It’s almost like you forgot that every congressperson charged with child trafficking is a Republican, every one charged with pedophilia a Republican, every one that knowingly covered for years of forced sexual abuse of children a Republican. Everyone trying to pass laws making it legal for adults to marry 9 year old children and have sex with them is a Republican. Every person claiming their political colleagues have wild drug fueled orgies is a Republican.
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Every one filmed lusting after 10 year olds and cat calling them in public is a Republican. Every one who said the thing they have most in common with their young daughter is “sex” is a Republican. Every one that bragged about trying to buy their way into their friends wife’s pants repeatedly is a Republican. Everyone we know that left their pregnant wives to sleep with porn stars without protection is a Republican. Every one that hosted private parties for Epstein, some they attended with no other adults allowed was a Republican.
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The way you people project this nonsense makes me believe that somewhere out there is a pizza place with a basement where your elected officials rape, murder, and eat very small children. It sounded completely insane when the accusations were made, but you people ARE completely insane AND guilty of EVERY charge you morons lob at Democrats.

Democrats, on the other hand, are never brought up on child rape and sex trafficking charges, never have photos come out proving their debauchery, do not have a party platform based entirely on scapegoating and hating huge groups based on skin color, nationality, sexual preference, gender, etc….all protected classes under the constitution btw.
Democrats also don’t try to overthrow democracy because they lost an election and can’t accept it.
Democrats also don’t legislate based on frauds like Desantis, don’t put out insane lies about their opponents, accusing them of child molestation without evidence, certainly not just as a fund raising plot. They don’t set up straw men like CRT to give their base something to be outraged about despite it being fantasy. They don’t create a big lie that the election they ran was fraught with fraud (with absolutely zero evidence besides the frauds they committed themselves).

You really should try looking in a mirror sometimes. If you think you hate Democrats over these false charges, you are going to really hate yourself. Party of debauchery….if you really believe that’s the Democratic Party and not Republicans, you had a clinical break from reality and need professional help before you hurt yourself or others.

You are so delusional you could be committed if we only knew your real name.

Edit: I suppose I should thank you for being such a ridiculous blowhard that always buys into the Republican lies, without you I would have no idea what nonsense needs debunking. You couldn’t be a better straight man even if your name was Laurel.

At the very least, the FCC should make spoofing phone numbers illegal. Or if the FCC won't do it, then Congress should pass a law making it a criminal act.

@smr
Well, there was a fight over the definition of butter too, but not what you described.

I think the biggest difference is the possibility that the public could confuse one product for another.

The public uses nut milk as a substitute for animal milk, you put it on cereal, in shakes, dunk cookies in it, etc. It's a white liquid that differs in taste, but is made to be close to animal milk.

The fight over "butter" as a definition happened between butter and margerine. The butter people, at one point even lobbied for a law making it so magerine could not be sold in the color yellow. It makes sense to some degree. They are similar products. They are used in almost identical application.

It's probably the case that nothing like that happened with peanut butter because it's not close enough to regular butter to be confused as churned milk fat.

One could argue that people may put peanut butter on toast with jelly with their breakfast, possibly; but they'd know what product they are using. No one would try to put a dollop of apple or peanut butter in a pan to fry up some eggs. They are night and day different products and it's not as though one would be confused about what you were getting into with the purchase of apple butter instead of butter.

Whereas milk vs almond milk seem similar enough, and butter and margerine are similar enough and both used the same; the FDA then decided that a distinction should be made.

My wife and I carry a recessive Gene that causes the disease NPC type C
It's got the horrible nick name of "Alzheimer's for little kids"
We found out we carry said Gene when we had our daughter and have this to look forward to https://nnpdf.org/the-disease/the-progression-of-niemann-pick-disease/

A few years ago, Indiana passed a law making it illegal to have an abortion because of genetic abnormalities. You can only have an abortion of a healthy pregnancy. The law was stopped by a federal judge, but other laws have lined up to take it's place, enough that working with insurance has become a nightmare. There are 4 other laws that are hindering us moving forward.

So, again, if we could more easily have an abortion, rather than watch a child slowly and needlessly die, we would, and then wait until we had a healthy fetus.

"Just move to another state" oh, yeah that's so fucking easy


If we had easier access to legal abortion, my family would already be bigger. Not that any of this is any of your business, but people have unique situations that you may not have considered.

I live in NZ. There's very much a "she'll be right" attitude to H&S here. And in some ways, it's great. It's easier to set up sports clubs, if you want to go in the wilderness, you're pretty much on your own, etc.

But the flip side is the fact that we have a terrible rate of injuries and actual deaths in industry, especially in agriculture and forestry.

And quite honestly, I think this "H&S gone mad" attitude is actually promoted by companies who don't want to pay to keep their employees safe. And that's not hyperbole, there is literally an ongoing investigation into a company that skimped on safety resulting in the deaths of 29 miners.

I agree it can be taken too far, and maybe the UK really is insane, but in my experience, it's one of those things that people whine about when they don't understand the reasons behind it.

PC, we'll agree to disagree.

Smoking: again smoke if you want to, but just not around me. Why should I have to put up with smoke when I'm having a meal? More importantly, why should the staff who have to work there, have to put up with a toxic environment?

As for the competition argument, it doesn't really hold water. A few pubs in Ireland preempted the smoking ban, and they went out of business, because there's almost always one person in a group that smokes. Having it as a law makes a level playing field.

I've been in three countries now when smoking was banned in pubs. Every time, the hospitality industry said it would be the death of them. 10 years later, no one gives a damn. People still go to pubs and a lot less people smoke. It worked.

If you're going to bring rationality and logic into the laws of religions, we can get nowhere.
I agree, logically the laws make no sense, but neither does an invisible sky daddy who's all love, and wrath, infallible but infinitely confusing, all knowing but constantly testing us anyway with torturous tests, capable of the impossible daily but never performs in public, etc. Being irrational when thought through doesn't invalidate it, by the rules of religion. It just means you don't comprehend the mysterious plan that will, miraculously, make it work in the future. Claiming logic demands you interpret the words to mean nearly the opposite of their clear meaning is akin to claiming to know the mind of God, or to know better than God...neither is allowed.

It clearly said different:
"until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished"
NOT "until I die". Earth sure still exists, (not sure about heaven, but it said "and") so every letter of the law is in effect, and anyone teaching different is thought of as "the least" in heaven. I found that indisputable by reading it, it was pretty clear on that to me.

Edit: It's like you're saying they read the words of God, think them through and see they lead to disaster, so say "God didn't mean what he said, he just wants to make us think". I disagree with the contention that that interpretation makes sense....and if it did I would suggest that Aesop is a much better teacher.

-..."they" in that sentence is the Catholics and Protestants.....it's your topic. In a general sense, it applies to most religions as individual groups, and the more dogmatic the followers are, the less tolerant of any dissent they become.

I can read. It's in the bible, and never contradicted or eradicated from the religious 'law'...so it's not what I define their beliefs to be, it's what the bible defines their beliefs to be, and if they don't follow it, what in the hell are they 'believing'?

I think you won't provide evidence because you can't. Someone's misinterpretation of the clear instructions, that let you off the hook for following them, means nothing when you have the clear text to read.

Only one hefty book matters in this instance, and it's undeniably clear. If you don't murder infidels, you don't follow the bible's teachings and so must deny it's God's law....making it nothing but a terrible book of fairy tales.

Edit: I think there's a disconnect about disrespect here. Atheists may not respect your beliefs with lip service and placations, but most religions require the complete eradication of differing beliefs. Atheists absolutely respect your right to believe any nonsense you want to, even if we may try to convince you why you're wrong. Religions invariably do not exhibit that base level of respect, how can you possibly claim they are more respectful?
Could it be that atheists are more respectful, enough to engage the 'other', so SEEM more disrespectful because they're up front and honest about their disrespect for beliefs, while religious people might smile but rarely actually engage in discussion/debate for fear of actually having to defend their indefensible beliefs, so just consider them a subhuman demon to be avoided as much as possible and backstabbed at every opportunity because they, let's say, think Saturday is the Sabbath?
I grew up in Texas, I have plenty of experience with 'Christian respect' for the beliefs of others (or lack thereof)....and it's nearly non existent there. I was told more than once that if I don't believe in God or Jesus my opinion didn't matter, and I wasn't welcome there, and deserved death. A few of those respectful Christians tried to beat some Jesus into me....but never one on one, and never successfully.

Sometimes I find Google hard.

I've only be able to find one pole that actually discusses the underlying reasons for people voting one way or the other, and it used wide categories. It showed that the biggest leave reason was to regain control over immigration policy, and the second most important was to regain control over law-making powers. Those sound like legitimate concerns to me.

I'm guessing their are more polls out there. Maybe you could point me at the ones you're talking about? I watch the related radx post (I could only find the Mark Blyth interview), but it seemed to support my current understanding of the situation.

My solution, since we can't get congress to govern themselves (meaning there will never be a federal law against buying congress) we should use local elections to pass local/state laws making it a felony for your representative to accept any money from anyone outside the area they represent, or to accept over a certain amount from a single donor, including gifts, salaries, free work (even volunteered work), perks, travel, food, vacations, or anything else with any value, punishable by immediate removal from office and mandatory jail time.
In California at least, we have the option to write our own laws and have them voted on directly by the populace (ballot initiatives)...real democracy...I know that's not true everywhere, but where it is it should be taken advantage of and used to fix problems our representatives refuse to fix. It's the only solution I see being possible...and even then only possible for some of us.