>> ^shinyblurry:

The proof that you're not is that you give no regard to the sin itself. You are using a relative standard to judge his crime, whereas God uses an absolute standard. There is no such thing as a minor sin in Gods eyes. God is holy and His standard is moral perfection. Moral perfection is what God calls good, and everything short of that is evil. He has also ordained the death penalty for all sin.
Neither was the crime itself picking up sticks. The actual crime was rebellion. It is not a minor thing to break Gods law, which the man knew full well he was doing. God punished Him not only for rebellion, but also as a public example to the rest of Israel that His laws were to be taken seriously. You have to remember that the Jews were His chosen people, and that they had entered into a covenant with God willingly. They agreed to follow His laws and adhere to His standards, and His standard was that they would be holy as He is holy. This meant that they would obey His law unceasingly with no exceptions. They also agreed with God that if they did not obey His law, they would incur the penalties He laid out.
I will agree that stoning is a particularly harsh punishment, but while you don't think the punishment fits the crime, that is because you don't understand how bad sin really is. Consider for a moment that what I said earlier is true, that one sin led to all of the madness that we see in the world today. If you can comprehend that, maybe you'll start to get the idea why God would use such a punishment as a deterrent.
You say there is no way a loving God would ever do that, to which I reply, that a loving God would do everything possible, including invoking extremely harsh punishments, to prevent as much sin as possible and protect His creation from the greatest amount of harm. To not take extreme measures against sin would actually be a point against Him, and not for Him.
>> ^Asmo:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I'll address it. I think stoning was used as a deterrent. He ordained an admittedly harsh punishment to keep His people from sin. While you don't see sin as a big deal, it is what caused the corruption of this entire world and all of the suffering therein. Every negative thing that has ever happened here stemmed from just one sin, and each of us have committed hundreds, if not thousands of sins. Sin is a big deal and I feel that punishment was a reflection of the seriousness of sin.
Look up stoning videos on Liveleak sometime and tell me how a supposed god of infinite love would prescribe it for collecting firewood on the sabbath... I condemn people who use stoning as monsters. By any standard, it appears that I am morally superior to your god... = P



Hi, shinyblurry.

I haven't responded to any of your posts in a while, but this time your answer made me throw up in my mouth a little so I thought I'd chime in. Let me read back to you what you just said:

"Moral perfection is what God calls good, and everything short of that is evil. He has also ordained the death penalty for all sin."

But in the Christian tradition, the ONLY being capable of moral perfection is God himself. Humans can strive for it, but never achieve it. So what you have essentially said is that God created imperfect creatures and now punishes them repeatedly, mercilessly, and arbitrarily with death for being imperfect. That doesn't sound much like a loving (or rational) God to me.

"I will agree that stoning is a particularly harsh punishment, but while you don't think the punishment fits the crime, that is because you don't understand how bad sin really is. Consider for a moment that what I said earlier is true, that one sin led to all of the madness that we see in the world today. If you can comprehend that, maybe you'll start to get the idea why God would use such a punishment as a deterrent."

Except that "deterrent" didn't work, did it? After Numbers 32-36 there are countless more examples of the people sinning in the Bible. So you're basically saying the poor guy in this passage died for nothing and that the supposedly omnipotent God who commanded the death was unable to see that this deterrence would fail. Nevermind that picking up sticks is treated as a far worse form of "rebellion" than the other various sins recounted both before and after this story in the Bible in which many of the characters are given less severe punishments or the chance to repent. So much for the Christian god being a god of mercy...

These kinds of contradictions and irrationalities are apparent to anyone who takes even a brief moment to consider them... and you wonder why the Sift isn't flocking to your evangelical banner?

6:20-6:30 he says Trayvon circled his car. Sounds very intimidating if true, but he never made mention of it that I remember in the 911 call and I think it's something you would note that this guy is outside your car circling it and reaching into his waist band.

Immediately following that he sounds like he's spit balling to me. He couldn't remember which of the TWO streets he was on in his neighbor hood.....

And in the 911 call you can hear him say "he's running" and then exit the vehicle and what sounds like fast-walking/running for a bit due to the wind and his breathing. He makes no mention of getting out to get an address that I can recall in the 911 tape.

8:40 ish, his recounting is much much slower than the time it took place on the 911 call. And I don't recall them asking him if he still wants a police officer.

8:50ish he brings up the "Are you following him?" question from dispatch and then telling him they don't need him to do that.

From the 911 he says he doesn't know the address of where he is. Matches up with his not seeing a street address. But there's two streets in his neighborhood it looks like on google map...so ...seems hinky to me. It's not an overly complex place to just give them landmarks to get to him if he had to.

Then he gives them his address and asks for the officer to call him so he can tell him where he's at.

11 and on sounds made up to me. At 14, someone coming out and him having a coherent conversation goes against witness testimony talking about him being in a daze and seeming out of it when they were talking to him.

So yeah, I think he's mixing enough truth with lies to make it really hard for someone to say otherwise. The tone of this video makes him sound somewhat reasonable, but on the 911 call he was muttering stuff under his breath and talking about assholes getting away and never getting caught...and lots of things not coming up in the 911 call that are in this video...again paint him as the victim when I think anyone else in the situation would have stated they were being circled and driven further away or not exitted the vehicle.

And on top of him perjuring himself along with his wife about how much money he had being off by 150k+ intentionally.......and the website he setup himself with graffiti on OSU black student center....and then all of his myspace accounts that he couldn't delete the content of making him sound like a thug himself and beating charges......

Can't help but feel his true nature came out the night he shot Trayvon and the rest of this is just his act to remain free. Good guy, whose not at all on a power trip or at all over-reacting like his past shows he does when he was brought up on assault charges against a cop, who just wanted to the right thing and protect his neighborhood.

As for trayvon looking around......everything in that video looks the same. He was probably f-in lost if it was getting dark....all of the houses/apartments/condos are the same color and mostly the same shape for most of the video.

I think we need a recount

...
248,
249
250

OK it's official.

Great Success

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>> ^Ryjkyj:

>> ^longde:
Curious; can you outline your friend's argument?

Well, first off, you have to imagine that he is very charismatic, and I was drunk and halfway through a game of Eclipse. Anyway, the argument (and this has already been said before) was just that the "stand your ground law" is flawed. All Zimmerman really would need to do, is prove that he felt his life was in danger. Any circumstances before that might not even be taken into account depending on how the judge feels the law applies. And Zimmerman is the one with an eye witness to back him up.
It sounds pretty flimsy, I know, but I would prepare myself for the possibility that Zimmerman will walk. There's no reason it can't end that way.


This is how many people feel. I have argued with someone about it repeatedly in the past week. I find the split on this issue comes to down to gun owners who carry and on the other side you have gun owners who don't carry or non-gun owners.

I keep saying that the law should not be whose alive to claim whatever. The law should be applied in order of events. Because Zimmerman survived the encounter does not mean he didn't start it, and the first evidence of this is him chasing Trayvon on foot.

I can't imagine a person in the world that feels getting chased by a complete stranger for no reason thinks that guy has your best intentions at heart. So, you could make a reasonable claim that Trayvon Martin felt he needed to defend himself.

And the evidence backs it up. Hell the recounting of events is something like this: Zimmerman follows in the vehicle, then gets out and chases on foot, 911 tells him not to, and he loses Trayvon. While returning to his vehicle (which could be the way Trayvon had to go to get home) Trayvon confronts him and asks if he has a problem, Zimmerman says no and (here's the important part) *reaches for his phone*, that's when he claims Trayvon says "yeah you do" and hits him.

Hell if I had someone chase me down the street and then reach for their pocket after they got me close, I'd assume ill intent in the form of a weapon or something.

So, in a non-insane law environment. The law would first apply to Trayvon. He would be covered under SYG and Zimmerman would be the aggressor and have to follow the parts of the SYG law covering that on how to disengage. If he didn't follow those or admit to following those, then he's fucked.

If he did follow those, then he still isn't covered under SYG because his stupid ass started it. Perhaps he felt in danger of his life, but it doesn't say aggressors under SYG also covered under SYG.

But a law without language telling you to not retreat or de-escalate is a stupid fucking law. You just find a place that has no cameras and no witnesses, then kill everyone. Create the confrontation if you need to, just make sure the other guy is dead at the end. And you are immune, no one can sue you for anything regarding those events once you've been cleared under SYG.

>> ^JiggaJonson:

>> ^zombieater:
>> ^JiggaJonson:
<blah>
<blah>

<blah>


Just because there are comments posted of people recounting stores of battery failure does not dispute the numbers that I cited. Granted, that's post-warranty, but that also means that the cars are older and are more prone to fail.

Also, some hybrids that are out today give lifetime warranties on their batteries! The Hyundai Sonata hybrid is one.

Ultimately, it's your choice weather to lease or buy, but I'd agree that it's a great choice either way. I made the plunge and purchased a Toyota Prius a few years ago.

My apologies if you felt slighted by the "inherently flawed" comment.

>> ^nomino:

from the smoking gun article: An affidavit by special agent Daria Botten said the woman recounted asking George, also known as Annie Kolath and Sajimol George, and her husband to let her return to India, but was told she lacked the necessary immigration documents.
Why does this woman have three names?
-Annie George
-Annie Kolath
-Sajimol George
Wtf?


What? You've never owned a million dollars before?? JFYI, for our poor folks on the sift, you get a second name at a million. I don't know what earns you a third, unfortunately, and it shames me.

from the smoking gun article: An affidavit by special agent Daria Botten said the woman recounted asking George, also known as Annie Kolath and Sajimol George, and her husband to let her return to India, but was told she lacked the necessary immigration documents.

Why does this woman have three names?
-Annie George
-Annie Kolath
-Sajimol George

Wtf?

>> ^NetRunner:

But again you're acting as though the existence of that implication injects some sort of falsehood into the mix.

Yes and no. It doesn't make any element of it false, but it makes part of it less than fully true. I'd propose this hypothetical assertion:
9/11 happened before the TSA was formed. There have been no successful terrorist attacks on the USA since the TSA was created.

Two statements. Both true. Yet I'd have a problem with anyone fluffing their resume with those two statements. Further explanation is needed to note that just because A and B are true, A doesn't imply B or vice-versa. Reading the fulltext of the Politifact page provides that explanation for their assessment, which I think is fair.

>> ^NetRunner:
Obama recounted the facts only. The fact that the facts themselves imply that Obama's policies might be partially behind the recovery doesn't make what he said "half true" or "mostly true", it was still just "true"

Shades of gray. I think that the evidence is in Obama's favor -- much moreso than in my hypothetical statement that implies that the TSA is 100% responsible for having prevented terrorism on US soil since 9/11. But in either case, I think that to know the truth as fully as possible, you need more information than any single assertion that the statements are "true" "mostly true" or "half true".

I'd even concede to Politifact altering their rating to "true" IF they were to maintain fulltext below that explains that such a rating excludes the implication that Obama's policies were largely or fully responsible for the recovery. If they did that, would it be an acceptable response from your point of view?

>> ^NetRunner:
As for the "fair and balanced" thing, I think that's really what's behind Politifact's follies. They're worried that if they don't ding Democrats roughly as often as Republicans, they'll be accused of being "biased" which would chip away at their credibility.

This is just my take on it, but I don't think that Politifact is keeping score and trying to get their digs in on both sides to avoid accusations of bias. I think there is a distinction to be made between them saying that a statement is "mostly true" or "half true" and accusing someone of lying. When they say that Obama's statements (or those of anyone else) were "mostly true", they don't mean to suggest that some part of it was false, just that they need to be supplemented with some additional information to fully appreciate. ie., Take this with a grain of salt.

>> ^NetRunner:
Instead what they've done is ruin their reputation in one fell swoop by letting concerns about their reputation bring them to the point where they're calling the truth "half true" in order to try to appear "fair and balanced".

I think that is just a bit overly dramatic -- no offense. Perhaps this ruined their reputation for you, but I don't think they deserve that reaction in general. I'm sure that they could make the same sort of assessments on statements from somebody of the Republican side -- say, taking credit for prosperity during the Reagan administration -- and it would elicit similar reactions from conservative readers ("Politifact has lost all credibility!", etc.).


By the way, just wanted to note here that I appreciate your point of view and have enjoyed considering this further. So while I'm basically sticking to my story and I think Maddow overreacted, I'm going to upvote the video (I didn't originally) on the basis of the strong and healthy discussion. Good sift and good support of your take on it in comments here.

>> ^MilkmanDan:

Arguments can be made for any of those ratings, and you're making a good one for "True" since the statements referenced in their own heading are limited to the 2 that are fully true. However, since they include Obama's previous 2 statments (implying that his policies were responsible) in their full explanation, I think that the revised rating of "Mostly True" is fine, and probably the best assessment. Much more "fair and balanced" than some other sources would tout themselves as being.


But again you're acting as though the existence of that implication injects some sort of falsehood into the mix.

Obama recounted the facts only. The fact that the facts themselves imply that Obama's policies might be partially behind the recovery doesn't make what he said "half true" or "mostly true", it was still just "true"

As for the "fair and balanced" thing, I think that's really what's behind Politifact's follies. They're worried that if they don't ding Democrats roughly as often as Republicans, they'll be accused of being "biased" which would chip away at their credibility.

Instead what they've done is ruin their reputation in one fell swoop by letting concerns about their reputation bring them to the point where they're calling the truth "half true" in order to try to appear "fair and balanced".