LiquidIce
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Posts posted by LiquidIce
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I guess this is the end point of letting politics & religion mingle: the religion is rewritten to fit the politics.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/conservative-bible-projec_n_310037.html
Lo and behold, the Bible has gotten too liberal, according to a group of conservatives. And it needs a little editing.
That's the inspiration behind the Conservative Bible Project, which seeks to take the text back to its supposed right-wing roots.
Yes, even scripture is not orthodox enough for the modern conservative. Not that it's the fault of the author(s), exactly. The group cites a few reasons why the Bible is too progressive: "Lack of precision in the original language ... lack of precision in modern language" and "translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one."
So how can the Bible be conservatized? The group has proposed a Wikipedia-like group editing project. Some of the ideas would only bring the translation closer to the original. But others would fundamentally change the text.1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias 2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."Among the words to be eliminated: "government." A conservative columnist at Beliefnet described the effort as "just crazy ... like what you'd get if you crossed the Jesus Seminar with the College Republican chapter at a rural institution of Bible learnin'."
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"A message to Christians who oppose public health care, from another Christian: Read more bible. Watch less Fox news".
Link: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/9kps9/a_message_to_christians_who_oppose_public_health/
Has anyone measured how the Christian community is splitting on this issue? I think it would be interesting.
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In an ideal world states rights would work. I can vouch for the fact that it doesn't go so well in Australia.
Education at a state level functions poorly - the different curriculums & approaches to education mean that institutions & diplomas are not consistent between states. Makes it harder for people who move interstate, and businesses & universities have trouble with comparing graduates.
Environmentally it doesn't really work that well - exploitative practices in one state can drastically affect neighbouring states while denying those states the revenue that the development in question would have generated. Eg - the Murry Darling river is one of our largest agricultural flows. It runs through multiple states, & the excessive exploitation of the river at its source means that the flow to downriver states has been diminishing for years, badly affecting the agriculture in the downriver states. The more outflung parts of the river are amost destroyed, and it hasn't been saved because one state (which draws more than its share) keeps obstructing a co-ordinated plan to ration the water.
The idea of states as melting pots of innovation is fine in theory but not practice. The states aren't breeding grounds for innovation because every state government is controlled by the same two big parties. The state governments aren't really any closer to local communities than the national government (... there's no particular reason why they would be, if you think about it). There isn't really a flow of successful ideas between the states for various reasons, including political rivalry (even within the same parties)... but there's endless potential for obstructive states to prevent attempts to employ policies that originated in other states.
At the same time, practices that some might see as undesirable (like free abortion, or gay marriage) are effectively legal in all states if one state enables them, since people can just travel to get what they want.
If you want community government the best shot is probably to abolish states. Have small, regional councils & a national government to handle the overarching stuff. An ideal healthcare system would probably have national baselines & minimum standards in place while leaving the individual hospitals with maximum leeway to conduct themselves according to the individual needs of their local communities. Best practice would be more easily shared once the political barriers imposed by squabbling state governments are gone.
Universal healthcare is relatively successful in Australia - our leftwing party (Labor) set it up; the right-wing party (Liberals) subsequently provided tax breaks for people who choose private insurance in order to promote competition & take some of the burden off public hospitals. It's quite a successful model of UHC that both sides of politics now accept. (It would have worked better had it been consistently run at a national level rather than by individual states, though).
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Yep - sort of seems like neither side really grasps the fact that the Democrats are in government now.
I saw an interesting post on another forum about that: as the Repubs get more and more dominated by their angry base, they move futher from the political centre, scaring off the moderates or undecideds; but that in turn reduces the voice of moderates in the party, putting the party even more into the grip of the angries. With their broad tent shrinking away, their only path back to power is through government failure, which gives them a perverse incentive to screw up and/or oppose everything in sight. If that's true, Obama will never be able to "reach across the aisles" on anything, leaving him dependent on his timid party crunching things through over the republicans screeching objections.
Presidential power thwarted - but by political pathology rather than constitutional checks.
See here - a great summary of the problem: http://www.forumopolis.com/showthread.php?t=89911
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No particular view on this other than that I hope the conservative side in Australia never EVER behaves like our brethren in the US have over this issue.
Check this out- a Democrat politician putting one of the lunatics in their place. (Finally!)
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I read this politics article & thought of you guys. Just an excellent take on the tension between the narrow, rigidly defined role of president as defined in the constitution vs the almost holy status the job has inherited in the celebrity-worshipping society of today.
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14082968
It doesn't seem to be in doubt that collectively, we are elavating government far beyond its traditional role, maybe to avoid responsibility for our own actions, or because the more traditional "higher powers" are not the source of comfort and meaning that they once were.
Is it a problem? What do we do about it? Any of the old politics hounds around here have a view?
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Artaban said:
LiquidIce, you concede the legitimacy of concern over the growth of government. I assert that you reach a point where such growth does equate to socialism. Can you explain why you don't?Concede it? Ha! I opposed bloated government spending long before the Bush-voting side staged its road-to-Damascus conversion & started holding tea parties.
(~)
Socialism isn't a generic term for growing government. It's a narrow term referring to something very specific. I said already that when governments start large-scale nationalising in healthy industries I'll be concerned. There have always, and will always, be interference in the market & shifts in government employment, but nationalising of industries for ideological reasons is the tipping point for socialism for me.
Refer previous graph for visual aid.
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Well the stat is about socialism so government employment is a bit irrelevant to what it's measuring. Unless you view government employment as socialism - in which case we should probably just agree to disagree since its just a minor definitional point.
I agree with your overall message & would only add that calls of "socialism" come across as hysterial as well as inaccurate & can obscure a legimitate point about the growing size & reach of government.
Finally, I just read my previous post again & wish to correct an obvious mistake. One fifth of one per cent is 0.2%; 0.002 is the proportion relative to one. Oopsie. Lucky I don't work at the tax office.
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Everything that was most criticised in Star Wars: Episode I (racial caricaturing, over-reliance on CGI; cliched story/dialogue) .. all that stuff is taken to even more extremes in this film. Once the little decepticon starts humping leg, the impression that the film is Too Stupid To Take Seriously is overwhelming & all thats left is to watch the pretty CGI & wait for more jokes.
The original Spielberg concept - about a boy and his car - was the emotional heart of the first film. But that's basically gone in this one. This one is pure Bay. It had flashes of some interesting ideas here & there but they really needed a professional scriptwriter to develop it.
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If we can agree that corporate and business assets are a reasonable proxy for the "means of production", this chart may be of interest:
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/conor_clarke/socialism%20chart.png
The US government now holds one fifth of one percent (0.002%) of corporate and business assets in the US, and those are largely businesses that would have collapsed altogether without bailouts. So don't panic. There was an economic case for keeping these entities afloat that had nothing to do with turning the US into a socialist country. There is also strong case *against* the economics of debt-funded bailouts, but the catcalls about socialism are kind of left field in the circumstances & not that helpful. Particularly where they drown out commentary that addresses the real problem.
I'll be swayed if the government starts nationalising healthy businesses, or refuses to let its current holdings go in the appropriate time. Niether seems likely from where I"m sitting, but it never hurts to stay vigilant, I guess...
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I'll read with interest, Art. But be careful not to conflate government employment with government control of the means of production. All governments employ people so if we define that as socialism then the word is meaningless. If we call it socialism whenever governments employ over x% of the workforce (where x = an arbitrary amount deemed appropriate for all governments in all cases) then that also strikes me as meaningless, but YMMV.
(I agree that government employment blowing out is usually bad, but calling it socialism gunks up the point you're trying to make).
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Stag is wise, as ever. Pretty well every advanced economy has elements in common with parts of socialist theory. But the core tent of socialism is government control of the means of production so the US is definitively not socialist. The bailouts could be read as a nudge in that direction but the government can't possibly aquire more than a tiny share of overall production with its limited resources, and what it already has is intended to be on-sold once the recession passes. The use of the overly simplistic "socialist" label says more about the aforementioned partisan media sources than it does about the actual nature of the US economy.
Maybe in another 50 years... but probably not. I would say that energy dependence is the overwhelming issue for the US economy, not reds under the beds.
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It is psychological torture, absolutely. It relies on creating suffocating panic and extreme pain & people being subjected to it have been known to die of terror. Technology allows a moderation in the physical damage compared to its use in the days of the Spanish Inquisition, but the lack of visable damage doesn't cause it not to be torture. The only governments to have utilised it in the last 40 or 50 years are the Bush administration and the Khmer Rouge.
The best insight is probably gained from the people who have experienced it - a bit vague about this but I think several public figures who were formerly supporters of the technique changed their tune after being voluntarily subjected.
So yes, torture.
With prosecutions, it doesn't sound like a very good idea since the actions were legal at the time according to the government of the day. Not that I'm any kind of expert on US law, but it seems like retroactive prosecutions would set a bad precedent, even if you're going after morally filthy people in this specific case.
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Unfortunately its not quite the case Jones - Thrones came out in late '96; Clash was early '98 (about 16 months later). Storm was in early 2000 (almost 2 years later, but the book was longer). Then it's a five-and-a-half year wait for Feast (which was short) and a three year gap and counting for the next. Four books in 3 1/2 years, then one book in nine years, while at the same time the story overall is requiring an ever growing number of books to finish. '
I haven't read War with Chtorr, sounds like the same problem. Robert Jordan had it too, as does his successor... the final book of WOT has been split into three, so the series is now 14 books & counting with the end book (no longer called Memory of Light) now due in late 2011.
One thing for TV writing- if they actually do fix an end date it's usually set in concrete. Except for when the writers go on strike.
Or the show gets cancelled.
Or the studio changes it.
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I couldn't agree more about ASoIAF, Stag. He managed one (excellent) book a year for the first three years but has only managed one (not so excellent) book in the past eight years. Maybe he's spread himself thin & is losing interest in such an incremental project. I think in a sense it is a breach of trust - when you spend money on books that size you expect to eventually have a completed story - and that seems kind of unlikely with AsoIAF now.
Re. 6 x 7 - it was foreshadowed, sure. I think part of my problem is with suspending disbelief. The show had been so realistic in a lot of its plotting but suddenly this is a universe where God is proven to exist, and he's an interventionist, genocidal old-testament kinda God who kills & restarts humanity on a cycle. It's too different to the universe I live in. It's like if the question had been "what's 6 x 7" & the finale says "54".
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I'll admit that several of the characters (Roslin, Adama) had very poignant endings.
But others .... would caprica 6 really get a free pass to grow cabbages from the last renmants of humanity... given she annhilated their civilisation? Did the failed mutiny mean that all was forgiven (for the cylons, not the mutineers)...? Of course, since God had a plan & a destiny for these characters and actively forced it using divine intervention it could be argued that the human race had no say in the matter. But is that satisfactory, really?
Would still say BSG is one of the better sci fi in recent years though. Probably the best since Firefly.
Ouch... poor GRRM. Most writers probably wouldn't appreciate the notion that people working on a story aren't entitled to comment on completed stories. Besides, GRRM has finished loads of stuff (including TV writing) & never yet used 'God did it'.... as far as I know.
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The finale just aired here. So I'm joining the party late - please excoos the thread necromancy. But I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in just in case anyone is still viewing this forum.
I want someone to refute me here: but I found the finale very disappointing. It seemed like instead of having a faith vs science sort of ambiguity (did all this happen for reason or not?) it settled the question of God's existence straight out, and instead settled for ambiguity on what he is and what he wants. The ambiguity was in the wrong place. The angels-as-plot-contrivance felt very weak. Like the writers had put themselves in a corner and had to come with something at the last minute. The idea of Kara as 'whatever you want her to be' does nada for me. And why did angels 1 & 2 keep their Baltar & caprica six forms for 150 000 years?
GRRM in his blog said (& I agree):
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ends with "God Did It." Looks like somebody skipped Writing 101, when you learn that a deus ex machina is a crappy way to end a story.
Yeah, yeah, sometimes the journey is its own reward. I certainly enjoyed much of the journey with BSG ... But **** it, doesn't anybody know how to write an ending any more? I've seen Clarion students left stunned and bleeding for turning in stories with those endings.
Pfui.
(I sure hope those guys doing LOST have something better up planned for us. Though if it turns out to be They Were All Dead All Along I'm really going to be pissed).
(Some spoilers for non-BSG stuff removed - see his blog if you want to real the whole thing).
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LordofBrewtown said:
I hope you are right regarding Congress. I have to strongly disagree with you regarding the cause. While Iraq may not have helped, this really began with the Fannie/Freddie's policies encouraging home buying amongst those who couldn't afford it - banks were heavily pressured by congress to make loans to those they may otherwise not have. I think tying the housing bubble to Iraq is a real stretch (first time I've even heard of such a theory - but, hey, you can't read everything & another reason these boards/this community is great). Housing prices are still probably at higher levels than they should be. And this plan to help stop foreclosures will only forestall the correction that has to happen. The big problem is: as long a prices at the bottom rung of houses remain too high, the market will remain frozen. Even if higher income people want to sell/etc. Because The housing market is unique in that current owners' new purchases/upgrades are depenedent on selling their current house (theoretically to someone else who will upgrade) - the whole market is in some way tied to the first time buyer - the price level of that level of homes. And that level is still too high in general. Helping the current people who can't afford to pay mortageges stay in their homes only delays the inevitable price correction that needs to occur.
I think you're talking about the Community Reinvestment Act that was touted by Carter & Clinton... but actually very few CRA loans are facing sub-prime troubles right now. There's no empirical research to back up the CRA link- my impression is that the CRA link is a political attack line with minimal economic merit. I imagine research is being done on this though, so maybe I'll be proven wrong.
Also, I'm not saying Iraq was the sole cause of the financial crisis. I used the word "partly" because the financial drain & debt burden it represented is *a* contributing factor. Throw in some bad banking practice, poor regulation (not necessarily insufficient, but definately poor), & the lack of energy policy which meant that in 2007 the US was still terribly oil-dependent & vulnerable to fluctuations. Mass psychology has a role to play as well. You can even go behind all that & look at the factors of production & the way tax rates for capital & labour are higher than the tax rate on land. That *may* have led to excess money being drawn to land (creating bubbles) at the expense of investment in labour & capital- with consequent impact on the capacity of the economy to physically produce things.
It's too trite to link a meltdown on this scale to a single policy or party. They'll be poking the carcass for years trying to figure it out.
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The economists are pretty divided, perhaps the package needs to work through the system before its value can be judged?
The inter bank lending rate appears to be settling down a bit which is the first indication that the first obstable to recovery (seized up credit markets) might be overcome. If that doesn't work out there may have to be extreme measures taken to get credit flowing- even down to the government using its new controlling interest in some of the institutions to force them to grant credit to businesses that need it for their regular operations. Certainly no recovery can happen (meaning the spending package will have been for nothing) if credit markets don't unkink.
Art, I think you'll find Congress is less profligate in future months. This was no ordinary month. Also, the recession you're in now partly goes back to Iraq. The drain of $100+billion a year into operations in Iraq weakened the US economy & pressed the Fed to cut interest rates lower to compensate, which in turn made the housing bubble bigger & built up the current mess. Yes Haliburton got rich but even allowing for that the real cost of the Iraq war is going to be far beyond $700 billion.
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Yep, fiscal prudence hasn't exactly been on the menu for the US since... ? Cinton? When was the last time you ran a surplus over there? Got to be getting on for 10 years. Look on the bright side- at least the money will be spent in America. (I think Iraq has cost closer to a $700 billion than $79 billion- with the 2008 funding totalling about $120 000 for every person living over there).
Obama is smart enough to string sentences, & comprehend some level of the economics involved. That alone holds promise for improvement.
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LordofBrewtown said:
I guess that depends on how big a fan you are of President Obama. I find the spin that those who oppose that giant piece of junk/pork 'want to do nothing' deceitful/standard old Washington two-party politics. That bill is appalling to me. Ghastly.
Economists that I respect and that have done outstanding work, are tearing it to shreds. And the President's comment that he won't include tax cuts because they are tired old ideas/have been tried and don't work isn't even factually correct. I suppose you could argue it hard to prove what is causal in economics; however, the GNP has improved markedly for at least the two subsequent years each time after a corporate tax cut (see results after Reagan and Kennedy cuts, -even Bush's worked). So, for him to dismiss those as not having short-term effects was incredibly disappointing to me.
Well it would be spin to say that anyone who opposes the package wants to do nothing, but you might want to revisit the quote if you think Obama is saying that. And the package includes about $280 billion in tax cuts, by the way.
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I thought I'd quote this Q&A from Obama's first news conference. Just an amazing answer. No doubt a large chunk of the world is temporarily grateful simply to have someone there who's articulate & intelligent. More will be expected later, of course... but for now just check out the eloquence.
Question: Thank you, Mr. President. You have often said that bipartisanship is extraordinarily important, overall and in this stimulus package, but now, when we ask your advisers about the lack of bipartisanship so far -- zero votes in the House, three in the Senate -- they say, "Well, it's not the number of votes that matters; it's the number of jobs that will be created."
Is that a sign that you are moving away -- your White House is moving away from this emphasis on bipartisanship?
And what went wrong? Did you underestimate how hard it would be to change the way Washington works?
Obama: Well, I don't think -- I don't think I underestimated it. I don't think the -- the American people underestimated it. They understand that there have been a lot of bad habits built up here in Washington, and it's going to take time to break down some of those bad habits.You know, when I made a series of overtures to the Republicans, going over to meet with both Republican caucuses, you know, putting three Republicans in my cabinet -- something that is unprecedented -- making sure that they were invited here to the White House to talk about the economic recovery plan, all those were not designed simply to get some short-term votes. They were designed to try to build up some trust over time.
And I think that, as I continue to make these overtures, over time, hopefully that will be reciprocated.
But understand the bottom line that I've got right now, which is what's happening to the people of Elkhart and what's happening across the country. I can't afford to see Congress play the usual political games. What we have to do right now is deliver for the American people.
So my bottom line when it comes to the recovery package is: Send me a bill that creates or saves 4 million jobs. Because everybody has to be possessed with a sense of urgency about putting people back to work, making sure that folks are staying in their homes, that they can send their kids to college.
That doesn't negate the continuing efforts that I'm going to make to listen and engage with my Republican colleagues. And hopefully the tone that I've taken, which has been consistently civil and respectful, will pay some dividends over the long term. There are going to be areas where we disagree, and there are going to be areas where we agree.
As I said, the one concern I've got on the stimulus package, in terms of the debate and listening to some of what's been said in Congress, is that there seems to be a set of folks who -- I don't doubt their sincerity -- who just believe that we should do nothing.
Now, if that's their opening position or their closing position in negotiations, then we're probably not going to make much progress, because I don't think that's economically sound and I don't think what -- that's what the American people expect, is for us to stand by and do nothing.There are others who recognize that we've got to do a significant recovery package, but they're concerned about the mix of what's in there. And if they're sincere about it, then I'm happy to have conversations about this tax cut versus that -- that tax cut or this infrastructure project versus that infrastructure project.
But what I've -- what I've been concerned about is some of the language that's been used suggesting that this is full of pork and this is wasteful government spending, so on and so forth.
First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit that we have right now and the economic crisis that we have right now.
Number two is that, although there are some programs in there that I think are good policy, some of them aren't job-creators. I think it's perfectly legitimate to say that those programs should be out of this particular recovery package and we can deal with them later.
But when they start characterizing this as pork, without acknowledging that there are no earmarks in this package -- something, again, that was pretty rare over the last eight years -- then you get a feeling that maybe we're playing politics instead of actually trying to solve problems for the American people.So I'm going to keep on engaging. I hope that, as we get the Senate and the House bills together, that everybody is willing to give a little bit. I suspect that the package that emerges is not going to be 100 percent of what I want.
But my bottom line is, are we creating 4 million jobs? And are we laying the foundation for long-term economic growth?
This is another concern that I've had in some of the arguments that I'm hearing. When people suggest that, "What a waste of money to make federal buildings more energy-efficient." Why would that be a waste of money?
We're creating jobs immediately by retrofitting these buildings or weatherizing 2 million Americans' homes, as was called for in the package, so that right there creates economic stimulus.
And we are saving taxpayers when it comes to federal buildings potentially $2 billion. In the case of homeowners, they will see more money in their pockets. And we're reducing our dependence on foreign oil in the Middle East. Why wouldn't we want to make that kind of investment?
Now, maybe philosophically you just don't think that the federal government should be involved in energy policy. I happen to disagree with that; I think that's the reason why we find ourselves importing more foreign oil now than we did back in the early '70s when OPEC first formed.
And we can have a respectful debate about whether or not we should be involved in energy policymaking, but don't suggest that somehow that's wasteful spending. That's exactly what this country needs.
The same applies when it comes to information technologies in health care. We know that health care is crippling businesses and making us less competitive, as well as breaking the banks of families all across America. And part of the reason is, we've got the most inefficient health care system imaginable.
We're still using paper. We're still filing things in triplicate. Nurses can't read the prescriptions that doctors -- that doctors have written out. Why wouldn't we want to put that on -- put that on an electronic medical record that will reduce error rates, reduce our long-term costs of health care, and create jobs right now?
Education, yet another example. The suggestion is, why should the federal government be involved in school construction?
Well, I visited a school down in South Carolina that was built in the 1850s. Kids are still learning in that school, as best they can, when the -- when the railroad -- when the -- it's right next to a railroad. And when the train runs by, the whole building shakes and the teacher has to stop teaching for a while. The -- the auditorium is completely broken down; they can't use it.So why wouldn't we want to build state-of-the-art schools with science labs that are teaching our kids the skills they need for the 21st century, that will enhance our economy, and, by the way, right now, will create jobs?
So, you know, we -- we can differ on some of the particulars, but, again, the question I think the American people are asking is, do you just want government to do nothing, or do you want it to do something? If you want it to do something, then we can have a conversation. But doing nothing, that's not an option from my perspective.
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Massive thanks, guys. It's good to know that people are interested. Apparently President Obama called our PM yesterday to offer aid. How nice is that?
Funny thing, while the south of Australia is burning, the north is having the worst floods in history. But some tiny good news is the heatwave has broken in Canberra - my town. It actually rained today. I claim credit- the rain started right after I put out the washing out to dry.
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A foster mother has been struck off by a council after a teenage Muslim girl in her care became a Christian.
The foster mother said she had recently bought a larger car and had been renting a farmhouse, with a pony in a field, so that she could provide more disadvantaged children with a new life.
‘That was always my dream and then suddenly, bang, it was gone. I am now in a one-bedroom flat,’ she added.
The woman insisted that, although she was a Christian, she had put no pressure on the Muslim girl, who was 16 at the time, to be baptised.
But council officials allegedly accused her of failing to ‘respect and preserve’ the child’s faith and tried to persuade the girl to reconsider her decision.
‘It never occurred to me that they would go that far,’ she said. ‘I was concerned that the council seemed to view Christianity in such a negative light. I wonder whether if it had gone the other way – if one of my Christian young people had decided to embrace another faith – there would have been this level of fuss.’
She added that the girl has been devastated by the experience.
This happened in the UK. I'm interested in what British or European formites have to say, but from the outside it seems like the cultural cringe over there is getting a bit alarming. In trying to "protect" the kid's freedom of religion, they stamped on it with combat boots.
US Health Care reform
in 8. AGoT Off Topic
Posted
That was kind of amazing. Way to steal defeat from the jaws of victory, and then victory from the jaws of defeat.
I laughed when the teabaggers started moving the goal posts - from claiming the bill would bring armageddon, to deciding.. well maybe its not armageddon quite yet because if everyone votes GOP in November they can repeal it. (Apparently Obama isn't just a communist socialist nazi muslim antichrist but also a schitzophrenic who would agree to repeal his own bill).
The supposed rout of Democrats in November will no doubt fizzle off anyway.
This whole thing was like that Monty Python sketch with the sensible party against the silly party. I'm seriously happy for you guys - welcome to the 21st century.