Is is just me, or does this title fit a good portion of the people that post in the Rant & Raves? Personally, I am a Heterosexual Conservative, God-fearing Christian, but to each their own. Before you get all froggy & jump, I have many friends from all walks of life & that includes homosexual liberal.....well, I don't know any atheists.

Basically, I just wanted a reason to post this pic. Ya'll can Rant & Rave about it. Have fun & I'll enjoy reading.

"Finally on my drive I saw a big church along the highway that hand a big pond in front and in the pond there was a huge statue of Jesus's upper torso with his eyes and hands raised towards the heavens. My wife asked me what it represented and I looked at it then said to my wife, I think he is asking "Who pushed me in this Goddam puddle"

Buwhahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa :pound:

Wow! This is so different from where I live. Up here the church is not welcome in the affairs of the state.

Well, Green, it's not supposed to be this way in United States either.

I'm so depressed I am thinking of moving up your way. I can't take this bullshit here any more.

Some folks are fighting back. Or they were. I haven't read this link in a long time so there may be more updated info throughout the site, not sure.

http://www.catholicvote.net/news_releases/index.htm

Green: How would you deal with a scenario whereby your Christian social right started shouting to the rooftops that anyone who disagreed with their stance on a person's right to choose and same sex marriages, was anti-Christian and going against the Bible? Not only that, what if they came into power and used their power to influence every aspect of the government and your military? What if the leftists became completely impotent and you even had to worry because your elections appeared to be fixed?

Well, that's the point of both my and TommyO's posts. Such a scenario does not seem to be in the cards in this country. Our Christian social right is not well viewed by mainstream Canadians - indeed they are regarded as a fanatical fringe group to put it bluntly - and our Conservative party was finally able to achieve a minority government only by squelching the voices of those members who attempted to talk a Christian social conservative line. This uneasy minority victory was also helped along by the fact that the Liberals, a party which had been in power for many years, was now viewed as being careless and corrupt.

As for our elections being corrupt, for both provincial and federal elections we rely on the printed ballot which must be marked by pencil. Collecting these ballots and counting them is done on something much like a pyramid system and all parties have their local members present during the voting day and at the count as well. It may in theory be possible to corrupt a poll or two but when you take into account that an urban poll takes in only a few streets you can see this business becomes complicated. Moreover, the total number of official ballots handed out must correspond with the number of names crossed off for every poll and all these documents must be saved against further review. It is true that a lot of trees get killed whenever Canadians have an election....:cry

It should also be noted that the largest single group of Christians in Canada are Catholic. This is not only because many of us are French Canadian but also because many of our Christian immigrants come from Catholic countries. These are folks who come from Italy, Poland, the Phillipines, the Hispanic countries, Ireland, Portugal, Spain.....

Wow! This is so different from where I live. Up here the church is not welcome in the affairs of the state.

Well, Green, it's not supposed to be this way in United States either.

I'm so depressed I am thinking of moving up your way. I can't take this bullshit here any more.

You would certainly be welcome to move up here. There is a blog by an American who decided to move to Canada; it is called We Move to Canada and it makes for interesting reading. She describes everything she went through before moving up here and she also describes the differences between the two countries. Something I never knew is that Americans wear shoes inside their houses; up here we take 'em off as soon as we get inside our front doors. Hah! Go figure, eh. I am bare-foot right now.:heh:

We would be hard pressed to have a totally paper ballot in this country now. The interesting thing that was offered up not long ago was that the electronic voting machines were either "accidentally" or intentionally tinkered with to cause a glitch that made the machines add votes periodically in the process of counting, to favor the Republican count. Sounds like something a director would get hold of and make a movie of. Something like "Soylent Green" :heh: Or the one where all the books were burned. :omg:

Corruption can happen in any sized country. Greed isn't exclusive to the United States. But we could be the poster children for it.

Green: I learned the hard way about why Mr. Roger's changed into his house slippers every afternoon. When we put our first house on the market, a lovely Asian couple came to see it but decided not to buy. When I asked their realtor why, she said that "The Chung's noticed that too many shoes had walked in your house." Darn that shag carpet and my son's cowboy boots!

Bubble: It's nice to know that there are some Catholics that are being vocal about their opposition to some of the church's political/doctrinal actions.

We would be hard pressed to have a totally paper ballot in this country now. The interesting thing that was offered up not long ago was that the electronic voting machines were either "accidentally" or intentionally tinkered with to cause a glitch that made the machines add votes periodically in the process of counting, to favor the Republican count. Sounds like something a director would get hold of and make a movie of. Something like "Soylent Green" :heh: Or the one where all the books were burned. :omg:

Corruption can happen in any sized country. Greed isn't exclusive to the United States. But we could be the poster children for it.

What is stranger than strange is to see who owns those corrupt ballot machines. Think "Bush family".

Bubble: I would believe anything! It might also explain why we had no significant recounts or election monitoring.

Do a Google search on Diebold. There are a LOT of verrry biased sites out there pushing an anti-Bush agenda. But there are some sites that really to attempt to be as objective as possible. You might be surprised at what you read.

I have been looking for a link I have that lists tons of details about election equipment and I can't find it. When I first saw it I thought it was another biased anti-Bush'er but I was able to verify most of it, the others I couldn't determine one way or another if it was factual.

Don't get me wrong, you can't get much more anti-Bush than me but I still want to read the objective stuff and I'll form my own opinions on any given topic. That doesn't happen with biased material. This link blew me away. I'll still continue looking for it.

Thanks BubbleButt. I try to read everything everyone offers up here. I very much like to read the info from both sides, even the biased stuff. It lets you know what everyone is up to. The difficult part is sifting through the lies. Proof that something posted on the 'net is 100% accurate isn't always readily accessible. So it is important that we keep our intellectual and objective hats on. I find that some of the more insidious lies are perpetrated by people with the motivations of money and power.

Thanks BubbleButt. I try to read everything everyone offers up here. I very much like to read the info from both sides, even the biased stuff. It lets you know what everyone is up to. The difficult part is sifting through the lies. Proof that something posted on the 'net is 100% accurate isn't always readily accessible. So it is important that we keep our intellectual and objective hats on. I find that some of the more insidious lies are perpetrated by people with the motivations of money and power.

One problem that I have is that I read *so* much information about various issues that sometimes I can't remember if a given tidbit is fact or fiction. Sometimes I'll read something and it doesn't really make a big impression one way or another but later I learn more about that specific topic and then I can't recall if the tidbit was real or not. So I try very hard to stick to objective sources. If I have to research it to remember if it was fact or fiction, I tend to remember that! LOL

That isn't to say that objective sources never have a biased twist here and there, they do! But I like to stick to places that have a rep of objectivity. I still research and verify, but at least it doesn't take as long if I stick to the reputable sources.

Now, finding reputable sources is no easy task. Sheesh

I understand what you say about reading both extremes. I just get tired of agendas. Why can't people just be honest? You know? It gets old after time. If someone is soooo right, there is no reason for them to lie. And I'm referring to media sources here. I find it annoying that I have to read media sources outside the US just to get the true scoop on US issues. It's ridiculous and embarrassing. US folks are the only people in the entire world that believes the US is just spiffy and hot stuff. The rest of the world knows things about us our own citizens don't know.

I'm ranting... never mind.

As well I just returned from Florida and I did hear that that state is seeing a huge downturn in property values, I was intersted in finding out why so thanks for the info folks.

Cheers

TommyO

Last year for the first time in history, the state of Florida lost more people than it gained for a net drop in population. Same amount of homes, less people equals lower prices.

Plus insurance has tripled in the 3 years since I moved here because of the hurricanes and taxes have doubled.

Do a Google search on Diebold. There are a LOT of verrry biased sites out there pushing an anti-Bush agenda. But there are some sites that really to attempt to be as objective as possible. You might be surprised at what you read.

I have been looking for a link I have that lists tons of details about election equipment and I can't find it. When I first saw it I thought it was another biased anti-Bush'er but I was able to verify most of it, the others I couldn't determine one way or another if it was factual.

Don't get me wrong, you can't get much more anti-Bush than me but I still want to read the objective stuff and I'll form my own opinions on any given topic. That doesn't happen with biased material. This link blew me away. I'll still continue looking for it.

Get hold of the HBO documentary: "Hacking Democracy".

Go to HBO's website and search for "Hacking Democracy".

Al Gore got minus 16,022 votes in one county in Florida in the 2000 presidential election.