BJean

yes kartman, I do find it interesting and too bad. HappyC, thank you for your post. I've been trying to tell people that too from my own vantage point (which is not Muslim) but coming from you, it is much more powerful!

I'm wretching. Doesn't it just make you want to join her faith? Certainly explains why she embraces the extremist right wing rethoric and hangs on for dear life.

Uh oh Leigha, you're trying to bring sense and logic to the debate. That's where the breakdown starts. Because for some it is just the argument that they want. They don't understand the logic or the sense of the health care reform debate. And they do not want to. Don't cloud the discussion with the real merits of it. Just be loud and use all the buzz words that you can think of - even reaching as far back as the Reagan years. That's what Republicans do best - slogans and rethoric! Truth and logic be damned. Begins to feel a lot like banging your head against the wall.

Dang, a few months ago I got my Droid. Shoulda waited for the iphone. Hated to go back on my contact with Verizon. This business and technology stuff... it'll drive ya nuts.

Well yes, congress was controlled by republicans in Clinton era. So they are totally responsible for everything good that happened when Clinton was in office... Well, I don't think so. The president is not super powerful when it comes to legislation, but he does have some power and Clinton did manage to get some things done even with the people who tried their level best to get him thrown out of office. When I think of all the money they spent and the ungodly way they handled the Lewinsky affair, it makes me nuts. :-)

God didn't write anything so nothing is straight from the word of God. Everything that is described as God's word has been revealed to us through a human being. The Bible is a wonderful book. But it does not contain words STRAIGHT from God. I don't understand how someone's faith is true when they assert things that are not true. Your faith would be more impressive if you saw things for what they really are instead of how you wish they were.

Nope Chris I can't tell you that there weren't rallies or sermons in churches in support of Obama on election night. Kinda makes you want to toss a bomb in there, doesn't it? You're right, of course it happens on both sides. But Christian and Catholic churches are generally conservative and they have very selfish motives for supporting Republicans. Some Christian churches support Democratic candidates because they have poor and working class congregations. I certainly appreciate you teling us about getting driven nuts on election night by rallies for Obama on election night. It's always good to see both sides of a discussion.

"and its down 56 cents today? whats your point?" Really? You don't get it? My point is that investors are not worried. They're still buying and selling AT&T stock. If they were scared, AT&T stock would be dropping like a rock. Well, for some 56 cents sounds like a huge drop, but it's all a game. People will simply invest in it when it's down. Hurrah for AT&T. They're geniuses.

tdsfl1, we have to pay for the war in Iraq and the military presence we have in Afghanistan. Also that charming little Bush tax cut fiasco was another joke on Americans. Republicans always seem to refuse to raise taxes (although the senior Bush had no choice) and they always bellow about "read my lips, no new taxes" but it has to be done when they run up the deficit like the Bush administration and Republican congress did. Historically they know the Democrats will do the right thing. Then after the Dems right the sinking ship, Republicans run a loud hateful campaign about Democrats being all about raising taxes. So the Republicans get back in control and do whatever it takes to line their own pockets while they're in office and mainstream Americans pay the price. It's appears to be a chain of events that is inevitable.

"Shares in AT&T, which is based in Dallas, climbed 7 cents to $26.22 in afternoon trading Friday." Guess investors are really scared, eh?

patty if the government didn't step in and regulate cars, roads and traffic, there would be chaos in the streets and many more people would be killed in traffic accidents. Some drivers are maniacs and road hogs and drive while intoxicated and we need rules to protect American lives. Business regulation in the United States makes sense too. Not all business owners are trustworthy. Many of them will do anything to make a buck, and I mean ANYTHING. They will take unfair advantage of their workers and treat them like dogs. They will lie, cheat and steal from their customers. There is no end to the kinds of really bad behavior that corporations and business people are guilty of. Someone needs to oversee them for the good of the country and its' citizens. Having no government oversight promotes corporate bad behavior and problems like Enron become all too common. Americans who worked hard all their lives to save for their future lost everything to the greedy bastards at Enron. That's not fair and regulations can help to prevent those kinds of predatory business practices. I totally understand the things you say about freedom to make money and run your own company without government interference. And if businesses had a conscience and conducted work fairly, there would be no need for government oversight. But the fact is, people tend to be consumed by greed and selfishness and they will take advantage of others to make a buck when the opportunity presents itself. I am sorry you can't understand this. Your negative thoughts about the government seem to be clouding your sense of fairness for all, to the extent that you are favoring the capitalist elite over regular Americans trying to eke out a living.

patty: "The extent you will go to defend your government astounds me!" The extent you will go to defend greed and corruption astounds me!

Oh yeah, all murders are crazy. *roll eyes* Oh but wait... you now have changed your verbiage from "crazy" to not "in their right mind and thinking straight" what tha? There is a big difference between those two concepts and like with the term christianity, there is usually more than one meaning for words. But a person isn't allowed to use a word in one context of their post one way and then arbitrarily decide afterwards that they didn't mean it that way, because what they really meant was something different. At least not if one is to read their posts and have them mean much. You can change the meaning easily, with no confusion, if you just say something like... what I meant to say is that people who commit murder are momentarily not in their right mind and thinking straight instead of pretending that the word crazy means: momentarily not in ones' right mind and thinking straight. So your religion or faith in christianity the way you say the Bible defines it, does not require you to do anything but believe, eh? Then why do you feel it is incumbent upon you to go about witnessing to others all the time? Just a personal choice I guess. Hasn't a thing to do with the Bible or Jesus requiring that from you so you can make your way into heaven, right? I'll be real honest with you. If I had never heard of Jesus, Christianity or the Bible, and you were the only source of information on the subject, I would run in the totally opposite direction. Because many of the things you say sound completely crazy. Or I guess I should I say that you sound, momentarily, like you're not in your right mind or thinking straight.

It is very stupid to write people off as mentally insane just because you do not agree with them or because you think that they are too extreme in their beliefs and the way they choose to act on their beliefs. By the way, the word christianity can be looked up in the Bible. You didn't invent the word and your definition is not the strict definition of the word.

Ah if only it were true, patty. Then we wouldn't have to argue about capital punishment. We don't put mentally ill people to death. That's why they have the "not guilty by reason of insanity" defense. Everyone who kills isn't insane. And everyone who invokes passages from the Bible to justify their deeds aren't mentally ill either. We may not always understand their motivation for doing those things but many are just very selfish, self-important and very misguided people.

Yay Cleo's. Once again you bring relevant data to the discussion. I wish some of the news media were as diligent about including relevant historical data when they're writing controversial stories to report. A few do, but a very few. Probably too much work and of course, not as shocking.

Well that's true Leigha. But I also believe that they are disengenuous in their stupid sloganeering. (I'm pretty sure I made that word up. Hmmm, it seems to describe what they've been doing though.)

Some of patty's links and photos remind me of this quote by Lane. "He [she] uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

Listening to the tea baggers is like listening to the losing team after a big loss - "we were robbed" "the umpire sucked" "those guys cheated" "no fair!!" When there's a bunch of bad sports bellyaching after a loss, you don't hear them take responsibility for the loss. It's always everybody elses fault and the winners cheated. Why didn't the tea baggers work as hard on winning and seeing to it that their representatives worked at fixing the health care system instead of just saying "no" and whining about what awful people the winning players were?

The hyprocrisy in the Catholic Church has always been a problem. Now that the Pope himself has been shown to have put the church before its' parishoners health and well being is almost unthinkable! If any of these priests had been teachers in a public school, the uproar and anger would have been played out in the news media and in our communities to the point that Americans would be calling for public lynchings. There's nothing much worse than for someone who has influence over a child, for them to sexually abuse those children. Children look to adults for guidance. They consider adults the ones who are there to teach them to do the right thing in all ways. We have a friend whose son attended a Baptist Church elementary school in Tampa, Florida. They didn't find out about their son's sexual abuse by one of the male teachers until after he was grown and had been in the Army (in a bomb disposal unit) for several years. He came home from the desert a wreck. It took many nights of drinking alcohol, hand wringing and support by his parents before he could unburden himself of the horrific things that happened to him when he was a child at the hands of that teacher. Can you imagine that scenario? Can imagine that happening to your child? They did their research and learned that the same teacher who abused their son was still a teacher at that school. How many years did that vile human being commit disgusting acts on boys who relied on him? How many other parents learned what that man did to their own sons over the years? Anyone who didn't report it and anyone who swept it under the rug is just as culpable as the pedophile himself as far as I'm concerned. John is still in therapy - too many years after his first discussion with his parents about the sexual assault against him when he was a child. The Pope and everyone involved need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Otherwise when will it ever cease?

I just finished typing a post on another thread about this. Why do Americans feel safe from foreign terrorists when the terrorists we should fear the most are right next door to us?

Now everybody can't be absolutely right, can they? What is needed is faith, personal commitment and trust. When someone speaks in absolutes whether they are protestant, Catholic, Muslim or any other faith, they must remember that they are only believing what THEY feel comfortable with and what makes sense to them. That's one reason why there are so many faiths. If the Bible were actually written by the hand of God, as some believe, then we wouldn't need to have all the religious debates and we probably wouldn't have so many non-believers. Because if the Bible had actually been written by God, we would have proof and not have to rely on faith alone. So everyone must choose for him or her self. And there are many choices and ways to interpretet the Bible and other religious books, ad infinatim. But what every person of faith must understand (and there are so many, many fanatics who do not understand this) YOU do not have all the answers. YOU offer no proof whatsoever - you only have what you believe to sustain you and to guide you. And you must never declare that your way is the only way! You must respect other faiths because they represent real people's beliefs. And although you may not believe that they are right with all your heart, their faith is, in fact, just as valid as your own. Now I know you look at other religions around the world and you can't understand how in the world a person could embrace their very strange "good book" as the true way, truth and light. But that is not for you to say. You are not annointed as the prophet sent from heaven to convert all souls to your faith. If you had been sent from God, you would be perfect and sinless and none of us is. So we must allow each other our various beliefs and we must respect each other and treat each other as God's children, no matter what we believe. There are people who believe that the Bible is simply a literary work, filled with parables and fascinating stories to give it the kind of merit one would need to adopt faith in God and the Bible. Those people too, deserve our respect and their intellect and education may serve them well in this life. They may in fact, be much better people than some religious extremists who are hell bent on destruction of those who do not agree with their beliefs. So it is up to us to become aware, to qestion everything and resolve in our own mind and soul, just exactly what we believe and which God we follow - or if we follow no God. Religion has been one of the reasons that countries go to war. And it has been one of the reasons that terrorists are motivated to kill other human beings. So it's not surprising that we might disagree here and try to verbally duke it out. It's healthy to discuss our differences but what we always must remember is to respect one another in the debate. Otherwise, we are in jeapordy of becoming an extremist who eventually, in frustration, finds ourselves disliking people of other faiths so much that eventually we even wish to harm those of other faiths. And my most important message is for religion to be kept out of our government. With these kinds of differences in our very basic, very basic, beliefs there is a good chance that we too could become as crazed and angry as some of the terrorists around the world. And if that happened, our country too could become a killing field. Reading this morning about some of the events that were planned by a number of Americans in this country only goes to show that religious zealots exist here, just like they exist in the middle east. So you know I am right about learning tolerance and respect. Those zealots did not start out just reading the Bible. It was a journey that brought them to this point. And along the way they lost respect for not only people from other churches but also anyone who specifically does not agree with their very rigid personal beliefs.

And btw, Sarah Palin should be crowned the queen of the tea baggers! She is definitely the source of some of their slogans, bitterness and anger.

Don't be so quick to say that Americans won't vote for craziness. Those wackos (very wealthy wackos) managed to get John Kerry defeated by calling him everything but the war hero he was. If they are capable of pulling that off, I sure don't put anything past them. You should look back at the elections over the past 40 years, including the primaries, and you will see what dastardly deeds the Republicans are capable of and willing to do to stay in power. Do not under estimate people who are willing to do anything for money and power, no matter how dishonest or illegal it might be.

Churches have become bastions of all things political. Church members are told how and why and for whom to vote. Ministers rail against any candidate or policy that goes against their own belief system. And the Pope tells everybody in the Catholic church exactly what they are expected do politically. As long as politics are conducted from the pulpits in America, then they should not be tax free entities.