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If the victims are black it's racist. If the shooter is black it's racist. If the shooter and victim is black it's racist. If neither is black it's racist (for leavin them out)
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Politics
The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
that could be read as a collective right, or an individual right. depends on how it's read. so look to history...
all the talk during the early days was about the need for a militia, there's no talk about how everyone has a right to a gun. i challenge anyone to find such evidence. the only thing one can find in those days, is that some people thought it was smart for people to have guns, but this talk is never tied to the second amendment, and it's a different point to make than everyone has a right to a gun. the only way you can find a right to a gun in the early history, is to say it's implied that given most people were in the militia, then they all had a right to a gun including those who werent in the milita too, i guess?
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Politics
it sounds like the classified documents that he had, he shouldn't have had. i can't say that for sure, cause they won't say what exactly he had.
maybe, trump could be said to have by definition declassified the documents simply by taking them. after all, the constitution says that the president IS the executive branch, so he's the one calling the shots.
the problem, though, is that he probably still shouldn't have had the documents, even if he can get away on a technicality per crimes. so, if he's going to use a technicality to get away with a crime, i dont think anyone should be afraid to charge him with obstruction of justice.
after all, he lied and obstructed the FBI trying to get the documents back. he did that after he was president. i mean, maybe they didn't have a right to ask for documents that weren't ultimately classified? i dont know, maybe, but he shouldn't have had them, and the FBI should have been able to ask for them back.
what do ya'll think? if you support trump in all this, isn't it just based on technicalities? he ultimately did something he shouldn't have, regardless of what the laws are, and you should acknowledge that.
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Texas is bussing them to NYC and DC. Maybe this will get the dems to finally acknowledge there's a crisis, and to find a way to stop it.
I think dems don't think this through, half thoughts. Instead of catch and release, send them back. Asylum seekers should stay in their home country or Mexico. A wall would help, but there's less radical methods too.
Libs want to think illegals don't hurt anything but that's not true. They need jobs which would be stealing from poor Americans. They don't speak English or have our culture so it would be expensive to teach them English and get them trained. Our cultures would clash which I assume is bad. They say immigrants commit as much crime as Americans, but I would assume if they r desperate, they r more likely to turn criminal. I mean assimilation is possible it'd just be expensive. Also again the job stealing... a bunch of unskilled poor immigrants needing jobs would throw off the Equilibrium our economy has settled into. Job stealing and major struggle. Plus we should follow through on what we say.... if we say not to come here and gave borders what's the point if we just let them come as they please?
Makes more sense to chip in financially to get them in a country that speaks their language and shares culture.
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It looks like no one changes their mind much. I the think it's rare, but I also suspect folks just don't vocalize much when they r swayed.
I change my mind more than I do a good job expressing
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DebateArt.com
turning 18 doesn't magically make a person a mature adult. we give them the rights of adults, with the consequences of adults, because they should know better. that doesn't mean they will know better.
if a kid isn't mature enough to own a gun, and many adults are no better than kids in their maturity, how does it follow that all adults are mature enough to own a gun?
my point, is the presence of a gun, will cause some people to die who otherwise wouldn't die. this common sense point is at the basis for half the nonsense that gun nuts talk about. "guns dont kill people, people kill people". in fact, guns do kill people. and, it should be common sense that a gun will cause some people to be more likely to kill people.
the science behind this is overwhelming, that the presence of a gun causes murder rate to increase, more here.
but i'm just curious how the gun nuts will wiggle around this kid v adult maturity point.
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it sounds like the site just wasn't managed properly. there has to be a sale or situation that would be acceptable to the previous owner, where the site could be maintained. letting it get shut down benefits no one.
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DebateArt.com
is it possible for there to be a purpose for suffering? yes. it can help us make progress to end suffering. we are co creators in that sense. it can give people the perspective to appreciate no suffering. as jesus said, the man wasn't born with health problems because of something him or his parents did, but to give glory to God when he's one day disease free.
also, asking why we still have suffering is like asking why darkness exists. that's just the way it is. can we have just light? i dont think that is possible in our reality. same way, suffering may need to exist in this reality too.
of course, a person can just insist that if it's possible for suffering not to exist but does, then it isn't necessary. a person could rationally cling to that principle, but they have to admit that they might be wrong if everything i say is true, and they need to admit that the alternative view that i present is completely realistic. What if God and heaven exist, and the reality is how i present it? then the skeptic is just clinging to philosophy that has no basis in reality. the words and thoughts, the pointless ramblings, of mere men.
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Religion
here's a load of science that shows the consensus in science is against the gun nuts.
it's consensus science that where there's more guns, or more people have them, that there's more murders than places that dont have guns.
it's consensus that where there's more gun control, there's less murder.
it's basically. irrefutable that non-gun murders are in line with the rest of the world, but gun murders are wildly out of whack. if this was a bad person problem, not a gun problem, then non-gun murders would be out of whack too. dont need scientific study for this though, this is such common sense, and it's obvious that you are just regurgitating stupid gun nut talking points, that there is something obviously wrong with your critical thinking skills.
gun control won't stop mass shootings, as people can just regular guns, or a few of them, and go on a rampage. but it might help some. if it's too hard to get a gun (fewer guns, more restrictions), people are more likely to give up. that helps a little.
or, like sandy hook, if they dont have assault rifles, they won't be able to shoot hundreds of spray shots with such ease in a few minutes. obviously, the benefit greatly outweighs the cost of confiscating assault rifles, given they're almost never needed for self defense.
gun control is mostly about lessening the amount of times someone gets mad and happens to have a gun when they do, less about mass schooting. i saw two strangers kill each other in road rage before, which obviously wouldn't have happened if they didn't have guns.
if you tell someone they can't have a gun, not everyone who is denied will run out and get one. if they dont have a gun when they are mad, they are less likely to kill someone than if they had a knife or other weapon. it might be possible to 3d print guns, but not everyone who is denied a gun is willing to go to that level of desperation.
this is all common sense. u need to work on your critical thinking and drop the propaganda.
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bruce/caitlyn jenner is a trans woman. he is biologically male but she identifies her gender as female. if caitlyn is attracted to females, i think it would be fair for him to call himself either homosexual or heterosexual. this is because by the standard of gender, he's a lesbian. but, by the standard of biological sex, he's a heterosexual. both are fair game for self declared labels.
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they already have a bunch of different types of repayment plans. one of them is even ten percent of your discretionary income per year for no more than ten years.
they also have rules for those who are disabled to get discharged.
how is that unfair? there needs to be personal responsibility too.
why should workers who have no degree be paying for their boss who has a degree? plus all those arguments that it's unfair to those who try to pay themselves.
i actually dont like part of the above ten percent scheme, cause it could encourage students to take too much out, knowing it will get discharged.
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here is my rant....
democrats will censor speech when it's dangerous or it's misinformation. republicans censor when it's simply a message that disagrees with them. examples are book bans from republicans, and social media censoring from democrats. the reason republicans are worse, is because they want to attack substance and dont have even a plasible (not that it's excused) excuse that the speech is dangerous or inaccurate. at least, republicans have historically not been all about new ideas. from the other side, the liberals' hippie ancestors are not amused, because those hippies promoted free speech, whereas modern liberals dont as much as they should. liberals also do things like ban trump from platforms.... it's understandable to block dangerous speech, but someone in trump's position should have least have a platform, so it'd be better to pick what things to block from him instead of a blanket ban. the reason liberals are doing the censoring moreso these days, is because they hold power politically these days in the culture... so it's an inversion of power, in the past they were the ones being censored.
if we support the government protecting free speech, we should all support everyone even beyond the government protecting free speech. my focus isn't debating those that think free speech is bad... but the thing is, everyone wants to talk out their mouth that it's good, and then a sizeable number will find ways to excuse censorship when it comes from their party.
i'm just calling spades, spades, with this post. how could you disagree?
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i organized my thoughts from another thread, and thought i'd share it here. i'll probably take the debate to other debate websites too, to get a feel for a wide range of opinions. i have trouble logging in so i wont be able to respond as consistently as i'd like.
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dr. jeffrey long wrong a book, 'evidence of of the afterlife'. a smart and capable doctor writing a book like that should be sufficient to establish evidence, but i know some peeps are too stubborn to leave it at that.
let's look at some lines of evidence:
philosophically, it's just plain stupid to argue that it's common for people to hallucinate elaborate afterlife stories when they die. why would this even happen? drugs, dreams, and other hallucations dont cause people to hallucinate elaborate afterlife stories in any other aspect of life... why should we assume there's something special about dying that causes this?
out of body experiences are commonly verified as accurate, to the point of almost always being accurate. doctors and professionals are often some people verifying things that occurred when someone was dead, when what the dead person knew was impossible to know. if ya'll want a start in researching out of body experiences, 'evidence for the afterlife' by doctor jeffrey long does a short literature review of some highlights. there's lots of studies that look at the accuracy of those experiences and they're always shown to be accurate. there's whole scientific journals out there dedicated to this stuff, the evidence is basically too overwhelming to just ignore. even the AWARE study where they tried to measure out of body phenomenon, had two examples where someone who was dead knew what happened out of their body. and there was some measurement of auditory ability when they were dead. now, yes this isn't the level of evidence that leaves no room for doubt, and this isn't exactly being able to be measured in a lab on demand.... but this is all evidence that is being measured and can be repeated. it's basic science.
dead family members. when people experience beings on the other side, the beings met are almost always dead and almost always family members. if this was just a random hallucination, there should be many more examples of living people and people other than family members. this consistency is a strong point.
there are plenty of examples of blind people seeing when they die, often for the first time ever. the examples who people who are coming to grips with a new sense, it takes time to process and that's exactly what we see.
here is more on the NDEs of blind people
some other lines of evidence:
-another good piece of evidence is that when experiencers are surveyed, they say their 'life reviews' are always accurate, 100% of the time. if this was just a brain going hay wire, we'd expect lots of false memories.
-i think this also goes along with the idea that if this was a brain going hay wire, people would experience lots of random images, like a hallucination or dream. instead, they see lucid clear after life experiences that they have no doubt about and that are more real to them than their earthly lives.
-also, people often see images in their life review, that they've long forgotten. it's not as likely just a brain going hay wire if it's showing the whole life even the forgotten stuff.
-it's also good evidence that the same sorts of NDEs happen to people who have never heard of these experiences, and to children who are too young to know about it either.
-it's also good evidence, that across all cultures, the themes in the experiences happen the same. that is, tunnels, light being, life reviews and such... all these things happen at the same rate regardless of country or culture. i realize humans are similar, so the argument that we just have similar experiences is possible. but if this just a brain going hay wire, it wouldn't be so consistent and would be a lot more like random images or random experiences.
more on consistency.
-almost every person who has these experiences after the exerperience then believes in the afterlife. if these were just hallucaionations, you'd expect this not to so consistent.
-it's also worth noting, that a majority of atheists even come back believing in God... it's almost never the case that theists end up becoming atheists. the atheists who dont convert, just had no special insight on the matter, the ones who gain knowledge of something end up becoming believers. (this is also a line of evidence for the existence of God)
-it's very rare to find a non christian religion NDEs by the way. the experiences are so rare, that i challenge anyone to find just a few of them. the only ones i've seen are too open to interpretation to draw too many conclusions from.
the skeptic arguments against NDEs being authentic are at best hunches, it lacks specificity in science. there's no known afterlife gene or something in our brain that we know of that would cause this. yes, we are all similar so maybe our survial gene is facilitating all this. but like i said, it's all just a big hunch. we have lots of science and scant evidence to support skeptics. there's simply not enough evidence to be a skeptic about whether there is even evidence to begin with. this is all evidence, so skeptics have a repubuttable presumption against them and they are bad and providing actual evidence to support their claims.
philosophically, if it's common for people to experience elaborate afterlife stories when they die, that's prime facie evidence that an afterlife might exist. even if i were to admit that an afterlife isn't most probable... it's objectively possible based on that evidence and all the other lines i've provided. that's why it's objectively irrational to say there's not even evidence for an afterlife.
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Religion
i mean, it's good to subsidize alternative fuel, cause it speeds up the transition to those sources. but i hear things like how hydorgen engines are making lots of break throughs recently. what if hydrogen makes more sense technologically, but economically electric cars have the advantage due to excess subsidies? maybe the government should give blanket tax credits to alternative energy sources, and let the chips fall where they may.
note, this is a hybrid free market argument. i recognize that government intervention could be a good thing, but i still see how tinkering in the market could distort maximum economic/technological progress.
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the media is good at telling us we should care about ukraine getting invaded, but they aren't good at telling us why.
what does biden do? he says he'll consider adding ukraine to NATO, and he is moving troops to NATO countries. these are needlessly escalating tensions.
what's the reason for such strong language? his actions are so untethered i can't quite pin point a reasonable motive. maybe it's as simple as ukraine being soverign is in the USAs best interests, and biden is just trying to act tough and is over reacting. id say a reasonable approach is to take what GDP ukraine is, and if russia invades, do twice as much GDP damage to russian GDP. that's tough without over reacting. give putin a choice. it's really not our business to be sticking our noses into otherwise. even the ukrainian president thinks the US president and media are over reacting.
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usually what happens is liberals spout that trump has committed all these crimes, but if you notice, rarely can they back up what they are saying with specifics.
often they're too subjective. things like inciting a riot, or campaign finance violations.
or they're too hawkish instead of common sense. such as trump merely giving the benefit of the doubt of what his properties are worth for different reasons, such as taxes versus getting loans.
there are some technical laws he may have violated, but they are not serious. such as lying about how big his properties are. it would be reasonable to disagree o this example and think it's a serious violation.
so, what are your examples of trump breaking the law in a serious way... and can you back it up with specific facts and laws?
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Politics