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most developed countries spend 35 percent of their GDP on taxes. in the usa, we spend 25 percent. the thing is, half our healthcare is taken care of by the private sector... and we spend 18% of our GDP on healthcare, which means about ten percent is covered by the private sector. what does all this mean? it means we spend about the same as other countries on taxes and healthcare, but we get far fewer results to show for it.
other countries have generous social safety nets, and generous benefits. not so in usa.
so where's all the money going in the usa? mostly healthcare. but also a bloated military. our military is bigger than the next ten militaries combined, in terms of spending. plus every other country spends half as much as we do on healthcare, and covers everyone, with most countries having overall better quality of care, such as wait times.
would it matter if we spent five hundred billion on defense, instead of 800 billion? couldn't we get our healthcare spending closer to other countries?
we could have a better safety net and benefits... or we could have more money to take home, or we could get our deficit under control.
why isn't this a no brainer?
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f'real though, doesn't that argument best explain the extremes that God displays throughout the bible? wrath. vengeance, love, mercy, "jealous God", "wailing and gnashing of teeth", "eternal torment" etc
here is a satire piece on the subject, but it does the best job actually making the argument, that God indeed has bipolar disorder
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Religion
think of all the benefits we'd get if we switched to clean, renewable energy.....
... but, what all this climate change talk is all a big hoax, and we create a better world for nothing??
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Politics
id say blacks are mostly victims of their own culture. there is indeed some white oppression that is unjust.. but their own culture is the bulk of the problem.
here is an article from a black person criticizing black culture itself...
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opinion article from cnn on the matter
fact check article that says what's actually possible
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there was a poll that said most republicans said it was an acceptable loss. most dems said it's not.
i would say it is an acceptable loss in the bigger picture. but it still didn't need to be that way. if people wore masks and social distanced and such better, we could be like other countries where they didn't have such a high rate of death. one thing i dont know, though, is how their economies look, or how open for business their economies are.
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here is my new proposal for universal affordable healthcare in the usa, that i think would be uniquely american as it has a lot of conservative principles in it:
the government gives catastrophic insurance to citizens above the median salary amount. if the median salary is 50k, then the insurance kicks in above 50k. to keep things simple, everyone is liable for up to 50k.
all other health insurance is outlawed and it's a cash economy for healthcare..... this will drive down costs tremendously.
everyone who receives care must pay what they can or pay ten percent of their payr until paid in full, or until they die where his estate pays what it can. all healthcare debt is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, such as how student loans are non-dischargeable. (there can also be hardship exceptions as there are with student loans) this ensures people pay what they are able, individual responsibility.
non-payment insurance pays all medial bills and takes care of any debt collecting from estates and folks who refuse to work or can't work. this ensures doctors get paid for their service from deadbeats, and puts the onus on the non-payment insurance company to collect.
as with student loans, most people will work to pay healthcare debts, cause they want money from a job. if you choose not to work, you perhaps get away with murder (as with student loans, we can't force people to work), but you get no income and can be sued if you have assets.
i think this covers all bases. what are your criticisms?
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i would say no as clearly God had conditions on earning his favor
discuss, debate
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Religion
instead of apartment buildings, build large buildings with lots of rooms in it, with shared kitchens and bathrooms. there's no reason with the current billions we spend on housing, that we can't get everyone who is homeless into a room.
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Here’s a fact that’s incredibly simple and very easy to prove, but I still find incredible.Take a normal pack of cards—52 in total (not that the exact number matters)—and shuffle it.A very simple process most people will have done at least a few times in their life.Now take that randomly shuffled pack and lay it out in a line so you can see the sequence of cards.Now just look at the cards for a second and the order they’re in.You are the first person in all history to see a pack of cards in that order.Never in the history of humanity has anyone ever held a pack of cards in that order.Okay now to be fair we can’t technically prove this but it’s so overwhelmingly likely it’s ridiculous to deny.How could this possibly be true?A pack of 52 cards has exactly 52! possibilities, that is 52 factorial (52*51*50…*3*2*1)Immediately you can see this is a pretty big number, but exactly how big you likely won’t have registered. That is approximately equal to:80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.That is 8 with 67 zeroes.Thus when you shuffle a deck randomly there is a 1/(8x10^67) chance that it is any specific combination. Again, to give an impression of how unlikely that is it is a 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000125% chance.That’s a bit of a mouthful so let’s only consider the first ten decimal places hereafter as if the chance is less than that it can be considered in effect zero.If you shuffle a pack of cards 100 times the chance that any of these 100 are a specific combination is 0.000000000% to 10 decimal places.If you shuffle it 1 million times it increases substantially to 0.000000000% to 10 decimal places… perhaps not substantially enough.Let’s now try 10 billion: that’s if every human alive shuffles it once plus a couple billion more times. Now it’s far far higher at 0.000000000% to 10 decimal places… still not high enough.Okay now let’s say that you shuffle a pack 1 trillion times? That is, dozens more than there have been humans in all history? Still 0.000000000% to 10 decimal places.Now it’s already unlikely that in all history that collectively all packs of cards have been shuffled that many times; let’s go a bit (well actually quite a lot) higher to see if it still stands and shuffle cards 1 decillion times, that would be if every human ever alive shuffled over a trillion times each, now it comes out to *drum roll*… 0.000000000% to 10 decimal places.And to clarify, no, it isn’t yet close.If you consider it to 20 decimal places you still round to 0.0000000000000000000%.So not only is it totally unfeasible that ever in all human history have two decks been randomly shuffled and come out the same, but we could multiply the number of humans by a billion, have them all shuffle a trillion decks each and it would still be a less than one in a billion chance that any would be the same as the one you just shuffled.Wow.I don’t know about you but to me that sounds pretty wrong; I can assure you however that it isn’t.A few people in the comments have made the valid point that this is a misrepresentation of the situation as it takes a shuffle to be a purely random order when in fact it very much isn’t. The reason for this is often when people shuffle they are shuffling from an ordered pack and frankly don’t do a thorough job of it so the order is still not random, furthermore, people often use similar shuffling methods making it again more likely the order will come out the same.This point is entirely true but doesn’t undermine the argument for the simple reason that the numbers are not close enough for it to make a difference. Exactly how much more likely than in the pure mathematical case it is in the practical case is almost impossible to gauge, but it could possibly be quite a great difference. As a result, if you calculated that there would in the pure case be a 1% that in all history the same order has been randomly shuffled to twice then it would be reasonable to reject this as not convincing as the reality could easily be ten times more likely at which point the chance is high enough you can’t say with confidence it hasn’t happened.The issue is that the chance is so much lower than that. To take the last calculation, you could have every human ever alive shuffle a trillion decks each and the chance that any two were the same could still be increased by a factor of a trillion and still be 0.0000% to 5 decimal places.In short, yes in the practical case the chances are more likely than represented enough, but the odds are so ridiculously small that this change is nowhere near enough to be relevant.
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Miscellaneous
asians have bigger brains than white people. period. bottom line. they also have the stereotype of being studious and smart , but it's a stereotype for a reason. they have slightly higher IQs. is it racist to simply point out that asians tend to be smarter than white people?
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here is an article describing it
the thing is, if those taxes get cut, that will mean the trust fund for those programs will be depleted sooner than expect. those benefits are already on a path to eventually get cut within the next ten to fifteen years, and if he cuts that funding, the benefits will be on a path to get cut sooner. this includes benefits for those who are disabled. the government made a promise to give benefits back for what has been paid, but if trump does this, the government will sooner than expect renege on that promise.
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... ask them why they won't allow people to have grenade launchers and nuclear arms devices, or machine guns. (though some of those fools want people to have machine guns, too)
the NRA is being sued for allowing its leaders to use company funds for private use. it's totally corrupt, these days very little substance comes from the NRA
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it does a lot of things that serve society. a great military, lots of safety regulations, a basic safety net. and such. there is a lot of partisanship, but i wouldn't call it dysfunction, just people with different world views. there is surely some dysfunction on the edges, like trump attacking the EPA and not enforcing some rules, but i would say generally there is a coherent EPA except on the edges
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an article about how the usa and canada were on the same path at the beginning of the pandemic, but then diverged due to the antics of conservatives, led by trump
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he said if schools dont reopen, they will lose funding. i mean, i'm not one to say let's blame this virus thing on trump, but here he is crossing a line. even if kids aren't as likely to get sick and die, they will still carry the disease to others who will get sick and die. betsy devous was shown that, but she refused to acknowledge it, saying she didn't think it'd be a big deal. obviously, for some states, it is a big deal. besides, this is a state issue, which should be the conservative par for course.
i mean, i'm really at a loss at why trump is doing this. he's smart enough to start wearing a mask in public. why isn't he smart enough to let states decide their own thing? this seems like an obvious self inflicted wound on his part, at least as far as i can see.
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Imagine being Bill Gates right now.
You spend 30 years of your life and $50 billion of your own dollars supporting humanitarian causes. You directly save hundreds of thousands of lives in South East Asia by providing anti malaria netting to half of a continent, you drop infant mortality rates throughout the entire developing world by funding vaccine programs including vaccinating 40,000,000 children for polio, and, amongst a plethora of philanthropic endeavors, you fund free educational platforms like Khan Academy so people can have free access to high quality education.
Then after donating half of your wealth to charity and pledging 90% of the remainder to charity in your will..
Arguably doing more to better life on earth for humanity than any other human being to ever live.
You then hop on the internet only to find a million scientifically illiterate fucking imbeciles that are using the very computers you pretty much invented in the first place to call you a child murdering arch villian antichrist because they watched a YouTube video made by some other yokel with the comprehension of a fucking potato.
Arguably doing more to better life on earth for humanity than any other human being to ever live.
You then hop on the internet only to find a million scientifically illiterate fucking imbeciles that are using the very computers you pretty much invented in the first place to call you a child murdering arch villian antichrist because they watched a YouTube video made by some other yokel with the comprehension of a fucking potato.
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evolution from species to species occurs when the environment causes some animals to die out, and only the survirors with the right genes live on to pass on their genes. the thing is, with humans, humans have adapted their environment to themselves. so, there won't be major evolution occurring. maybe things like lactose intolerance will continue to evolve, and other micro evolutions. but, nothing major should be in our future unless there are drastic changes to our environment.
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Science and Nature
the civil rights act prohibits discriminating on the basis of sex. so you can't be fired if you are female. the liberals of the court and two conservatives, said that 'sex' is vague enough in the statute to include transexuals too, since they are defined based on 'sex'. and, the text of the law says you can't discriminate "because of sex", so the that wing of the court also said the rest of the LGBTQ gang, including gays, are also protected, i guess cause they have sex with who they choose. with all this said, the rest of the conservatives said that the court should have stuck with 'ordinary meaning' in interpreting the statute, not literal meaning. that's a compelling point, cause ordinary people write and read laws, and perhaps that should be the basis of interpretation. a policy point in favor of the progressives is that the law could have been more specific, and since most people think it's wrong to discriminate against gays, maybe we should afford them some protection too, give them the benefit of the doubt. i know conservatives are willing to look at original meaning when the text is not clear.... so is the text not clear here? you could argue it is, or it isn't, and your policy preferences will surely color your choice.
what do you think and why?
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Politics
i saw a black woman on facebook say she's voting for trump, cause what biden has done for blacks pails in comparison to what trump has done for blacks. what could this lady be talking about exactly? i mean i have a few ideas, but.
trump said to blacks "vote for me. what the hell do you have to lose?" and i'm thinking. maybe your healthcare? trump tried to repeal obamacare and medicaid for the poor. and you stand to gain better healthcare with biden. this alone is enough to say biden is better.
thoughts?
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Politics
people shouldn't have to risk their lives by getting the virus, just to vote. i see republicans who oppose the idea, but as far as i can tell they can never give rational reasons for it. they are just lemmings following trump's desire. to be sure, i dont see any logic coming from trump either. it just boils down to the idea that trump thinks it would hurt his chances of winning if there's vote by mail. i do believe he has even said that he felt that way, at one point.
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he's a billionaire, which makes him the richest president, and he's a president which is often called the most powerful person in the world, and he's in charge of the us militiary, which is bigger than the next ten militaries combined along with almost the most nukes in the world second only slightly to russia. also the usa economy was the strongest it had ever been under trump. of course, putin has access to more wealth that is hidden and russia is a strong country, just not as strong as the usa, so putin is only a close second. also, this is all based on just what we know, as as of now we dont know if there are other living intelligent beings in the universe.
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all credible sources say 'plandemic' is bunk.
i'm guessing there will be support from the trumpians here. anyone stupid enough to support trump is also stupid enough to buy into junk conspiracy theories.
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here are five reasons it's stupid to vote for trump....
1. he wants to kick millions off their health insurance, and he has no plans to replace it. he's talked about getting people healthcare but is a stooge to the republicans so he won't do it
2. he wants to allow companies to pollute mercury into the environment, which is a serious neurotoxin. among all the other pollutants he's cool with
3. his center piece for legislation that he could actually get through congress, is a give away to the wealthy and tax cuts are stupid to do during good economic times. how is it wise to borrow against your kids to fund the government?
4. he wants enact no gun control, despite the fact that gun control works according to the best science out there, according to the scientific consensus. he talks like he wants more background checks, but is a stooge to the NRA
5. he has no plan to transition us to alternative energy, and got us out of the Paris accord to reduce air pollution. if carbon dioxide is the highest it's been in millions of years, and twice what it's been for hundreds of thousands of years, and it causes global warming according to the scientific consensus, maybe we shouldn't be putting so much in the air? just a thought. i'm mostly worried about droughts due to global warming.
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even in recent years the court hijacked the meaning of the second amendment. if you look at conservative judges back as recent as the reagan years, you'll see they interpreted it to protect militia, not an individual right to a gun. all you have to do is look at the lack of any evidence at all that the amendment protects an individual right, back when the amendment was passed. every other amendment has clear purpose in the legislative history, but there's no mention of self defense or hunting or any of that for the second amendment. other than a skewed interpretation, there's no evidence for individual rights to a gun outside a militia.
for more on gun control science and law and policy, a very informative website, see here....
guneducationalinformation.weebly.com
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Politics
the reason? simple. one person, one vote. all votes should be equal. i get the reasoning behind the college, that like the senate, there could be a way to level the playing field with small states v highly populated ones. but so what? if you support the electoral college, you dont think all votes should be equal. you can't claim to think that at all. we should be democratic, if a state has more people, it should have more power.... one person, one vote.
as far as the politics of it, even Trump wanted to abolish it before he became president. like all things political, his beliefs have changed vastly when he became president, and are made only to benefit himself and be a stooge to the republican party. all the republicans who support the college probably didn't before trump, either. as for me, ive never supported the college, way back to when i was a kid, well before even Al gore lost to the college while winning a majority vote, well before it was clear that the college is the only way republicans can win.
if you support the college, will you here and now explicitly acknowledge that you dont think all votes should be equal?
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Politics
i'm sick of these bernie brats thinking they are taking the high road by voting third party or not voting biden. if you dont vote biden, you're just letting trump win. that's a fact. these guys may have caused trump to win in 2016. bernie had his chance but didn't appeal to enough people, he wasn't mainstream enough. so i mean it is a two party system, but given we have primaries, it's more than just two people or visions, ultimately.
do you really want trump to win so you can pretend you're being principled?
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food stamps give food to people who can't afford it and might starve. healthcare policy gives healthcare to people who can't afford it. section 8 gives shelter to people who would be homeless.
most people dont try to stay poor to get these things. the ones that do stay poor, feel that is their best option, so it's not such a bad thing. even if these programs keep some people poor, they still accomplish their ends of feeding and tending to their needs, so the war on poverty isn't a bad thing.
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what if the usa implemented universal catastrophic coverage, while outlawing all other health insurance, and forcing americans to pay out of pocket up to a percent of their income per year. maybe ten or fifteen percent of their income. we would naturally encourage Health Savings Accounts that already exist. we would also require as trump pushed, for all prices for health costs to be advertised up front. i would also consider coercing people to save in their health savings accounts every year and making their whole account fair game before coverage kicks in.
the good thing about this system is that it would pressure people not to abuse their access to healthcare, to save on their deductible. the lack of so much insurance and government blank checks for routine care would drive down costs, with the free market.
would conservatives here back this plan, why or why not? what about liberals, what's so bad about this plan?
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every other developed country spends half as much as we do and covers everyone, and they almost all have better wait times to see a doctor, and most have higher life expectancy and decent quality overall.
why should the usa be different?
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Politics
i encourage folks to read Dr. Long’s book “evidence of the afterlife” to get some concrete science that points to NDEs being more than just hallucinations. for example, when out of body experiences are studied under scientific conditions, the folks who have the experience are almost always accurate in describing events that happened outside their body while they were dead. folks who try to just guess what happened outside their body are almost always way off. the book mentions the work of heart surgeon (skeptic turned believer in the ‘realness’ of NDEs) Dr. Parnia, the AWARE study, where a couple experiences accurately describe events outside the body in a verified and documented situation. another factoid, is that folks meet relatives during the experience and the relatives are almost always dead: if this was just a hallucination, folks would experience living folks and less relatives a lot more often. then there’s how drugs dont replicate the NDE….. drug experiences are almost always random experiences, random imagery in hallucinations, not consistent stories with common themes of the afterlife like NDEs. also, there’s the fact that common themes like tunnels and meeting a being of light are consistent when measured and documented across cultures and with people who have never heard of NDEs, including young kids. finally there’s just a philosophical point…. the idea that people just consistently hallucinate afterlife stories when they die pushes credibility. is there some story embedded in our brain or genes or something? it’s a ridiculous notion.
there’s a load of other scientific factoids in that book. i highly recommend it. clearly there’s something deeper going on with NDEs than just hallucinations.
there’s a load of other scientific factoids in that book. i highly recommend it. clearly there’s something deeper going on with NDEs than just hallucinations.
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Religion
i'm not aware of any verses that forbids slavery. but i can find some that allows it.
Leviticus 25
"44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly."
if you look earlier in the chapter, the above is basically words from the Lord through Moses.
so why can i or can't i own slaves, according to the bible?
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Religion
but who am i to say this is not reasonable, and is bat shit crazy?
"Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him." (Deuteronomy 13:13-19 NLT)
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Religion
every other developed country covers everyone at half the cost. that alone is enough to overlook any negatives that their system may have. dont get me wrong, the usa could definitely fuck things up, but we have no examples elsewhere to think it'd happen here. i know people complain about wait times in canada, but they are the only country with worse wait times than we have. everyone else is better. plus, they can decrease their wait times just by getting more doctors, but they choose not to. it's a problem that can be overcome and isn't a problem anywhere else, and they are half as costly anyway (if we spent half as much as we do now and had canada's wait problem, is that really so bad?), so why the big fear in fixing our broken healthcare system through the government?
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i dont like scrolling down to get to religions and politics for example. i dont see a good enough reason not to make them at the top of the list of forums.
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DebateArt.com
Richard Dawkins stated that “Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”However, even naturalistic worldviews also take some things on faith.For the purposes of this discussion, we will define a miracle as an event which occurs outside of the natural order and cannot be repeated or explained by the scientific process.
Consider the following four miracles which must be accepted by the atheist in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary:
- Getting Something from Nothing. There has never been an observed example where something was created from nothing. No person would attempt to build something without materials, and there is no theory outside Big Bang cosmology which reaches this conclusion without ridicule from the scientific community
- Getting Life from Non-Life. Even if naturalistic causes could have created the universe, it would still be necessary for non-living material to become living. This is also an unproven (and impossible) feat which must be accepted when denying the existence of God.
- Getting Order from Chaos. Personal observation tells us that all things tend towards disorder, not order. Left to themselves buildings crumble, gardens are taken over by weeds, and living material decays. If unguided natural causes produced the universe (from nothing) and produced life (from non-life) these processes would necessarily go against observed scientific principles in order to produce the complexity, beauty, and order that we observe in the world around us.
- Getting the Immaterial from Physical Matter. If nothing was able to produce everything, non-life was able to produce life, and chaos was able to produce order the atheistic worldview would still encounter an insurmountable obstacle. No matter how organized, it is impossible for physical material to produce the immaterial realities of human consciousness. Our morality, beliefs, desires and preferences all exist outside of mere physical matter.
Each of these examples go against the natural order and could be labeled as miracles. Naturalistic worldviews such as atheism, evolution, and neo-Darwinism regard this evidence for God with what Dawkins would certainly consider an unscientific approach: each item must be taken on faith.
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Religion
this article describes the research that establishes the claim
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Politics
"“If a man’s testicles are crushed or his penis is cut off, he may not be admitted to the assembly of the LORD." deuteronomy 23
does that also mean said person can't enter heaven too?
plus i dont understand the wisdom in this teaching?
please, teach me what i am missing here
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Religion
so God told his people in the old testament that there are unclean foods. then in the new testament he said there are no unclean foods because God made them clean. as far as i can see, this is a contradiction.
some people say the food was considered unclean because it was unsanitary or something. but how does Jesus dying change that it's unsanitary?
why does Jesus dying suddenly make some food clean when it wasn't before?
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Religion
the things trump did are not that serious. it's questionable whether what he did was even corrupt, let alone illegal. biden may have did some bad things related to ukraine, so trump asked them to investigate. what's the big deal? the usa and ukraine has a treaty where they are suppose to cooperate in investigations if they are willing and able. trump is the leader so it's not far fetched to ask them to look into it. per crimes, it's a stretch, and a gray area at best for democrats. so far all i can see is people say he sought something of value illegally per campaign finance laws, and other people say he was bribing ukraine by dangling aid money in front of them. if it doesn't look like a duck or quack like one, why should we say these are legal violations? and even if they were, they aren't that far fetched or unreasonable on trump's part. more like if they were illegal, democrats are unreasonably playing 'gotcha' in getting him on any far out thing they can.
how is what trump did such a big deal?
how is what trump did such a big deal?
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where is the evidence the fathers wanted to protect rights to self defense and hunting?
where is all the evidence that the fathers were generally against gun restrictions?
where is all the evidence that the fathers were generally against gun restrictions?
here are some highlights about gun laws during the founding era:
-stand your ground laws were not the law. colonists had the duty to retreat if possible.
-public and concealed carry in populated areas was banned
-anyone who didn't swear loyalty to the state couldn't have a gun. it's far fetched to say as today's conservatives do that guns were protected to protect against the state when back then the state was disarming people they thought were disloyal
-the state disarmed people for the purposes of furthering the government. one of washington's first acts was to disarm the people of queens new york.
-all guns had to be registered and inspected
-some states regulated the use of gun powder
-some cities prohibited firing guns in the city limit
-some cities prohibited loaded firearms in houses
-only one state protected gun rights outside of the militia
-several states rejected the idea of gun rights for self defense or hunting, even though conservatives today claim it was already protected by the second amendmnet
-indians and blacks were barred from having guns
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Politics
it takes only ten or fifteen minutes. you dont have to pay at the end, just check your email for results. it looks like a decent website.
i got 132. what did you get?
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Miscellaneous
What Happens to Your Brain When You Stop Believing in God:
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Religion
ocean farming. we have vast swaths of unused ocean. sea weed, fish, mussel etc. i read that an area the size of the state of oregon could feed the world, so we have basically unlimited potential. plus sea weed captures a lot more carbon than trees do.
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Politics
i use to want all illegals deported. then i realized we can just use E verify to stop illegals from stealing almost all our jobs, if all they do is rough produce production. plus, a large majority of americans do not want to work in fields, and it'd be rough on farmers to strip them of that cheap labor, plus this gives us cheap produce, plus it doesn't cost so much to deport them this way. i agree they deserve to be deported, but this is just a practical step that benefits everyone involved.
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if the legal system determines someone is likely, or probably, going to commit a violent crime, why shouldn't we take their guns, at least temporarily? that's all red flag laws do. why should the standard for preventing gun access be that the person already committed a violent crime beyond a reasonable doubt?
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Politics
here is an article that says the country was good when oil was plentiful and oil prices were up, and not so much when that wasn't the case.
republicans like to point out that they gave everyone free college and healthcare, and then went bankrupt
i think that misses the point. there are plenty of rich successful countries, like those in europe, who provide healthcare and eduation and they dont go belly up. these countries probably have agriculture or other sources of income, like the usa.
i admit you can't give everyone everything when you don't have the means, but that's only when you don't have the means. flat out socialism i would surmise is bad, but just giving people food education and healthcare, isn't, or at least shouldn't, going to automatically bankrupt a nation.
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Politics
if you don't believe in god or a higher power, then you must think that this world and its creatures are just robots from cause and effect chemical reactions. i suppose this is another way of saying can atheists, and how many are there, believe in free will in a deeper sense than we are free to make choices that are based on cause and effect chemical reactions?
it's not exhaustive proof of God, and is sort of like the complexity argument for God. but i dont know how you can look at humans and think we're just robots. it lacks common sense.
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Religion
i'm referring to the comments in regard to the dark skin congresswomen recently, three fourths of whom were actually born in the usa.
the reason it's racist, is because he never says those sorts of things about white people.
also, his comments about how the countries they came from were shit holes.... he's effectively saying the people who come from there are shit hole people. (he has said he doesn't want to get immigrants from shit hole countries) i actually agree that the people from sub par countries are often sub par people, but you can't generalize onto specific people. so, that comment was racist as well given he only talks about dark skin countries that way. .
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Politics