If gays went about "recruiting" kids the same way religion does, by forcing itself upon a defenseless mind/body people would be outraged. Why do we even allow religions to exist?

>> ^uhohzombies:
Talk about grasping at straws... they really kind find anything else more negative to use against him? Get ready for President Obama. It's gonna be great.



Oh for the love of humanity, "It's gonna be great"? Just how many presidents have you lived through that were "great"? Obama will be a disaster, just like any of the other worthless candidates on either side. Oh wait, we also have Ralph Nader. Yeah, go get em', Ralph. The .2% of the vote he gets will be "Great!"

Let's all hold hands around the campfire as Obama leaves us defenseless against nuclear holocaust! Yippee!

***
I hate supposed "comedy" that revels in attacking the defenseless. I suppose that you could post videos of people beating up homeless guys, or making mentally handicapped people eat their own snot, or assholes knocking people over in wheelchairs and it would get eleven votes.
***

WTF?? Rickegee you are kidding right? There is simply no comparison here. Beating up homeless people and playing a harmless prank on a child are miles apart. Not to mentioned your clear social bias. WHo made you heir to the throne your majesty? And assuming that he is a racist is really reaching.

@moonsammy:
Ron Paul has said he is not going to just abolish it, you can't do that because of those who are currently dependent on it. But he does want to phase it out. There is a lot of misunderstanding about Social Security. A lot is from an ignorant optimism in our current economic situation, and also from the well-intentioned but flawed socialist ideologies you espouse. Right away, I can see you failed to catch the point about what causes mass poverty in the first place. Your concern is wholly placed in addressing the problem, assuming, erroneously, that poverty is the product of greedy rich people who will stop at nothing to collude and hoard all the wealth in the world, and not the result of government intervention in the free market through the federal reserve's inflationary control over the money supply, high taxes to fund do-good big government agencies and programs like SS, and government intervention via managed trade agreements and acts like Sarbanes Oxley.

Most wealthy people spend or invest their money, either through employing people, philanthropy, or consumption. A yacht or a car are both products produced by workers either in this country or another. It is more likely to be from this country if inflation, taxes, and government regulations are low, because then there will be no incentive for the producer or consumer to go overseas. Much of the time rich people spend their wealth on employing people for their business, buying products themselves, and it generally fuels the production means of the consumption ends. So in the free market system, the money is transferred naturally through production and consumption, which is good for everybody. In the socialist system, someone who has worked hard to earn wealth is getting their wealth stolen from them by the federal government to be redistributed to someone poorer which you claim is more fair. Money that would have ultimately gone towards someone else's income/productive effort is simply taken and transferred. On the most extreme hypothetical scale, everyone's wealth is redistributed to equality, removing most incentive to work harder and get more than the person next to you. So greed and wanting more fuels production and consumption, which inadvertently has the effect of helping everyone far more than stealing and redistributing would have. Social security and the income tax are both in the same destructive boat, because they are taxes on production, not on consumption. That isn't to say the free market is capable of eliminating poverty completely, or addressing the needs of a small percentage which is incapable of working. But in that scenario, you have voluntary stuff easily footing the bill through local churches and non-profit organizations.

That's really the whole point of social security - it isn't to benefit the lazy and the worthless that are such a plague upon us upstanding citizens, but to preserve some degree of dignity and humanity amongst our fellow countrymen who have, totally or at least largely through no fault of their own (none of us are perfect), become unable to adequately maintain themselves.

This shows me how little you actually researched before responding. Social Security is payed and received by everyone. It's a "retirement" program. Even Donald Trump can get an SS check when he retires. Don't pass this guilt trip garbage on people, this is what gets them trusting in the government in the first place.

In terms of your suggested alternative to the social security system: I'd love to see that be practicable. Unfortunately it is almost certainly too utopian to have a real chance.

Oh, you mean like all those years before it was implemented?

Until all corruption, greed, and prejudice is eliminated from our society there will *always* be people who are unfairly screwed over in life.

And politicians are incapable of these things, so we should entrust them to legislate the market in our best interest? We should trust them to spend money more wisely than the people who worked for it? That's stupid, that's exactly how we got in this position. Big business in bed with big government, legislating under the do-good pretense of taking care of people. Of course there are always going to be people getting screwed. But far more people get screwed with your system, making free market capitalism the better tradeoff. It's the same short-sighted argument from gun control advocates. Since gun violence exists, we should work to ban guns. Yet when these bans are implemented gun violence actually increases. The criminals get them on the black market and don't think twice against citizens they know are defenseless. Meanwhile, the gun-law advocates finally figure it out: guns actually prevented far more crime than they caused through coercion, and that didn't show up in the statistics. They took a knee-jerk reaction to media stories covering gun crimes in schools, and the immediate emotional outcry overpowered actual reason.

Here, you claim that SS isn't in trouble financially or a tax burden on the economy. Just do some research:

http://www.socialsecurity.org/quickfacts/

http://www.socialsecurity.org/reformandyou/faqs.html

NORAD has the ability to see trajectory based blips on their radar that are not using a transponder. These are usually highlighted on their radar screens as an unidentified craft. Dick Cheney was in control of NORAD by executive order just a few months before 9/11.

Confusion? - Yes...
Deliberate? - Unknown
NORAD Commander (Cheney) was in the basement of the Pentagon having an unusual conversation with an airman right before the crash in the Pentagon as reported by Mr. Mineta.

Was the Pentagon truly defenseless? Highly unlikely - details of air defense capabilities for the Pentagon are top secret.

False flag operation? Motives do exist according to the PNAC's desire for a "New Pearl Harbor" in order to expedite "their plans"(Wolfowitz,Cheney,Rumsfeld to name a few on the PNAC "think tank"). Pres. Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to attack Iraq and quickly abandoned the "search" for the "elusive" Osama Bin Laden.

We were quickly told how the "terrorists" pulled such an amazing feat off with extremely crude weapons and was supposedly orchestrated from a cave halfway around the world. 6 of the 19 accused terrorists are still alive today, so this story doesn't add up, among other flaws in the official story.

We want to believe we were told the truth.. that our government would never lie to us and commit or enable such a heinous crime, however many top level government and military officials have gone on the record protesting the official story.

Any logical criminal investigator would have to agree that the official story has many holes in it. Some evidence still exists but much of it was quickly shipped with armed guards to be permenantly destroyed in Communist China thanks to Rudy Giuliani.

It doesn't look good for this administration, however many people are refusing to look at the inconstencies of the official story.

Description of Straw Man
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:


Person A has position X.
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
Person B attacks position Y.
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.

Examples of Straw Man

Prof. Jones: "The university just cut our yearly budget by $10,000."
Prof. Smith: "What are we going to do?"
Prof. Brown: "I think we should eliminate one of the teaching assistant positions. That would take care of it."
Prof. Jones: "We could reduce our scheduled raises instead."
Prof. Brown: " I can't understand why you want to bleed us dry like that, Jones."

"Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can't understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that."

Bill and Jill are arguing about cleaning out their closets:
Jill: "We should clean out the closets. They are getting a bit messy."
Bill: "Why, we just went through those closets last year. Do we have to clean them out everyday?"
Jill: "I never said anything about cleaning them out every day. You just want too keep all your junk forever, which is just ridiculous."

Hmmm... some are taking a strong stand by not compromising on their principle of unwavering hatred against cute, defenseless animals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar

"... On the Ides of March (March 15; see Roman calendar) of 44 BC, a group of senators called Caesar to the forum for the purpose of reading a petition, written by the senators, asking him to hand power back to the Senate. However, the petition was a fake. Mark Antony, having vaguely learned of the plot the night before from a terrified Liberator named Servilius Casca, and fearing the worst, went to head Caesar off at the steps of the forum. However, the group of senators intercepted Caesar just as he was passing the Theatre of Pompey, and directed him to a room adjoining the east portico.

As Caesar began to read the false petition, Tillius Cimber, who had handed him the petition, pulled down Caesar's tunic. While Caesar was crying to Cimber "But that is violence!" ("Ista quidem vis est!"), the aforementioned Casca produced his dagger and made a glancing thrust at the dictator's neck. Caesar turned around quickly and caught Casca by the arm, saying in Latin "Casca, you villain, what are you doing?"[55] Casca, frightened, shouted to his brother for help in Greek ("ἀδελφέ, βοήθει!", "adelphe, boethei!"). Within moments, the entire group, including Brutus, was striking out at the dictator. Caesar attempted to get away, but, blinded by blood, he tripped and fell; the men continued stabbing him as he laid defenseless on the lower steps of the portico. According to Eutropius, around sixty or more men participated in the assassination. He was stabbed 23 times.[56] According to Suetonius, a physician later established that only one wound, the second one to his chest, had been lethal..."

Wow. Where to begin?

Your comparison to a policeman shooting an unarmed suspect is flawed, because cocaine and other illegal narcotics happen to kill an enormous amount of people, directly and indirectly. More so, in fact, than armed fleeing criminals, by a significant factor.

This leads into your argument about shooting down a defenseless plane. No, they could NOT have followed them until it landed. By the time it landed, it would have been outside of their jurisdiction, meaning the criminals on the plane would have gotten away scot free. But hey, how could you know, you're just tossing out comments on the interbutts, nobody's actually going to call you on your incorrect assumptions of international interdiction procedures, right?

And as for "absolutely no threat"....see:
US Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Office of Applied Studies. Results from the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: national findings. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; 2006.

Over 15,000 people will die this year in the United States alone from narcotics overdoses. Just because those people on the plane weren't putting a gun to Americans' heads and pulling the trigger doesn't mean they weren't contributing in a very real way to the deaths of thousands.

And don't tell me what I assume about people on that plane. Those people on the plane were very likely middle-level runners, with slightly-above average income for their country because, as you suggested, it was the best job they could get. That does not, however, mean that they could not have gotten other, lower-paying-but-non-criminal jobs, especially the pilot. That also does not mean that they did not have a very good idea of the effects their successful run would have on other faceless people. That also does not mean they did not have fair warning, or have full knowledge of the possible retribution for their actions. The terms of engagement have been well-declared, documented, and acknowledged for a long time. They knew what they were getting into when they agreed to run drugs for a cartel. Hell, they were warned repeatedly by the military jets, yet they chose to ignore those warnings and continue anyway. Or did you miss that?

As for your bit about Bush, way to make a baseless accusation - I guess anybody who disagrees with you has to be evil incarnate, just like Dubya? I was for Gore the first time around, and campaigned for Dean and later Kerry during the 2004s. So the hell with your throwaway lines, if you're so quick to judge that I'm the kind of person who votes for Bush, you're the kind of divisive, whiny airhead that lost us the elections.

In reply to your comment:
“

In reply to your comment:
“ Sl666's comment was just pure idiocy, and I'm not in the habit of suffering idiots.”

Thing is rembar, i think you are the idiot - sorry for the delayed reply,

I would prefer none of them had to die, but i cannot sanction actions to shoot down a defenceless plane.. they could have just followed it until it landed and arrested them? they were absoloutely no threat.

Would you say the same if a policeman shot someone who was running away from them? no weapon?

You assume that everyone on that plane was some evil Columbian drug lord, that probably isn't the case, it was probably flown and crewed by people that work for a drug lord because it was the best job they could get.

Defend my country, no worries, defend my family, no worries, shoot down a civilian plane? f**k no, thats an act of terrorism.

Its people like you that voted for bush.”

another chapter closed.
liliiiiiitu...Where are you, brat? Giving some poor defenseless man a hard time in a doomed relationship, mayhaps????

"Beyond that from a pure traffic stand point I can say without a doubt that Fedquip has been a boon for videosift. We have gotten over 40,000 visitors from his blog since he started his collective."-maybe I should start a blog in all the spare time i spend here, and get my new, single-serving pals to haunt.......oooooooooo, scaaaaaary

what the hell does that matter?? Keep yer day jobs if you think money and traffic and popularity is what you need....."We need the guy cause of ratings???
Look, I don't pretend to understand the motivation of the creation....I am, with all my banter, simply voting up and down, like everyone else according to my own sensibilities and whims......and Roe, the labels liberal, conservative, moderate, etc, are feel-good boxes for concepts bastardized and polluted, words to replace meaning-.....I am indeed, frothing at the mouth, but....haven't you guessed me yet???? I take no sides, contrived and limiting as they have dissolved into........I am, who the hell I am-you may have noticed i defend Qm from time to time, because, a gang-bang of rhetoric, is as filthy to me as a concentration camp, or concertina wire over a road, or assholes who think they know anything, about the big picture.......I defend the defenseless, feed the weak, assist the strong, and Allah-Baba can sort out the rest of them,
perception, is a motherfucker.......

Affectionate, my ass. I can't wait until he teaches the four year old how to say "nigger" and puts it on the tubes. A four year old is just such a pathetically easy mark for this sort of thing.

But I'm not too worried about the mental/emotional health of the child. MAybe his mother is not a redneck.

I hate supposed "comedy" that revels in attacking the defenseless. I suppose that you could post videos of people beating up homeless guys, or making mentally handicapped people eat their own snot, or assholes knocking people over in wheelchairs and it would get eleven votes.

I just don't have the patience or the tolerance for it.

The incident highlighted the growing divergence between the means available to the police and the offensive and defensive technologies employed by criminals. Video footage of the incident clearly shows police pistol bullets striking the suspects with little or no effect, largely due to the body armor worn by the suspects. Their body armor was able to stop the .38 caliber and 9 mm projectiles fired by the officers' service handguns.

The ineffectiveness of the pistol rounds in penetrating the suspects' body armor led to a trend in the United States towards arming selected police patrol officers with .223 caliber/5.56 mm AR-15s semiautomatic rifles. This provided first responders with greater ability to effectively confront and neutralize heavily armed and armored criminals.

Advocates of gun control in the United States cited the incident as evidence that U.S. gun control laws were inadequate to prevent military-class weaponry ending up in the hands of prior felons. Opponents of gun control counter that as the weapons had been obtained illegally, the incident did not indicate that criminal use of legally registered fully automatic firearms was a problem.

The LAPD patrol officers were not adequately armed or protected to deal with such criminals. The gunmen were firing rifle rounds from illegally-modified fully automatic assault rifles while being protected by full body armor. The officers' handguns and shotguns could not penetrate the suspects' armor, while the suspects' weapons were capable of severely wounding officers and bystanders through cement walls and automobiles.

The North Hollywood shootout was an armed confrontation between two heavily-armed and armored bank robbers (Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr. and Emil Dechebal Matasareanu) and patrol and SWAT officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on February 28, 1997, at a Bank of America teller-office.

The shootout resulted in the wounding of fourteen people (twelve police officers and two civilians) and the deaths of both bank robbers. Although only the suspects were killed, the sheer number of injuries made this one of the bloodiest single cases of violent crime in the 1990s, and one of the most significant single bank robberies of the 20th century.

The Weapons
Larry Phillips and Emil Matasareanu had a large array of firearms, which included:

o HK91: Used by Phillips as he fired at officers on the left side of the bank, the rifle itself took a hit to the bolt guide rails, which caused little damage.

o Type 56 Assault Rifle: Used by Phillips after discarding the HK91, as he started the escape. The rifle jammed.

o AK47s: Both Phillips and Matasareanu used these rifles during the robbery.

o Bushmaster AR15: Matasareanu retrieved this rifle from the trunk of their getaway car after sustaining a leg wound. He then waited in the car for Phillips, while shooting through the windows. This was also the rifle used by Matasareanu as he was engaged in his last shootout with SWAT officers.

o Beretta 92 9mm pistol: Phillips committed suicide with this weapon after sustaining several gunshot wounds.

Facts
* Approximately 370 LAPD officers were called to the scene.

* Other than the LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and units of the California Highway Patrol (CHP) responded to the scene. In the MVP documentary film, the LAPD sergeant being interviewed discusses the roles of those agencies as well as LA Airport PD, Burbank PD and LA School PD. Off-duty LAPD officers came in prior to the announcement of city-wide TAC-ALERT, which activates all personnel on duty. Members of the LAPD training at the Valley area police academy as well as the main LA police academy located in Elysian Park also responded. SWAT officers also responded from the police academy. One response was from Chief Willie Williams, who came from Parker Center, the LAPD's headquarters, located downtown.

* The following year, seventeen LAPD officers were awarded Medals of Valor from the department for their actions and bravery during the shootout.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_hollywood_shootout


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i34fbTMEius The video is from the film adaptation 44 minutes : North Hollywood Shootout - "Based on a shocking true story, 44 MINUTES recounts a fateful day in the life of several LAPD officers. In the summer of 1997 in North Hollywood, two wild gunmen with AK-47's began an assault on dozens of defenseless policemen. The results were tragic, but in the midst of the madness several well-trained and heroic individuals rose to the challenge, saving innumerable lives in the process."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362389/

looris ... it's not so much that people pretend that bad things don't happen, because ignorance runs rampant at times, but watching videos that are cruel to harmless, defenseless, innocuous animals and children are in poor taste. we've discussed this issue before.

In reply to your comment:
“drforeverclear is of the kind of people who likes more to pretend bad things do not happen.”

"Maybe this is the kind of hardass mentality which lost you the war. "

No, that's the kind of mentality that will keep that soldier alive. At any moment in that video, that soldier could have come under fire. Had he left his rifle with his buddy, or in his vehicle, there would be several moments from when he comes under fire to when he retrieves his rifle that he is completely unarmed and defenseless. Those several moments could make all the difference between whether he, his fellow soldiers, and the children there, live or die.

It is for that reason, among others such as theft and safety, that the notion of your weapon never leaving your immediate reach is drilled into soldiers from the moment they first begin handling a weapon in basic training.