kagoscuba

Moderate. Death penalty conservative though, and I just read this morning that the a-hole who was the person responsible for Megan's Law being created will no longer have to worry about death here in NJ, as the death penalty is 99% sure to be repealed. Give me a gun and a free shot, and I'll take care of it. I won't shed a tear either.

Just would like to see what other peole think about this administration's sudden adoration of torture, and I want to see if I am left-wing, right-wing, or just plain nuts (most likely). The torture de jour is waterboarding. 1. Is it torture? 2. Should people in the US caught doing it be prosecuted as war criminals? 3. Would you support state-sanctioned torture of someone to save 1 person, 10 people, a thousand, a million people? My Answers: 1. Yes 2. Yes - because the US has prosecuted Japanese commanders for waterboarding US troops during WWII, and they were sentenced to life in prison. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Not to mention waterboarding is against the Geneva Convention and the UCMJ. 3. No to all. Total left-wing loon, right? Wait...there's more. I don't support government sanctioned torture. In other words, it is bad policy. It makes the US a lesser place to have this policy part of the official record. We lose the appearance of having a moral high ground, as a nation. Nothing is rarely as it appears, however...what the CIA does in black-ops they do not need to report to the general public, and they should use any methods deemed needed. If they need to torture, maim, or kill to get the information they need, then so be it. However, tell them if they get caught, they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That keeps them discrete (as they should be already). I call it the speeding car syndrome. We are all given cars that are made to exceed any speed limit here in the US. We are given the freedom to drive the car, within a set of laws. If we break the laws though, we get penalized. For better or worse agencies like the CIA perform duties most of are unable or unwilling to do, and those duties are needed to keep us free. While I am against wholesale torturing of prisoners; I also understand there are times when more extreme measures are needed. *donning flame suit* FLAME ON!! :eek:

"We all suck and will eventually kill each other off..." That's why, when people ask if I am scared diving with sharks, I always laugh and say, "Have you been to the mall recently? That's a lot scarier than any dive where the sharks show up." At least sharks are semi-predictible.

"For your information, I was self pay.. insurance did not pay for me. And if getting my band to lose 40 lbs of overweight is inmoral to you.. then you have issues." I went back to make sure, and yep I never used you or your in my statement. I will now. You ignored the basis of the statement and allowed yourself to think the statement was pointed at you. It was not. The statement was to make you think about the illogical rational you were using. Telling a woman to keep her legs together is simple enough. So is telling a fat person to keep their mouth shut or telling a smoker not to light up. It's even as easy as telling a man to go beat off in a corner instead of asking the woman to have sex with them. (unlike overeating or smoking, there are two sets of influences for human sexuality) I used the morality clause, not as a personal attack, but as a sign of how absurd the argument (the one I used) was. The monetary clause was used as an additional point of contention and was not personally directed at you (for that matter, I am a self-pay as well), nor did I even look at how much weight you had lost, but congratulations.

"IMO women that don't want things (because they apparently consider babies just things or they wouldn't kill them) growing in their bellies should probably keep their legs closed." Wow...and I guess that people that don't want to be fat should keep their mouths closed. If they are fat, it is their choice and problem, and anyone who uses medical science to get "un-fat" is not being moral. Why should science and insurance pay for a mistake that was made by a bad entirely personal choice? Hell, fat people didn't even have someone else asking/begging/sometimes forcing them to make the bad choice.

Just to play devil's advocate: Joshua: 8:23 And the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua. 8:24 And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword. 8:25 And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai. 8:26 For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Not that any of this allays the severity of the deed the father did to his daughter; however, there is much smiting and dying, in the name of the Lord, in the Bible too. I'm no fan of the Muslim religion, but examples of one-off items like you provided don't add too much to the argument; in fact, they would tend to dilute it with the hint of ethnocentrism introduced.

wasa - That's why I chose my solution. It takes the onus of the "moral" decision away from the mother and gives it to society at large. If society at large wants to dictate how she must deal with a pregnancy, then make society at large accountable by forcing them to raise the child. The mother gets what she wants - no child to raise; society gets what they want - no child dies; and pro-choice people like me get what we want - a barometer of how true the pro-life people are being to themselves. They talk a good game, but as Ben Franklin and Tom Brady most recently said: "It's better done than better said." Let's see how they react when the government shows up at the door with their new unexpected bundle of joy. We'll even give them 9 months notice a baby is coming so it won't be one day to the next.

oops, made mistake in first version...the last "pro-choice" was meant to be "pro-life."

<p><p>"the ideal would be a solution that would protect the mother's rights and the baby's rights for those who think that the baby should have rights.."</p> <p> </p> <p>This is probably not a new idea, as ideas rarely are, but here is my shot. Have a national binding referendum on abortion. In order to vote in this referendum you have to be 21 (reason will be clear later) or older and you have to sign a registry which lists you as pro-choice or pro-life. Based upon the results of this referendum, if abortion remains legal, then nothing changes. However, if abortion is made illegal, then the follwoing happens: Any unwanted child first can go to those couples wanting to adopt. If the baby is not adopted within 1 year, then the child is placed in the home of one of the registrants who claimed "pro-choice" as their affiliation. This child cannot be refused by the chosen guardian. Mandatory monthly social worker visits will be required for the first 4 years, in order to account for the health/safety of the child.</p> <p>In this system, the child wins, anti-abortion voters win, and we all get to see if the pro-life lobby will put-up or shut-up in order to get this referendum passed. If they truly care about the children, then this should be a no-brainer.</p></p>

"some Jews who had killed Christ" Jews do not deny they had something to do with the death of the Jew known as Jesus Christ. However, it was a particular sect of Judaism that was concerned with the death of Christ, and it wasn't a crime against Christianity, as Christianity did not exist yet. A group of Jews killed another Jew they accused of heresay. End of story? Nope...it took awhile but 351 years later the religion of Christianity was codified at the council of Nicene. That'd be like the United States declaring independence in 1776 and writing the Declaration of Independence in 2127. Doesn't make much sense. The more I learn the more I question.

Zero-Tolerance equals Zero-Intelligence. We are creating a nation of emasculated auto-bots.

I drink the occasional beer. I can't get down more than two bottles due to feeling full. That's about 1/3 of what I could get down in an evening (not every evening) of drinking beer before the band.

"What is talking white? talking black?" It could be worse, you could be told you "look Jewish." That's about as intelligent as telling the Pope he looks Catholic. It happens all the time to Jews though. Oh, and I made the mistake, while I was in the military, of calling someone black who was so black that in the words of Chris Rock, "if it was nighttime and he closed his eyes, he'd disappear," but the person was Puerto Rican. He was not pleased, and I got to hear how it was offensive to him and other Puerto Ricans, and Puerto Ricans run the gamet from very dark-skinned to blonde hair and blue eyes. Lesson learned.

I slightly misquoted Mr. Huckabee. Here is exactly what was said: In 1998, Huckabee told a Baptist convention that “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ,” and explained why he gave up pastoring for political campaigning: “I didn’t get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.” Jesus Wept.

Romney (OUTSTANDING speech the other day), then Giuliani, then McCain. I liked Huckabee as a candidate until I found out he did not believe in evolution and has a vision of America "united by Christ." I still like a lot of his views and he's probably a lot of fun to hang out with and have a beer or two, but you couldn't get me to vote for him unless he was running against Stalin. Of course Hillary is only Stalin in a dress. If Barack wins the Democratic ticket, it'll be a tougher choice for me (I'm Independent).

"When a scientist’s interpretation of data does not match the clear meaning of the text in the Bible, we should never reinterpret the Bible. God knows just what He meant to say, and His understanding of science is infallible, whereas ours is fallible. So we should never think it necessary to modify His Word. " Please provide another website that is not as laughable as the one with the quote above. Like I have mentioned before, this post is as much the word of God as the Bible is. This post was written by a man, edited by a man, and it had data not included by choice...just like the Bible. Any person obtuse enough to think the Bible is infallible is either hopelessly ignorant or blindly devout to the point of self-delusion. This type of delusion is even creeping into our presidential election. Mike Huckabee has already stated he 100% does not believe in evolution and wishes for a country "united by Christ." I like Mike Huckabee for a lot of reasons, but for the two reasons I mentioned, he doesn't have a prayer (pardon the pun) of getting my vote.

Yep...that's sliming. I had a little bout of that last night. I'm still getting used to the second fill. I'm still on my mushies stage and went with something that worked well after the first fill: grits. So, I'm happily eating my grits, when I had that "oh crap, this is gonna hurt" feeling. For the next 15 minutes or so I got to feel why grits are called grits. I felt each and every individual grit try and make it's way down my stomach...not fun. A bellyfull of gurgling grits is not an optimum way to enjoy Monday Night Football. I felt worse than the Atlanta Falcons were playing.

"the Bible holds no controversy or ambiguity for me whatsoever" It does to me. For one thing it was written by men. Two, it was vetted by various groups and entire chapters were thrown out of it. Three, lots of things were lost in translation. For example, "Thou shalt not kill" was not in the "original" version. Translated from the original Hebrew, that commandment read, "Thou shalt not murder." There is a big difference in connotation there. For example, those who refuse to fight in war because it is killing (thus in conflict with the Bible) lose their argument, when faced with the true translation. Not to mention, there was lots of God-sanctioned war in the Bible.

I consider, "I prayed and got the result I wanted" to be mere coincidence. Chinese, of the "Boxer Rebellion" thought they were impervious to bullets. Many people ran out in front of bullets and came away unscathed by coincidence. Thus, this led to the idea that the idiotic belief had some merit. More people ran out in front of the bullets, and slowly but surely probability swung its uncompromising scythe over the believers. I had a friend die three months ago from cancer, at the age of 37. Lots of people prayed for him to live...I guess you could say the parayer was answered in the fact he will live forever in our memory, but who am I to argue semantics with the prayer answerer guy?

You might have lost enough weight from your second fill to where the restriction is gone. I learned on Friday that restriction is a combination of the band and your body's pressure from surrounding tissue that keeps the opening small. I found out because when I saw my band on the floro (just before 2nd fill) both me and my doctor saw the band was wide-open, compared to my first fill, and he said that was completely normal, since I've lost considerable weight since the 1st fill.

Got my second fill last Friday, and what a difference!! I can feel yogurt and shakes going down now. I was able to eat broccoli, chicken, chili, and pickles before, but I doubt I'll be able to next week, when I go back to solids. I foresee a lot of liquids in my diet for the next few months.

"I know there is a God by the many blessings he has given me in my life" Do you mean blessings he has given you personally or to all of us? The reason why I ask is from the point of view that there is a God, but we are essentially like a huge ant farm. He (or she, or it) put all of the ingredients together and watches what evolves. The old Christian idiom of "God helps those who helps themselves" is a pretty blatent way of saying "God doesn't have one iota of physical presence here on earth." Much as luck doesn't exist, physical interaction between God and humans does not exit. I would say every blessing you have received has been the direct result of either the hard work/love of someone who cares for you or your own for someone else. I use the God/luck example like this. If God interfered, you wouldn't need a parishoner in Colorado with a gun to kill an intruder at a church; he would do it for them. Buying a lottery ticket and winning the lottery is not lucky. Not buying a ticket and winning the lottery would be lucky. Like luck, many "blessings" are a matter of coincidental intersection, even if the coincidence is affected by a matter as small as getting out of bed that morning 5 minutes earlier than normal (could be the difference between buying the ticket and dying in a car accident on the way to buy the ticket).

I'm not an atheist, but my religion is quite contrary to the "norm" here in the US. I was raised a Methodist, went to church every Sunday, sang in the choir, went to vacation Bible School, and many other activities. These activities were always driven by my parents,and questioning religion was seen as "not having faith." well, once I was free of my parental bonds, I started questioning and reading more than the Bible. That's where I had the epiphany: "Religion is not the truth, God is." Once I read about the council of Nicene, the conditions surrounding the creation of the Apostle's Creed, and the bastardization of the Bible, I was enlightened. The Bible is no more the word of God than this post is. It has wonderful words and meaning, and the spirit of God may be in it; however, to believe,as some do, it is the infallible word of God is folly. That being said, I do follow many of the teachings of the Bible, and I do thank my parents for putting me on the path to enlightenment; I also thank God for giving me the intellect to question and use reason to walk the path.

Thanks everyone!! Boy, I thought I was filled before, but not really. I'm not PB'ing, but I feel even yogurt and pudding going down, unlike before. I'm going to have to be REALLY careful, when I go back to solids.

tell them to kiss your "smaller booty!"