timesjoke

I don't think you make a problem better by creating more problems. Giving away "free money" sounds like a good short term solution to those who restrict their view to the hear and now, but the logical thing to do is consider how many harms are being done in the long run by spending money we don't have for "feel good" programs. If any money should be spent by big Government, it is better to help the job creaters and settle the markets, not treat the job creaters like the enemy and keep markets unbalanced the way Progressives do. The people out of work are not all "lazy" but I fail to see how their being lazy or not means the Government must take responsibility for them.

Which legislation would that be? . . Everything that was placed on Bush's desk in the last two years of his Presidency was created by a progressive controlled Congress.

Giving away a free lunch would be like extending unemployment benefits, the Government will give away tax money, but the Progressives have no idea how to help the ecomony because they hate business and private enterprise. The solutions are in the hands of those they hate and attack.

He didn't. He said "UNDER HIS PLAN" Obviously, Republicans wouldn't go for his plan and his plan was never implemented. The smoke tax is a non issue (unless you wanna cry about smokers paying too much), and the tan tax was part of the healthcare plan by congress, not Obama. . . BS, he was still making that claim about his plan after it was passed. And Obama made the same promise all during his campaign about not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

As usual everything turns to religion bashing, I just love it when the atheists prove their intollerant of anything they personally do not agree with but they claim it is religious people who are intollerant. I am out, I made my point very well that knowing a religious book and knowing Christianity is something completely different.

My concern was for the unfair taxes imposed on the poor who smoke Bender, I feel compassion for anyone who is unfairly targeted by big Government. I went without insurance coverage in my life and that was one of the driving motivations for me to improve my situation. If the Government gives medical care away for free you remove one of the reasons for people to work harder. So the only way a person can care is if we create a massive, wasteful, all powerful Government to live our lives for us? Really? That is the limit of a Progressive mind to find solutions to their problems? I care about people Bender, I care so much I don't want to add to the condition that transforms them all into unmotivated and dependent half-humans just to buy their votes. A Christian does not want to transform a human into an animal and kept in a pasture waiting for the Governemnt to feed and take care of them. That is called starting out in life Bender. Why do you believe everyone should start out their life with the Government providing everything their first day of work? I was one of those people Bender, I had to start over twice. I today feel a great deal of accomplishment and pride that I was able to climb out of that mess and find better. This is the American dream Bender, to find success by the sweat of your brow, not have it handed to you without earning it by an all powerful Government who took success away from someone else. Wait a second, first you say they earned the "help" then you say your willing to pay more. Either someone earns their way in life or they don't. It seems you Progressives believe that just being alive in America means the Government owes you something. You want to give away your money then do it, but don't put the Government Gun to my head and force me to give my money to the people too lazy to improve their life the way I worked hard to improve mine. Stop dodging the question, I asked you how you "help" without using money taken from other people, you still have not answered that question. In your comment above you admitted you would have to pay 4 times as much in taxes to pay for a Government system and this is my point. Why should the Government be in the business of playing Robin Hood? You are the guy parroting socialist talking points Bender, you can't offer even one example of a Government run system that offers even basic care decently. The Canadian system rations care and it even takes 15 months to get an MRI done once it is prescribed but getting it prescribed is even harder. For some reason you think an all powerful Government will be "nicer" than a private insurance company but your missing one very big part. An Insurance company is a private business with competition and they must at least try to keep their customers happy or they will go somewhere else. With an all powerful Government system, there are no other options and they don't have to worry about you going to the competition. You can't sue them for treating you poorly and you can't use public opinion to change how they do things. Once an all powerful Government takes over, your trapped into taking whatever they are willing to give and you can just keep your mouth shut about your complaints for all the good it will do you. Why do you Progressives believe making a profit is bad or evil? It is the profits that offer the ability for companies to do research and create new drugs to cure disease, it drives medical adbances for new ways to operate and offer less invasive methods to treat patients. Making money in the medical world is responsible for 99% of the modern medical treatments you can get Bender. Take away the ability to make money and you end up like Canda, having to ship patients to another Country because you could not afford to keep up. America takes some of their premature births, some of their brain injuries, and many other special medical cases like the recent story of the woman from canada who had to be cut in half to save her life all because in Canada an earlt MRI to catch cancer early was not offered. In some ways yes, they can be real. The real boogyman is the big all powerful Government run by people who could not run a McDonald's without being fired. We are placing massive amounts of money and power in the hands of lazy, unmotivated Government workers. I guess you are loss because you can never seem to grasp the concept I point out to you. I have private insurance and get treatment sometimes the same day and had an MRI two days after it was ordered one time so where is the Insurance rationing you speak of? Sure there may be a issue finding a doctor if you don't already have one that is accepted by your system but that can easily be avoided by setting up your doctors ahead of time before your sick. Your PPO you speak of still lets you go to any doctor, they just don't pay as much to the non-included doctor. A all powerful Government system will turn my two day wait for my MRI to 15 months because MRI's are expensive and they must control costs. The same thing for all sorts of expensive medical treatments and medications. You want to be honest all of a sudden? Okay, how about this, I am able to "afford it" because I went out there and "earned" the money used to pay for it? Do you think I always had plenty of money to pay for health insurance? I was motivated by my need to care for my children and myself to go out there and improve my life and "earn" enough money to pay for things like my insurance coverage. You Progressives are the ultimate bigots and racists because you believe some people can't earn their own way through life. You look down your nose at some people and say to yourself, they need the Government to step in because they don't have the ability to find a better life on their own. I have my doubts about you sometimes, like when you tried to claim Obama never promised to not raise taxes. Sometimes you seem out of touch with what is really happening in the world. And on the backs of how many tax payers? We don't know if these jobs are "saved" yet, they are surviving on the Governmnet tit right now and we have to wait and see if they can create vehicles people want to buy at a rate to cover their expenses and create a profit. If they never get off the Government Tit then these jobs are not saved, they are propped up only through massive waste of taxpayer dollars. But hey, at least the over paid Unions are happy right now and we know that is really all the Progressives want anyway. Again, you not being informed of even the most basic facts is disturbing: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/business/02gret.html Mr. Grassley heard back from the Treasury last Tuesday. Herbert M. Allison Jr., assistant secretary for financial stability, confirmed that the money G.M. used to repay its bailout loan had come from a taxpayer-financed escrow account held for the automaker at the Treasury. Don't forget new regulations and direct involvement in what GM will offer the public in vehicle selection. The Government now owns and runs a car company, as I had already pointed out. If Obama is fireing and hiring people that should make it very clear. The benefits package for retired workers (only the retired ones, not the ones actually building cars) of the UAW exceeds the entire pay of all the employees of Nissan. Again, you not knowing very basic facts about the Government ownership of GM is very sad. Most of the money spent by Obama through the tARP program was to buy GM, not give it a loan, well there were a few loans, but most of the 52.4 billion Obama spent on GM was to take majority ownership of GM.

How do you figure that? Your point was that religion comes from books or other people telling you what to believe. eddo was asking a question and even if he does not agree with what snaff believes, how does that mean atheists know more about what it is to be a Christian then a Christian? Do you even know what point your trying to make at this point?

Didn't you say before I have no right to complain about higher taxes on cigarette because I don't smoke? Well why are you crying about them not having insurance when you do have insurance? I love it when you contradict your own possitions Bender, lol. Anyway, I fail to see why it is the Government's responsibility to fix the lives of people? Why do you think these peopel are incapable of fixing their own lives? You found success, do you think your better than them and the only way they can find a better life is if the Government hand delivers a better life to them? All the Government can do is create dependency in the population. So you make my point, you want the Government to give away tax money (you call tax money "help") to those who did not earn it. Okay bender, how exactly does the Governemnt "help" if not give someone something they did not earn? I am all ears, if you can tell me how this is done without taking from those who earned to give to those who did not earn for free I am forever going to join you as a Progressive. No it does not Bender, there is not one Government run system in the world that is run that way. All your doing is replacing a corporation system with a Government system. All Government systems must ration care. At least the corporate system has some educated and professional people running it with very little waste. A Government system is run by idiots who can't cut it in the private sector and they will tripple overhead and increase management costs that will take away from medical care. The Government cannot efficently run a system this big becuase they can't afford to hire anyone with that level of skill so that is why every government run medical care system in the world is filled with massive waiting lines and refusals for certain treatments the Government has decided is too expensive to let the lowly peasants have access to. I currently pay for insurance and gap insurance and can go to the best doctors and get the best treatments available not because I am royalty or because I am a Progressive political elite, but because I worked hard and "EARNED" my healthcare. Sometimes I really believe your not acting stupid. I know most of the time you just pretend not to know these things as an excuse not to admit to the failures of Progressives but even can't believe paying one loan off with another loan is the same thing as paying everything off. GM basically paid one government loan off with another Government loan, they have not made any headway changing the percentage owned by the Government. And who But it was mostly the Unions who screwed it up and what did he do with them Bender? Did Obama punish the Unions? Nope, he gave the Unions part ownership of a private company they previously never had ownership of. Why was it important to give the Unions such a big prize they never deserved Bender? And your still avoiding the point, Obama does own GM and is controlling it. Stopping the insurance companies from dropping people was an easy fix and something several Republicans offered legislation covering that would not cost Americans one dime in tax revinue. But Obama and the Progressives were not happy with just protecting some customers from any rare abuse (nobody I know has ever been dropped for these reasons). Obama and the Progressives wanted as much direct control as they could get so that is why they had to pass this monster that gave them full control through legislation. The Government is now at the helm of the boat, even if the boat does technically belong to someone else.

Sorry, I don't read things that have the word "OPINION" in the URL. . . It appears you never read anything that does not prop up your own belief structure Bender. You even tried to claim Obama never promised not to raise taxes, you seem to be the lest informed person on this forum next to Builder, I find it interesting you share the same political views, it seems being uninformed is the most common connection with Progressives. One insidious force keeping unemployment high is regulatory uncertainty: Companies that could hire (or re-hire), don't -- because they're worried about what new restrictions will be coming down from Washington. Congress bears much of the blame -- especially for the new "financial reform" law, which leaves so many details to be filled in later. But a major contributor to businesses' worries is the Obama Environmental Protection Agency, which is issuing a daily barrage of rules and regulations threatening jobs in American industry. So concludes "EPA's Anti-Industrial Policy: Threatening Jobs and America's Manufacturing Base" -- a new report from the minority staff of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (on which I serve as ranking member). The report focuses on four of the EPA's most egregiously anti-business proposals and explains how they threaten American jobs and global competitiveness. One example: the EPA's proposed rules for industrial boilers -- which the consulting firm IHS-Global Insight found could cost 800,000 jobs. The United Steel Workers union says the proposal "will be sufficient to imperil the operating status of many industrial plants . . . Tens of thousands of these jobs will be imperiled . . . many more tens of thousands of jobs in the supply chains and in the communities where these plants are located also will be at risk." Communities should also be bracing for new regulatory burdens from EPA's pending ozone decision. The Obama EPA is now expected to demand, in some areas, ozone levels lower than what occur naturally in the ambient air. The economic impacts are sure to be disastrous. Nearly 600 counties across the nation could be in "non-attainment," which entails, among other things, draconian new regulations to lower emissions; loss of industry and economic development, including plant closures, and increased fuel and energy costs. Several New York counties -- Monroe, Seneca, Fulton and Essex, among others -- are at risk of "non-attainment" status, meaning more job losses. Unions for Jobs and the Environment, an organization of 12 national and international labor unions (including the United Mine Workers, the Teamsters and the Sheet Metal Workers) warns that the ozone rules "would lead to significant job losses across the country during a period of high unemployment." The Obama administration clearly knows these numbers won't sell with the American public -- it has delayed announcement of the ozone rules from August to the end of this month, too late (it hopes) to register before Election Day. The EPA adds insult to injury with its endangerment finding for greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. This finding (issued after the Senate refused to pass a cap-and-trade bill for the fourth time in seven years) will lead to onerous new regulations potentially covering over 6 million sources in the economy. According to the US Chamber of Commerce, the finding may "force" the EPA to regulate 260,000 office buildings, 150,000 warehouses, 92,000 health-care facilities, 71,000 hotels and motels, 51,000 food-service facilities, 37,000 churches and other places of worship and 17,000 farms. The regulations will pinch a vast range of industries -- including aluminum production, ammonia production, cement, iron, steel, lime, petrochemical, phosphoric acid production and pulp and paper manufacturing. Yet, by EPA estimates, the net effect of these regulations would be to cut global mean temperature by about one-hun dredth of a degree by 2100. Of course, reducing global warming is not the point. As the report shows, the EPA's proposals have negligible environmental benefits. Instead, they are the vanguard of President Obama's anti-industrial policy agenda -- pushing America's manufacturing base overseas. As Americans continue to feel the economic pain of the recession and fear for their jobs, it's time for Congress to do its job: This agenda must be stopped.

And how exactly do you want to "help" them? By giving them stuff they did not earn by taking it away from those who did earn it, and all under specific controls and so called incentives to control their behaviors. If people are having a "hard time" they have themselves, their family, their church, their friends, and their community to help them if they really need help. There is no way a massive Government agency can know if a person really needs help or is just scamming the system. Add on top of that your massive Government system must feed itself on the tax funds as well and in many cases the waste is so massive it is obsene. Look above at your first quote, you say you want Government to help people, that means you want Government to give away free money and services, that is the only way the Government can "help" right? You don't mean you want government agents to move in and do their laundry for them.........right? No Bender, when all of this first came out you said you wanted the Governemnt to destroy the private insurance industry, you said screw the insurance companies. Don't pretend now that your not a big government advocate. GM has not paid the money back, they took Government money from one source to pay off government money from the loans, we still own most of GM. On top of that Obama has direct control of GM, remember when Obama fired their CEO? After Obama took power the Progressives passed new laws givign them the power to control the banking industry, today the banks and GM are puppets to the Government whim. Obama passed legislation controlling how Insurance companies must do business, what services they must provide, who they must cover, and what they can charge for. That seems like a lot of Government control to me. What if these same provisions were applied to your life Bender? If the Government told you what to do and how to do it, would that men your independent and free or a Government entitity because the Govenment controlls your every action?

So all the jobs that went overseas in the last 10 years (mostly in 2001-2007) were the Democrats doing? Refresh my memory... who was the President, and who controlled congress back then. . . 10 years? No buddy, over the last 40 years it has been all powerful Unions and heavy handed Government buracrats that have plundered and over regulated the jobs out of America. Sure, other things like NAFTA helped to kill American jobs, but I also was very vocal against Bush for signing it. But nothing can compare to the destruction of jobs on a recent scale against the harms done by this Administration and it's new agenda through the EPA. Ending oil production was just the beginning. Give this a little read: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/quietest_jobs_killing_machine_xAlRo2nRYjtYKaWKAwe7fN

I don't see that, the fire depatement went there anyway becuase the fire spread to another property that was covered, I can see as a computer making a decision not to roll at first, but once they were already there, how can a human being just watch a famliy home burn and do nothing? Again, charging him extra would be resonable, telling him no, not under any circumstance would they put out the fire was not reasonable in my opinion. Yes, he gambled, but why just stand there and watch his house burn? Was that designed as insult to injury? Rub salt in his wounds because he did not want to give them $75 up front? Send a message to the other County residents that they better pay up? What is next? You have to pay for a cop to show up and investigate your murder?

That would be reasonable hugo, just leaving the residents of the County to fend for themselves seems wrong to me. And the firefighters just watching a home burn also seems wrong to me.

That would be like buying insurance after the fire. No, buying insurance after the fire would cost the insurance company hundreds of thousands of dollars but we are talking about $75, this is not a lot of money and he even offered to pay more. He was not looking to make money out of the deal as the insurance example would seem. He just wanted them to put out the fire, they responded to the fire spreading next door and was already there and still they just watched as a family home burned. That is some cold sh!t. My problem with this is the County refuses to offer fire protection services and the city seems to be extorting money from the County residents. Of course the County commissioners and county mayor are mostly Democrats....... Tell me this, what are basic land taxes for? What does the County resident get for his taxes on his property?

True, but you don't just watch a home burn down just because of a $75 fee. They pay County taxes but the County does not provide fire services. The least the County should do is create a combined service and help County residents get these serivces that most would consider basic. I know you like to act the hard azz hugo but could you really stand there and watch a home burn down and face yourself in the mirror? I could never do that myself, rules be damned, I would have put out the fire if I had been the firefighters. And why not let him pay the $75 then? He offered to pay whatever they wanted and still they said no.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-welfare-20101004,0,5787669.story More than $69 million in California welfare money, meant to help the needy pay their rent and clothe their children, has been spent or withdrawn outside the state in recent years, including millions in Las Vegas, hundreds of thousands in Hawaii and thousands on cruise ships sailing from Miami. State-issued aid cards have been used at hotels, shops, restaurants, ATMs and other places in 49 other states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, according to data obtained by The Times from the California Department of Social Services. Las Vegas drew $11.8 million of the cash benefits, far more than any other destination. The money was accessed from January 2007 through May 2010. Welfare recipients must prove they can't afford life's necessities without government aid: A single parent with two children generally must earn less than $14,436 a year to qualify for the cash assistance and becomes ineligible once his or her income exceeds about $20,000, said Lizelda Lopez, spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services. Round-trip flights from Los Angeles to Honolulu on Orbitz.com Sunday started at $419 — more than 80% of the average monthly cash benefit for a single parent of two on CalWorks, the state's main aid program. "How they can go somewhere like Hawaii and be legit on aid … they can't," said Robert Hollenbeck, a fraud investigator for the Fresno County district attorney's office. "This is money for basic subsistence needs." The $387,908 accessed in Hawaii includes transactions at more than a thousand big-box stores, grocery stores, convenience shops and ATMs on all the major islands. At least $234,000 was accessed on Oahu, $70,626 on Maui, $39,883 on Hawaii and $22,170 on Kauai. The list includes $12,433 spent at the upscale Ala Moana shopping center, $3,030 spent at a group of gift shops next to Jimmy Buffett's Beachcomber restaurant on Waikiki Beach and $2,146 withdrawn from ATMs on the island of Lanai, home to a pair of Four Seasons resorts and little else. "If it's on Lanai, that should trigger an investigation," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. "California taxpayers, who are struggling to keep their own jobs, are subsidizing other people's vacations. That's absurd." Of the nearly $12 million accessed in Las Vegas, more than $1 million was spent or withdrawn at shops and casino hotels on, or within a few blocks of, the 4.5-mile strip. The list includes $8,968 at the Tropicana, $7,995 at the Venetian and its Grand Canal Shoppes, and $1,332 at Tix 4 Tonight, seller of discount admission for such acts as Cirque du Soleil. Although many Las Vegas casinos block the use of welfare cards in ATMs on gambling floors, more than $34,700 has been spent or withdrawn from the ATM at a 7-Eleven in the shadow of Steve Wynn's new Encore casino and a couple of blocks south of Circus Circus. The store's owner, Rupee Chima, knows the California welfare cards well. He said the people using them don't look like high rollers. "They're not coming in with Rolexes," he said. And it's possible, he noted, to pack a bunch of people in a car, drive four hours from Los Angeles and share a room at a down-market casino hotel for a relatively frugal vacation. Californian Omar Mikhail, dining at Encore, said his parents paid their rent with welfare aid when they immigrated to the Bay Area from Afghanistan in the early 1980s. They would never have dreamed of driving to Las Vegas with their monthly check, he said. "When I hear something like that, it's so disheartening," he said. The data show addresses of stores and ATM locations where the cards have been used and the amounts of the transactions by year. They do not reveal the identities of the welfare recipients or show how many users visited a given retailer. Of the $1.5 million accessed in Florida, $13,109 was spent or withdrawn in South Beach, most of that at bars and restaurants along trendy Lincoln Road. More than $7,000 was withdrawn from ATMs a few hours north, at Walt Disney World. The data also show $16,010 withdrawn from 14 cruise ships sailing from ports around the world — Long Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing. Eight sail primarily from Miami. The out-of-state spending accounts for less than 1% of the $10.8 billion spent by welfare recipients during the period covered, and advocates note that there are legitimate reasons to spend aid money outside of California. From the data provided, it cannot be determined whether any of the expenditures resulted from fraud. "I think when somebody hears it's in a fancy hotel in Hawaii or Vegas, it's too easy to assume the [welfare recipient] is visiting that place and it wasn't somebody who stole their card," said Jessica Bartholow, a legislative advocate for the Western Center on Law and Poverty. There is no rule preventing welfare recipients from leaving California, as long as they get clearance from their county case worker to be absent from the program's 32-hour-a-week job training requirement. County investigators, who state authorities say are responsible for rooting out fraud and abuse, typically don't question a recipient's whereabouts until transactions on a welfare card show that he or she has been gone for more than 30 days. "If it's a one-time thing in Miami, we would never check that out," said John Haley, commander of the financial crimes division of the San Diego County district attorney's office, who said 24% of all new welfare applications in his jurisdiction contain some form of fraud. "We look for patterns of abuse." In Los Angeles County, investigators hadn't been checking until a recipient was gone for three months, said Department of Public Social Services Director Philip Browning. The inability to do more was "really just a resource issue," he said. Following questions from The Times, Browning said investigators would start inquiring once the data show that a recipient has been gone for more than 30 days. Many recipients travel to other states in an emergency such as a death in the family, investigators say. But with government resources scarce, it's difficult to sort those cases from incidents of abuse. An anti-fraud unit in Orange County, which won praise from state officials last year for saving the state millions, has since had to slash its budget and lay off 15 investigators, said Paul Bartlett, commander of the county district attorney's Bureau of Investigation. Those cuts saved $900,000 in operating expenses but allowed "an estimated $9.6 million in suspected fraud payments out the door," according to an Orange County Grand Jury report released in May. A state audit last year found that none of California's 58 counties was adequately following up on information that could help root out fraud, including monthly computer matches that list clients who are receiving duplicate aid from other states, those who are ineligible because they're in prison and others who have died.

Here is another great example of how Progressives never get enough tax revenue: http://www.wpsdlocal6.com/news/local/Firefighters-watch-as-home-burns-to-the-ground-104052668.html OBION COUNTY, Tenn. - Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won't respond, then watches it burn. That's exactly what happened to a local family tonight. A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground. The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning. Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay. The mayor said if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck. This fire went on for hours because garden hoses just wouldn't put it out. It wasn't until that fire spread to a neighbor's property, that anyone would respond. Turns out, the neighbor had paid the fee. "I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick. Because of that, not much is left of Cranick's house. They called 911 several times, and initially the South Fulton Fire Department would not come. The Cranicks told 9-1-1 they would pay firefighters, whatever the cost, to stop the fire before it spread to their house. "When I called I told them that. My grandson had already called there and he thought that when I got here I could get something done, I couldn't," Paulette Cranick. It was only when a neighbor's field caught fire, a neighbor who had paid the county fire service fee, that the department responded. Gene Cranick asked the fire chief to make an exception and save his home, the chief wouldn't. We asked him why. He wouldn't talk to us and called police to have us escorted off the property. Police never came but firefighters quickly left the scene. Meanwhile, the Cranick home continued to burn. We asked the mayor of South Fulton if the chief could have made an exception. "Anybody that's not in the city of South Fulton, it's a service we offer, either they accept it or they don't," Mayor David Crocker said. Friends and neighbors said it's a cruel and dangerous city policy but the Cranicks don't blame the firefighters themselves. They blame the people in charge. "They're doing their job," Paulette Cranick said of the firefighters. "They're doing what they are told to do. It's not their fault." To give you an idea of just how intense the feelings got in this situation, soon after the fire department returned to the station, the Obion County Sheriff's Department said someone went there and assaulted one of the firefighters. I'm sorry, but you don't watch a home burn to the ground just because he did not pay an extra $75 fee. Basic land taxes used to cover all services but local Governments have decided that they can extort more money out of residents by refusing to give them fire protection unless they pay an extra fee? Really?

I am not mad so no need to simmer down. What is a lie eddo? Being dishonest is a lie and both of them were dishonest about what I said, so they told a lie. Emkay did it several times trying to insert words into my mouth I never said. What I meant was clear, all they both did was grasp at any excuse to take shots at me and lie instead of admitting I offered a great example of how impossible it is for an Atheist to understand Christianity without faith. I don't really care about Builder, he has proven himself to be an uneducated idiot many times over, but emkay is actually a very smart person and even if she does not believe it I want to respect her very much and each time she tells a lie just because she can't come up with anything else to respond with against my points it really makes it difficult to give her that respect. This is why I also offered the example of love, we can't prove love exists using science, but it exists all the same. This need to create various religions I believe is caused by their need to define what they can't fully understand. Humans have this drive to explain everything in human terms but this feeling we have is something that we can't give human meaning to. This is why I say that while a Atheist can memorize a passage from the Bible or know all sorts of religious methods, there is no way they can know Christianity without faith. Or reading a Bible makes you a Christian just as much as reading a western makes you a cowboy. I also believe that most of the time they are trying to get closer to the same God. Each of us are approached by God in a way we are able to receive his love. Depending on how we are raised or our cultural differences, we may need a slightly different approach and God is all things to all men. I don't try to force God into my vision of what God must be.

I agree, if you want better then either move or deal with the transportation issues. The big problem is our largest growing part of our population is the single, never wed mother with at least two children. I don't care how great of a mother you are, there are limits to your time and energy. Just from basic human limits the average child is going to be stuck in whatever is the least energy using option. I do like the voucher system if it brings more accountability and less Union manuvering to education. Many school systems spend arounf 1/3 of their budget on non-teaching elements of the schools from mowing the grass to running massive school board buildings and school board staffs. Imagine if they could put that money back into teaching..........

And yet those same people are the only people creating jobs on any real level. How does it help their community to discourage people from investing? The class warfare is how the Progressives 'sell' their tax increases. They show how evil the "rich" are and how they need to pay more becuase it is unfair they have so much while other people have so little......what a bunch of garbage. You can't elevate one segment by bringing down another segment of society. Great prosperity of one group let's them want more success and create more jobs and that leade everyone to doing better. If you bring down the one guy who is doing well, then you also bring down his incentive to create new jobs so you have basically killed the goose that way laying the golden eggs (jobs). You know what is even worse? If this measure passes the Progressives will pay a group to "ESTIMATE" how much new tax money they will get and before the first dime is collected, they will have spent it all and after they don't get as much tax money as is predicted (they are always short) suddenly the Progressives will say how they have to raise taxes again to make up for the shortfall....... At this point I just tell the Progressives no. No more new taxes, live on what you have, streamline the waste in the existing programs you already have. A Progressive will never get enough tax money, they always spend every dime and are out there with their hands in our pockets again, and agan, and again. It never stops.

School districts are different depending on the State but most let you place your child in a different school in the same County but the problem is transportation. The school and county can't have busses running in all directions so if you want your kid going to a different public school than the one your normally in, then you have to figure out how to get them there and pick them up. Most homes don't have a stay at home mom so this can make the choices limited. Of course private schools are available but like you said, some feel it is too expensive while I don't like them becuase kids don't learn the social skills they need to live in this world properly. I can help my kids learn if the local school is not teaching thengs I believe they should know, but it is impossible for me to remove the years of conditioned superiority complex that seems to show up on anyone who attends private school. The idea for vouchers is that parents can get a check from the State to use tword private school and only have to pay the difference instead of the entire cost. I personally only like this idea if it grows enough to get more normal background kids in the private schools to dilute the air of entitlement so many of those kids wear like a crown.

What I said was clear, you lied and tried to make it seem like I said God had nothing to do with faith, your doing that because you can't admit I proved my point that there is no way an Atheist can understand faith based on only what they can find in a book. Several times in this thread you have tried to assign things to me that I have never said, why you constantly lie about my points I don't know but still you are doing it.

So emkay, is a woman clearly defined and understood completely based on an inspection of her scientific elements and written in a book or is a woman more than that? Can a person completely understand everything you are as a woman by reading and memorizing an anatomy book? If you were to tell the truth you would have to admit that a woman is more, so why is it so difficult for you to understand that there is more to faith than what you can find in a religious book or ceremony? These are human answers, not scientific answers. Using pure science there is no way to prove love exists. Do you love anyone emkay? Cana book define your love and how that love can be a little different depending on who your talking about? Do we proclaim love as nonexistent because we can't prove it is real in a book?

Again, you guys have to lie to try and get out of the point. I never said God had nothing to do with faith, I said God had nothing to do with the creation of individual religions. Religions are a creation of man in his attempt to worship and understand God. There has never been a command from God to form any specific religion and most certainly has never created a name for it. Faith comes directly from God and not from any book or church. It is a feeling inside you, a connection you feel through your soul, not from someone else or from any religious tool or textbook. You do not need the ability to read or attend a church to be saved.