Voice of Reason Loc: Earth

Yeah, most examples that are completely wrong are bad ones.



Of course not, but a good beginning would include eliminating some of the restrictions the Obama administration put on police.

But, just out of curiosity, in your plan how would a cop determine if somebody is carrying a concealed weapon?



In my experience, the likelihood of a person acting impulsively and violently without thought is inversely proportional to that person's level of intelligence.



Exactly. I know what your intent was, what I've been trying to show you is that your idea is not only bad and unworkable, it's also unnecessary.



And therein lies the rub. It's easy to agree on generalities, the devil is in the details. Always.

Here's another question for you. If a law-abiding homeowner has a gun stolen and doesn't report it within whatever allotted time, you want to hold that homeowner responsible for the damage the thief later caused with the gun, right?

So, how about a liberal judge who lets a violent felon with multiple convictions out on the street yet again? Should that liberal judge be held responsible for the damage the felon does?



Now you're the one misunderstanding. I didn't mean any gun was involved. I was just comparing the punishment for two different people. One (person A) gets 5 years (under your plan) for simply carrying a gun and hurting nobody. I'm saying if we're going to put an innocent person in jail for 5 years for ignoring an arbitrary rule where no harm was done, then somebody else (person B) who does cause harm and damage (with an uninsured vehicle, not a gun) should be punished more severely.

I don't understand your final question. How can they not afford the medical bills? Obamacare is THE LAW OF THE LAND.



Ahhh, is it still campaign rhetoric a year and a half after the campaign? Is it possible that you're letting partisanship influence your perception? Does it bother you even a little bit that she's doing what Hitler did? (Actually, Hitler did it with a much smaller subset of the population.)



Honestly, I think that balkanization is the solution. It doesn't have to be violent or hostile, but it is time for a mutually agreeable divorce. We can split the country into two and everybody can choose which half to live in. Then, just as we deal with other foreign governments, we can develop trade, defense and immigration agreements.

whitnebrat Loc: In the wilds of Oregon

quote=Voice of Reason] ... a good beginning would include eliminating some of the restrictions the Obama administration put on police.[/quote]
Care to elaborate on which you would eliminate?

Ummmm... self-defeating question as 'concealed' means out of sight. It would only come into play if it were used. And it's difficult to conceal an AR-15 or a MAC.

True, which is why we have Darwin awards and that we can't legislate against stupidity. Some of these violent acts are always going to happen no matter how many laws and penalties you put against it. There is no such thing as a risk-free world.

...


Apples and onions. The homeowner has an obligation to report the theft so that law enforcement can try to find out who stole it and prosecute. The judge is also wrong, but there is no law saying that they can't do that. An appeal to a higher court is the recourse in the latter situation.


Person A knows that carrying without a CCW in the city limits will get them time. Person B should also be punished appropriately for no insurance, and depending on circumstances, maybe be cited for the accident.
Your sarcasm is noted about Obamacare. But that doesn't cover this case that I hypothesized. Even under Obamacare, there will be 30+ million uninsured running around. If they can't afford the insurance, they can't afford the insurance. Period. How do you want to pay for their medical bills after that accident? Through the ER? Single payer insurance? Face it, we pay one way or the other.

You brought it up. And no, I'm just trying to be pragmatic/realistic. I stand by my previous statement.

Personally, I've said for years that we should have let the South secede and avoided the Civil War and all that's come since. The South would have collapsed economically within twenty years because the slave business model was not viable. They would probably then have applied for readmission to the Union, and the whole reconciliation would have been amicable, as opposed to Reconstruction and all the bad blood that it engendered.
But that was then, and this is now. Hindsight is always 20/20. Now all we can do is make the best of the situation as it stands. We can't go back in time and mold it the way we would like it to be. I wish us luck. We're gonna need it.

Voice of Reason Loc: Earth

Really? Given the recent revelations about Cruz and Obama's 'school-to-prison-pipeline' travesties, it's astounding to me that you would ask.



Yay!!! I'm finally making headway! I agree completely, we don't need any more stupid gun regulations.



I am well aware that liberal judges can inflict violent criminals on society with impunity. I was asking if YOU THINK they should be held accountable. If so, why? If not, why not?



Satire, not sarcasm.

Well at least you admit that Obama destroyed the world's best healthcare system and 20% of the economy for naught.



The same way it was paid before Obama and, according to you, after the implementation of Obamacare. What I guess you're calling 'through the ER'. Meaning they pay nothing and the hospital adds the cost of their care to the bills of everybody who's not an irresponsible asshole.

If I were king, after being healed, they would be required to work and pay their bills, or go to jail. But, before you say it, I'm not and they won't.



So, after pages and pages of declaring your support for gun rights, you support a malevolent psychotic fascist, who has vowed to confiscate your guns, for president. And you call that pragmatic. Wow.



I agree with that. What, in your opinion, made the slave business model unviable?



The way I see it, the leftists are going to destroy the country. They're hell-bent on that. So, we can either let them destroy the whole thing, or we can save half. Simple choice.

whitnebrat Loc: In the wilds of Oregon

Most state and local judges are elected for a term. Vote 'em out if you're not satisfied with their rulings.

I never admitted anything of the sort. Even you know that by eliminating the penalty for the individual mandate and killing the payments to insurers, that an additional 20/30 million additional people will be losing healthcare insurance. It wasn't Obama, but the Republican congress and administration that has forced this to happen.

Yep, that's what I mean. If you're happy with that, then that's great. My opinion is that universal single-payer insurance would cost less and provide better care to more people than either the pre-Obamacare system or Obamacare itself. OR, do Medicare for everyone. It's the most efficient government program that's out there.

Glad you said it for me.

Hmmmmm ... with the exception of the confiscation of the guns, it seems to me that's what we have now.
..............................
whitnebrat wrote: "Personally, I've said for years that we should have let the South secede and avoided the Civil War and all that's come since. The South would have collapsed economically within twenty years because the slave business model was not viable. They would probably then have applied for readmission to the Union, and the whole reconciliation would have been amicable, as opposed to Reconstruction and all the bad blood that it engendered."

Most historians agree that the slave trade was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, due to international pressure. The South could not replace those slaves that ran away or died fast enough to keep it going. It would have cratered of its own weight.

And the left sees the Right as the Darth Vader of politics. An old saying from Robert Heinlein comes to mind:
"Never try to teach a pig to sing ... not only does it waste your time, but it annoys the pig."

Voice of Reason Loc: Earth

Interesting...this is supposed to be a forum where people share their opinions, but twice you've refused to give your opinion on this question. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you're required to, you can refuse to answer anything you want, I'm just a bit perplexed as to why you won't.

Personally, I don't follow judges rulings and have no idea who's who when it comes to judges on the ballot. So, being totally ignorant of any relevant information concerning them, I abstain from voting, for or against, all of them.



So let me get this straight. The stated purpose of Obamacare was to provide health insurance to those who didn't have it, right? Prior to the implementation of Obamacare, it was estimated there were about 42 million people without health insurance. According to you, now that Obamacare is the law, there are over 30 million people without health insurance, which means Obamacare failed to provide insurance to about 75% of those who it was designed to help, while removing the ability to actually receive health CARE from tens of millions who had access and insurance prior. No reasonable person could possibly consider that outcome to be anything other than an abject failure.

Or, alternatively, the stated purpose was a lie, and the actual goal was to cause death and destruction, in which case it was a spectacular success.

As for the elimination of the individual mandate, there is a difference between losing something and exercising ones FREEDOM to choose not to purchase it, without paying a fine to big brother.



LOL - "Most efficient GOVERNMENT program". Isn't that similar to "Smartest dumbshit"?

In Canada, everybody is covered under single payer. If you're sick and need a CAT scan, the wait list is about 6-12 months. Pets are not covered under single payer. If they're sick and need a CAT scan, it can be done today.

In England, everybody is covered under single payer. The system is so overloaded that they are now withholding care to those deemed 'undeserving'. Still, the hospital hallways are full of gurneys with sick people being neglected.

Why is it that everything the left is for results in mass death?



Yup, but only if you redefine malevolent and psychotic and fascist. Which is exactly what the left does. If you disagree with a leftist you are automatically malevolent, racist, psychotic, racist, fascistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic and racist. Not to mention mean and greedy. And racist.



I disagree. If there is a demand for something, there will be a supply. That's as true for slaves as it is for illicit drugs. I submit the real reason for the abolition of slavery, both here and elsewhere, is due to mechanization. Machines now do the work that was done by slaves in the past, and they do it better and more economically. Machines powered by fossil fuels. Which the leftists want to eliminate. So we can get back to slavery. And famine.



C'mon Whitney, I strongly suspect you're smarter than that. Certainly you understand they're just play-acting. They know they're perfectly safe screaming that Trump is a nazi, because they know he's not. If they were right they'd be in concentration camps. They know that. You should too.

Same as gay rights activists targeting Christian bakers claiming they're homophobic, knowing full well it's not true and they're perfectly safe doing so. They never target Muslim bakers, who really are violently homophobic. They might get hurt doing that.

I like a lot of Heinlein's books. I think everybody should read "Stranger In A Strange Land"

whitnebrat Loc: In the wilds of Oregon

"Stranger" is my fave of all of 'em. Another of my faves is Richard Bach's "Illusions."

whitnebrat Loc: In the wilds of Oregon

The reason that I haven't really answered this is because I don't have a good answer at this time. If we allow judges to be swayed by public opinion, then justice becomes mob rule. If we allow them to be totally autonomous, we run the risk of situations such as you propose. I would have to say as a preliminary answer to your question that judicial review via the appeal process was supposed to make this kind of thing not happen. But I'm not sure, (not being a lawyer) if it is possible to regulate judges in this manner. So my answer is ... I currently do not have an answer.

I have no idea either when it comes to those votes. I usually tend to vote for the incumbent if there's no negative stuff floating around.

In any insurance market, the basic idea is to expand the risk pool to include as many people who will not ever use the insurance that they're paying for. This spreads the payout for those that do claim reimbursement over a far wider spectrum of people insured. The individual mandate was an attempt to encourage (read 'force') younger, healthier people to pay a surcharge if they did not participate in the risk pool. In this 'land of the free', that met with significant opposition. With the penalty removed, those younger, healthier people are not participating in the pool, which results in premiums going up because of increased cost per insured person for the payouts. It's s viscious cycle, without the risk pool spread. As premiums go up, fewer people can afford the insurance, which in turn again increases the premiums for those that are left in the pool. They are older, sicker, and the cost per insured person rises astronomically. When the number of people in the pool decreases to a certain point, it no longer becomes profitable for the insurer to provide coverage, and everybody loses. Between the loss of the individual mandate penalty and the cutting of funds to support low income insureds, it effectively hobbled the entire system, and caused the situation as we see it today.
Since it has been effectively sabotaged, we might just as well repeal what is left of it. Medicaid expansion refusal by many states didn't help much, either. We'll go back eventually to being a sicker, less effective population ... which may have been the objective all along. But I digress ...

Please elaborate...

See above.

Satire/sarcasm noted. Actually, the amount of money that Medicare provides to actually fund medical care is about 95% if my memory serves me correctly. Most insurance companies run in the 60/70% range, I believe.

I can't argue this one because I don't have facts to argue with. Please provide the sources for this statement.

Same as before.

Hyperbole noted. I haven't heard of any 'mass deaths' recently? Can you provide sources for this?

Good talking points. I don't believe I've ever used many of those terms except when the actions of a few have warranted it. But when you get the Family Research Council and Mike Pence doing everything possible to delegitimize the LGBTQ community, I have to consider this as homophobic. When you get white police (as in Ferguson and elsewhere) shooting unarmed blacks without valid cause other than they were scared, I have to call that racist. When you get an autocratic administration that wants to ignore the rule of law, I have to consider that fascist. When you have corporate execs making 500 times what their workers do at minimum wage, I call that greedy. When the shoe fits, wear it.
//whitnebrat wrote:
//Most historians agree that the slave trade was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, due to international pressure. The South could not //replace those slaves that ran away or died fast enough to keep it going. It would have cratered of its own weight.

Check your facts here. If I recall correctly, the majority of harvesting cotton wasn't mechanized until the turn of the twentieth century, and the field hands were doing the same thing as they were before the Civil War, only were having to be paid for it. It is true that in this day and age that mechanization has taken much of the work previously done by hand away, but there still isn't a machine that can harvest tomatos accurately, or harvest lettuce.
//whitnebrat wrote:
//And the left sees the Right as the Darth Vader of politics. An old saying from Robert Heinlein comes to mind:
//"Never try to teach a pig to sing ... not only does it waste your time, but it annoys the pig."

Play-acting or not, it defines the national political stage. It doesn't matter if they believe it or not, that's what's being acted on.
I wish I could say that Trump wasn't an autocrat at heart, and didn't admire other authoritarian rulers. The only reason that they're not in those concentration camps is because of our 'rule of law' and freedom of speech.

Being homophobic isn't the problem. They can believe whatever they want depending on their religous views or lack thereof. What is at issue is the whole issue of discrimination, and whether their private views on predilictions such as gay lifestyle can extend to their willingness to not provide goods and services that they offer to the general public to specific people based on their social appearance.


Amen. See previous post.

whitnebrat Loc: In the wilds of Oregon

Allow me to wax loquatious for a brief period.

All of these discussions and rhetoric are nothing new. Throughout history, the same problems have been identified, solutions proposed, and governmental/social systems have been implemented. These same situations were discussed in the Senate in Athens, at the Forum in Rome, in innumerable dynasties in China, in any number of capitals of Europe.
The basic problem is human nature. For some, adequate is never enough. This goes for nations as well as individuals. The clans of Scotland only united enough to repel the Romans, then went back to raiding each other. European history is replete with warring states and overrun empires, from Charlemagne to NATO. Chinese history has any number of sparring states, sometimes uniting, and other times sharply divided.
History is cyclical … the only thing that changes is the ability of people to kill and subject others through technology. If there's a better way to overcome your enemy, you probably will use it. Bigger and more deadly is better.
Religion/ideology has for millennia has been a driving force in this respect. Egyptian gods ruled over the Middle East for millenia. The gods of ancient Rome overran the middle east and northern Africa until the advent of Moslem invaders. Christianity flooded over Europe and generated the Crusades. Genghis Khan ran amok over central and eastern Asia for centuries. It has occurred recently with Hitler and the Nazi movements.

Throughout all this, there have been lessons that were learned and then forgotten, only to be relearned the hard way a few decades later. We're going through one of those 'relearning' periods as we speak. In this case, it is trying to determine what direction that we want our society to go. The rhetoric is just as heated as it was in Caesar's day; the discussion as diverse as it was in Socrates' time. What will come out of it is still unclear, but the choices are pretty stark. We can choose representative democracy and have a voice in our society, or we can become autocratic in our government and lose that voice.

For those of you who are interested, let me recommend reading the following:
Will Durant's Lessons of History. You can download a zip file/pdf copy at this site.
http://www.balderexlibris.com/index.php?post/2012/01/17/Durant-Will-Lessons-of-History
It's a short book, but keep your dictionary handy. Durant uses four-syllable words and ones that haven't been heard in modern vocabularies in years. I had to check out a few myself. It's well worth reading, however, and will give you a new perspective on a lot of the things we're dealing with in this day and age. I hope you enjoy it.

Voice of Reason Loc: Earth

I'm not familiar with Richard Bach, but I'll check it out. Thanks.

In the SciFi category I think Heinlein is one of the best, but THE best, IMO, is Isaac Asimov. Have you read any of his "I,Robot" series? All about unintended consequences. Great!

whitnebrat Loc: In the wilds of Oregon

Yep, read most of them. But Heinlein is still my fave!

Bach is a little more cerebral, but Johnathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions are quite worth the read.

Voice of Reason Loc: Earth

Oh, okay, I've read Johnathan Livingston Seagull and thought it was okay. Not too sure about the divine intervention, though.

I'm really bad with names, so I forget the names of all but my most favorite authors.

Voice of Reason Loc: Earth

Wow. My estimation of your intelligence, which was already fairly high, just went up a couple notches. A stupid person, when asked about something they don't know, will usually make up an answer, because they think admitting ignorance will make them look stupid. A smart person knows that nobody can know everything and feels no shame in admitting ignorance about a particular subject, especially one of little or no interest to them. Good on ya!

Now for the bad news...there is a right and wrong answer to the question, and you should have been able to use logic to determine it. Stop and think about it...if judges were held legally responsible for the future actions of everybody they released, no sane judge would ever release anybody. There would be no point in even having judges anymore. So, much as I don't like it, we cannot hold judges liable for the actions of the felons they release. Simple logic.



You know what's funny? If I were going to vote for them using just your criteria of incumbency, I'd go the other way. Vote against all incumbents. Just cuz.



You really need to diversify your information sources. A large amount of what you wrote above is absolutely true, but you've missed some major, critical points. I don't want to spend all day writing this, so I won't go into too much detail, but consider the following:

As you correctly stated, in any insurance market the basic idea is to expand the risk pool to include as many people who will not ever use the insurance that they're paying for. Key words being 'risk pool'. Another way to look at it is like a bet. When you buy health insurance, you're betting that you'll get sick and need it. The insurance company is betting you'll be healthy. The problem is most healthy young people don't expect to get sick and don't want to pay to bet they will. But, the insurance free-market had a solution to that...pre-existing conditions. With pre-existing conditions preventing the ability to get insurance, responsible healthy younger people thought, "I'm healthy now, but I want to be covered ahead of time in case I develop some disease or condition in the future."

Obamacare did away with that. Also, at the same time, by forcing insurance companies to provide coverage for pre-existing conditions, it eliminated the risk factor, which is the basic premise of insurance. Without that, it is no longer insurance. What was a risk is now a certainty. The insurance company is no longer betting you'll be healthy, they know you're not and it's gonna cost them. Big time. Now it's charity. Worse, now that young people can wait until they need insurance before they get it, the only way to get them to buy it is to force them at gunpoint. Hence, the individual mandate.

So, Obamacare took what was a free-market health insurance industry, and converted it into another welfare/income-redistribution scheme. The entire plan was unsustainable from the start, and the changes you're talking about made by this administration will hasten its demise, not cause it. Remember, before the Rebups did anything about Obamacare, during the open-enrollment period last fall, premiums were skyrocketing and many areas had one or no providers left.



Just plain logic. It was implemented for its stated purpose or not. Only two options.

Having said that, President Obama and most of his advisers made no secret of the fact that they really wanted single-payer. I can't prove it but I strongly suspect that Obamacare was purposely designed to fail, so that it could be replaced with single-payer, and apparently it's working with you.

Further, look at all the jobs that were lost or converted to part-time (destroyed). Then at all the people who are now stuck paying sky-high premiums for insurance with deductibles in the tens of thousands of dollars, preventing them from being able to afford to get care. Any way you look at it, Obamacare is a disaster.



I've read similar statistics concerning Medicare, but have no idea about their validity. And you know what they say...there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

But, even assuming that 95% figure is absolutely correct, what percentage of those payments are fraudulent? From everything I've read it's pretty high. It's easy for a rubber stamp to be efficient.



I won't provide a link for you, but I will explain why. How's that?

Let's say I tell you the sky is red. You say it's not, it's blue, and ask me for a link saying it's red. So I send you a link to www.VorIsAlwaysRight.com and, sure enough, right there in black and white it says the sky is red.

Now, will you...
a) Think, "I, and everybody I know, have been wrong all along. I thought the sky was blue but VoR and his link just proved me wrong. I, along with everybody I know, must be colorblind."

or
b) Think, "VoR and his website are both wrong. I'm going to look at other websites and see if any others claim what his link says."

Unless you're a complete idiot, and I don't think you are, you'll choose b, right?

So let's just skip the part where I send a link and you disregard it, and skip straight to the part where you find your own links. Okay?

Now if this were some obscure information or a specific reference, I'd be happy to provide a link, but this is general knowledge that is readily available at dozens of sites. In my experience, people are significantly more likely to believe information they find on their own.

However, just so as to not be obnoxious, I will provide you with a specific link. It has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion or even politics, but everybody needs a good laugh now and then and this lady is FUNNY. Enjoy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0N03iNdcfs

Voice of Reason Loc: Earth

Actually, that's not hyperbole. It's fact. There's the sudden, dramatic mass-death scenarios that you might see on a wartime battlefield, or with a natural disaster. Then there's the slow, steady mass death that leftists favor, using their favorite 'weapons' or 'tools', starvation and disease.

You are, like most people, probably blissfully unaware that environmentalists are responsible for more deaths than Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Che/Castro combined.

Back in the 50s and 60s malaria was practically wiped out due to the use of DDT. DDT is almost a miracle chemical, deadly to insects like mosquitos and bedbugs, and harmless to people and animals. But, in 1963, Rachel Carson published a book, Silent Spring, in which she falsely claimed that DDT was responsible for the thinning of bird eggshells, resulting in infant mortality of certain bird species, primarily bald eagles. Fast forward through all the junk science and a worldwide ban on DDT was eventually enacted. Estimates on the number of deaths from malaria since the ban vary, but most estimate somewhere between 30 million and 60 million people. Dead. From a disease that was almost eliminated. And could have been. But, it was mostly women and children. Poor, black women and children in Africa that don't matter to the elite greenies, any more than mosquitoes matter to you and me. They just use resources and contribute nothing useful to the greenies causes. The greenies, to this day, consider the DDT ban to be among their greatest successes. Just think of the carbon footprint all those dead women and children didn't have the opportunity to leave.

As for the eggshells, they were recovering on their own long before the DDT ban was put into place.

Recently, finally, a few African leaders have decided not to continue to sacrifice millions of innocent lives on the altar of fake environmentalism and have begun using DDT again, with great success given the extremely limited use allowed.

Don't believe me, and don't ask for links. Do your own research.



I believe you and, in fact, would be surprised if you had.



I don't follow that council or the VP, or watch CNN or MSNBC, so I honestly don't know what you're referencing. Can you provide an example. And yes, I could look it up myself but I really don't care. I used to be on the side of the gays until they became the bullies and, while preaching tolerance, became the most intolerant asshole zealots on the planet. Now I say, "F*ck 'em". I have nothing against 'regular' gays, but the gay rights advocates are complete assholes who deserve nothing but contempt.



Okay, on this I do know what you're talking about, and you're completely wrong. In the case of Ferguson, 'without valid cause' would mean Mike Brown didn't physically attack the cop. But he did. And the 'hands up, don't shoot' turned out to be a lie. Don't be stupid, Whitney.



Me too, which is why I considered President Obama's comment about a pen and a phone to indicate his disregard for the law and his fascistic tendencies. Not to mention his lawsuit against Arizona for trying to enforce federal law.

President Trump, on the other hand, is obeying the law, even if it's being applied against all past precedent. When he issued his immigration orders, the leftists found some obscure judge, halfway to China, to declare it illegal. So President Trump stopped its enforcement. When the appeal is heard at the Supreme Court, they will reverse the illegal decision of that radical left wing judge in Hawaii and President Trump can begin enforcing his legal order.



Okay, but why just corporate execs? What about the football player who makes 500 times more than the janitor who cleans his locker room? Is that greed that needs to be rectified as well? What about the actors and actresses who make hundreds of millions of dollars for one movie, while the caterers on the set make minimum wage? I could go on but hopefully you're intelligent enough to get the point.

Worse, do you want the Repubs in congress, or President Trump, deciding what people are allowed to earn?



I didn't know that about tomatoes, although I do seem to remember hearing something like that about lettuce. Anyway, no we didn't instantly go from slaves working the fields to today's giant combines, it was a gradual progression, but mechanization allowed for the gradual reduction of field workers. The first steam traction engines were used in agriculture beginning in the 1850's. Also, for all intents and purposes, slavery in the south didn't end immediately after the civil war. New laws were written allowing for the arrest and incarceration of blacks for the crime of "thinking about committing a crime." These prisoners were then conscripted to work in the fields. Slavery under a different moniker.

I can guarantee you that if slavery was needed for agriculture today, we would have slaves today.



Okay, maybe you want to reword that? Otherwise, it sounds to me like you're saying, "I don't care if Trump isn't really a nazi, if I want to believe he is that makes it true." That's not real smart, to say the least.



LOL. In other words, because he (President Trump) is obeying the law. That's your proof that he's a fascist?



Well then it's high time to crack down on all those Muslims who won't bake cakes for gay weddings, right?

Further, I'm sure you feel the same about restaurant employees who refuse to serve cops too, right? Consistency matters.

whitnebrat Loc: In the wilds of Oregon

Just did, and at the time the research seemed solid, but you're absolutely correct in what you said. The only thing that I would add is that they are using it in the smallest amounts possible to do the job with international monitoring.

We agree to disagree.


Sorry to get your dander up, but there are alternative facts on this, and it's a crapshoot as to which to believe. In far too many instances, people have been killed by trigger-happy cops that have gotten off scot-free because the DA's refusted to prosecute even when presented with evidence of the person being unarmed. Cops can't shoot until they're SURE that there's a danger. And whatever happened to non-lethal force? And waiting for backup while keeping the subject under observation? A bullet (or 20) just because the cop is fearful isn't the answer.


I'll reserve comment until the ruling comes down.

Apples and onions. The actors negotiate for individual contracts, as do athletes. The caterers probably work for an industrial catering outfit. There's a big difference between these two situations.

OK, you've worn me down and I'm having difficulty responding logically. I concede the field and you've won. I reserve the right to maintain my own biases and opinions, however, and I'll probably put 'em out there occasionally for you to potshot.
Have a great day.

whitnebrat Loc: In the wilds of Oregon

PostScript...
To those of you that have been watching this tennis match, what you have witnessed is the incremental trend of even 'reasonable' conservatives to resort to the more shrill and conspiratorial bases for their thinking when presented with logical and 'reasonable' alternatives to their issues. It's unfortunate, but that's the way they think and what they want, which was the original intent of the thread to display. They become 'unreasonable' when any progressive idea or 'Obama-created' theory is brought up. It's just a "what's so". Not all conservatives, but too many for my blood. As a 'middle of the road' observer of the political scene, the comment of Jim Hightower (former Texas Ag commissioner) applies: "The only thing in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead armadillos." I have given up in the face of bluster and 'unreason'. Thass' all, folks!