in a christian haunted house - yes we had them in Tulsa when GUTS church did it - it was cool also.

Certainly an interesting attitude he has and I commend him for his nature, but I respectfully disagree with him. The rich can give all they want to the government, and privately, and should for similar reasons to Gates, but this is about externalizing a subjective expectation on others. I'd rather a more objective leaning idea, something linear, sterile. Something that doesn't allow the government to look at somebody and create ways, laws, specifically to 'go get their money'. That's what the IRS is. Those "loopholes" are people running away from the big bad wolf.

This is a Face the Nation interview. Obviously, there's tons, but I liked this one because he talks specifically about Iran, the coldwar, and his response to the isolationist label. Part One (5 mins): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0C00o6mtwY&feature=bz302 Part Two (3 mins): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxoK6UV4l_4

And yet, after all of that maneuvering, they still cover the major major major majority of the total income tax burden: No, and it wasn't supposed to. It was a reply to Saryctos. Was just trying to make the point that the poor are not just struggling to buy food, clothes and shelter - they're also struggling because they get kicked while they're down - like ridiculous punishment scenarios where everyone gets charged money for not complying with rules because they didn't have enough money. When I hear the liberals going on and on about the poor and how we need programs I just want to puke. They would do the poor a better service by staying at the state level and making some sense out of the regulations and tax structure that punish the poor the most. As Bascule pointed out, this proposed fair tax system is too. I still like it better, however. than income tax - much better. Principly it makes more sense to me too. But I'm open for other ideas as well. I'll also admit to preferring simplicity over complexity. A simple tax code is a transparent tax code. And we are in bad need of transparency, and I want to see thousands of tax geeks hit the streets unemployed. No one should be able to make a living off the complexity of a tax code. That's your first signal something is way off. And now that it's ingrained, it's here to stay. For books of reasons that you probably already know...

No I think he meant drawing 30% income tax... When I was making around 20 grand a year trying to support my wife and two kids, I actually made money at tax time. We were among the first to file since we would be looking at raking in around 3 grand or so - after only paying in maybe a grand over that year. Ask any poor person, they all know about earned income credit and the great pyramid of payout. Several of us have advocated the necessites to be non-taxable. Presumably that would be food, shelter, clothing. However, you're saying they spend all of their income on things they need to live. I don't think so. I say that from the perspective of someone who was poor. We didn't pay most of our money to live. We paid fines by the state for not having insurance on our car, or not paying for our tags (because we thought eating was more important)....yes, I guess they thought we were "against" insurance rather than being too broke to buy any...so they punish you with your wallet for being poor. We paid two months rent and multi-hundred dollar deposits just to get crappy apartments - rundown slums for our labor - since our credit history sucked and had problems paying bills..from being poor, obviously. I could go on, but the point is that being poor costs you more money because you're financially untrustworthy to every business entity out there. The government stacks and layers tax obligations and laws that hit the poor right where it hurts - and then punishes them with even MORE money when they fail to meet these obligations from not having enough money in the first place. Not saying you don't have a point, but I think people misunderstand how the poor get screwed.

Because poor and rich are subjective positions that can be and are exploited regularly. Such as the SCHIP program where people making 3 times the poverty level are considered "poor" enough to qualify. This is silly. Judging everyone's personal economics is another sticky mess of corruption. Why the propensity to stick our noses in everyone's business? Businesses have various levels of expenses based on their individual histories - debts left from previous owners, past economic catastrophes, and etc. You judge someone making 6 figures like they're "not hurting any", while they continue to pay off the 7 figure debt they had to incur to generate their 6 figures. Or you rob someone of their hard earned profit the FIRST year they actually get off the bottom of the barrel. To judge someone's income fairly, you'd have to judge their expenses as well. All of this is extremely personal, subjective and quite frankly an aggregious deviation from the principles of a free society. I prefer to be as objective as possible, and it's quite possible to be FAR more objective than that. Why not a more passive approach where basic necessities are not taxable? Everyone enjoys their necessities tax free - mainly benefitting the poor, without invading privacy, personal information and insulting hard working successful people by insisting they keep paying the majority of the tax bill while being badmouthed by the poor who aren't paying anything at all.

Because a drug dealer or prostitute's income is not reported - obviously - so, they pay no income tax on their income. In case you don't know, our present income tax system in the US requires the citizen to report their income, which is conceptually bashed against what law abiding employers have reported paying to that individual. So, in the case of illegal businesses, they never pay taxes on their incomes. With a sales tax solution, they will pay taxes on their merchandise like the rest of us, since they're not taxed on the income side any longer - rather the consumption side.

The Fair Tax would finally tax the illegal domestic business culture - drugs, prostitution, and etc. Also makes it virtually impossible to lie about lowering or raising taxes. Today you have to wade through a million pages of tax code to figure out if you're being lied to. I don't like the idea of payments to the poor and blah blah blah. Once again, let's go out of our way to complicate simple things. Just don't apply the tax on goods we consider to be necessities. Like food, clothing, that sort of thing. An active system like these payments they're talking about introduces corruption and creates the need for a department - yet another bottomless pit of shame. Why not keep it as simple and passive as you can? And percentages are all that should matter. To make wealthier people pay a higher percentage is flat out wrong. You should never allow your government, or your damn neighbor for that matter, to decide how much money you "need" - when you're "rich" and when you have "plenty leftover". This is just lazy intellectual excuses to rationalize redistribution. Bill Gates blows billions of dollars on philanthropy, so I'd rather see that money distributed by him than the fat cats in washington. More of his dollars will actually get to the people who need it - channeling it through the government will dilute it into more unaccountable, irresponsible "systems" of beaurocracy that feed the entitlement system we're all so proud of today.

Rocking horse people eat marshmellow pies, newspaper taxis, cellophane flowers of yellow and green....kinda like that

This is getting as bad as Godwin's law... You're not sacrificing any freedom. All of us are expected to take the time at law enforcement's request. Did you tout your Ben Franklin phrase the last time you got pulled over by the police? It's cooperating with law enforcement that all of us are expected to do. And if you don't' date=' they can and will use force - no matter how minor the catalyst. We have a fair legal system that puts the burden of your guilt on the government to prove, not for you to prove your innocence - but that doesn't give you the right to deny "the people" an investigation to that end. It's really as simple as that. No one freaked out on Bascule. They didn't put guns in his face and throw him on the ground, full cavity strip search, display his personal information on a big screen, hold him for 3 months in a prison camp - they investigated him for 30 mins and checked out a homemade looking electrical contraption. And won't repeated exposure to these devices help to become more common to these screeners? Maybe they won't stay soooo stupid much longer? I used to say this. But there was always something wrong. You're dismissing your best resource, and empowering a penetrable one. 1) Systems are predictable, calculable, consistent - therefore has loopholes, the more consistent the sytem, the more reliable the loopholes. 2) Because perpetrators use subjective judgment on a predictable, consistent system, they get the advantage. Kind of like putting 8 men in the box on a shotgun pass. It's a mismatch which favors the adaptable, flexible, calculative - subjective - thinker.

Where exactly are we understanding the need to check this out, by these comments? Maybe that's your specific take, but Bascule clearly thinks that everyone who thinks a breadboard and wires = a bomb is stupid.....even though a bomb can be made with uh, breadboard and wires. And since bombs don't come pre-packaged in sleek boxes from Wal-Mart, it would likely be a HOMEMADE device. And gee...a breadboard with exposed wires is most likely a HOMEMADE device ain't it? Anyone who appears to be a threat should have guns thrust in their face, period. If you're not a threat, none of them will go off. If you are, they likely will. To expect humans not to protect themselves from a perceived threat is unrealistic and quite frankly should win a Darwin award if not exercised.

Yes, the problem pointer-outers have spoken. They are a dime a dozen. Want to know some more problems in the world? I'll keep you busy for awhile. All I'm really getting from this is you all think it's stupid to react to wires and breadboards as bombs and I've pointed out over and over again that it's a self-defeating notion that you shouldn't react to wires and breadboards. For the same reason that a $5 box is an illusion, by wholesale rejection of "obvious" looking devices you get the same result - just don't conceal your bomb in anything and you'll not have any problem either.... But I know, it's easier to dismiss that thought and NOT to put yourself in their shoes and NOT realize the weight of their responsibility and poke at them for an obvious obligation on their part to "check it out". The flip side story is Bascule goes to the airport with his contraption and no screener anywhere does anything about it, or just looks at it dumbly and gives it back without concern. Gee...sounds like a full-proof bomb idea...just make it look like what people think a bomb looks like. You seriously don't see the problem with your logic, iNow?

How is the ecosystem a gestalt? It's properties ARE derivative of the summation of its parts isn't it? And how can a component of a gestalt act externally to it? One could argue that the ecosystem is built with properties that guarantee equilibrium - just not recognizable to what you're accustomed to.

Same with entering an establishment with an AK-47 huh? Just buy a box and viola! - instant illusion. You guys are right. Everyone is soooo stupid.... The next time I'm walking down the street at night and see someone pointing a black cylindrical object at me, I'm not going to be an IDIOT like these TSA goofs and immediately think "oh must be gun", I'll just reason it out - it's obviously just a stick, or a magic wand...

Yeah, you know I like healthy skepticism, but I expect it to play by the rules and this crap is circumventing the scientific method - which means it's worthless to me. This is a problem within conservatives. This creepy denial system based on fighting science. They make it feel noble with emotional appeals sprinkled with rebellion psychology.

Yeah, I understand you're real convinced. I don't necessarily doubt you, really. But that's quite a prediction for a subject that science hasn't mastered - can't even be sure what there is to know, considering knowledge has a tendency to reveal further unknowns not even realized before. Who knows what kinds of physical laws we still aren't aware of yet? I mean really, you can't "suppose" a condition, simply because you've never "seen" the condition? Of course, this way the hell over my head. Maybe that's why I find it easy to question...

Exactly. I predict in a hundred years there will be no states. They'll just be lines for tradition. Some people will still complain, and the feds can respond with "Hey, you've been giving up your power for 200 hundred years...what did you think was going to happen?" Of course, they won't be federal anymore either, obviously. Or maybe he knows the constitution was designed for a federation, not a unitary state. I get the whole argument that our framers and forefathers were not omniscient saints, but that doesn't invalidate the theory that there's an imbalance in this federation, has been. The central government has been gaining more and more power. Now it's time to swing it the other way - keep things in check. At least, that's my perogative.

So are you all saying that a photon will never be able to be at rest, ever? No matter the potential millions and billions and <how every many zeros you can dream up and add on to the end of that> of years of activity and life in the universe long after we're all dead and gone, no being or force of any kind will ever under any circumstances be able to stop and analyze a photon?

Particularly when Ron Paul doesn't HIDE his position at all, like his pro-life stance, yet still respects state's rights. Maybe you can pin down most politicians as "hiding" behind the 10th amendment to avoid sharing their opinion, but I don't see that here. Clearly, Dr. Paul sees an imbalance of power between federal and state and many of his positions are consistent with empowering states. And the details, in my opinion, are supposed to be up to them. We're not advocating a confederation here, and a federation requires state powers, by definition. Are you sure you're taking the "middle" ground here?

Well I don't mind the power distribution argument, except it's built on the notion that government should have any authority over an institution that's clearly a private matter covered under civil liberties. However, we are talking about licenses and being "recognized" by the government as married, so on one hand they're not really removing a right, but rather denying a privilege. It's interesting.

To follow up on his gay marriage stance, here's his position, which comes from this. Not sure where I stand on this. Ultimately I don't think government on either level, state or federal, should have anything to say about it. But his position does appear to be more about power distribution than moral legislation.

See, I get that from a lot of folks. They see it as pawning it off to the states rather than doing them the favor of allowing them their own say. That's actually counter-intuitive to the concept and spirit of freedom - choice. You're rationalizing the denial of localized choice as "not giving up" - as if you've somehow shucked your responsibility because you didn't make a decision for us. I also don't believe the degree of unity you advocate is worth the price of losing the elegance and beauty, to me anyway, of richly diverse state governments and cultures. In fact, I'm not so sure they would stay that way, naturally anyway. My politics and lifestyle isn't the same as my parents, yet I was raised under the same government, same city, almost the same neighborhood. Families and friends don't all think the same way, so I'm not sure how diverse each state can really get. Although it would be nice to have a real "sin city"...