Reincarnate

You are lucky. So many people just go off the deep end and are too far gone. Once you get that deep into the web of conspiracies, you're often past the point of reason and no amount of research and logic will ever make a difference again. Any kind of information that contradicts their world view is either ignored or passed off as manufactured propaganda. I've seen a lot of people I care about lose their grips on reality because of this and it makes me sad. I'm glad you saw the light.

Whoa. How did you escape?

C'mon guys, abortion thread is over there.

I was a theistic evolutionist before it was cool. Indeed. It was no way like this when I first joined... haha.

It's pretty bad. Respects everyone? Wasn't he the on who said that nearly half the country is a bunch of takers who can't take responsibility in their lives? I didn't feel particularly respected when he said that about me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_(2010–2011) And from the other day: http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html

That's not the military. It's also within a police officer's rights to search a home in a case where people were reporting shots fired. That was the City of New Orleans that issued that order (not the Federal government), the police confiscated the weapons (not the military), and the city was sued. They lost, and were ordered by the courts to return all of the confiscated weapons. Following this, the Louisiana government passed a law that would prevent that from ever happening again, as did 21 other states. And after that, the FEDERAL government passed its own law to do the same thing. If the government is after our guns, why are they passing laws that make it harder for them to get our guns?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_government_response_to_Hurricane_Katrina#Confiscation_of_civilian_firearms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disaster_Recovery_Personal_Protection_Act_of_2006 "Kiernicki testified Olofson told him the third position was for automatic firing" "Clevert said the key was not what parts were in the weapon but whether it operated in automatic mode. He played a video used at trial showing ATF agents firing Olofson's weapon in automatic mode." "A search of his home turned up books on converting rifles to fully automatic, and e-mail on his computer showed he bought M-16 parts, records show." http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/29561634.html So it has nothing to do with the government taking guns away, and isn't applicable to the discussion. It isn't happening.

Saw it on opening night in HFR 3D and holy heck it was wonderful. Took my eyes some time to get used to the HFR, but once they did, it was easily the most beautiful movie I have ever seen. And I love the things that they added as well. It's mostly derived from the Appendices, so it did happen, and I love that they decided to add it in to give us more backstory and a bridge to LOTR. My only complaint was the use of CGI for the goblins. I think they easily could have accomplished that with actors in costume as they did with LOTR - it may have cost more, but it would have looked better and more real I think. The critics are full of crap. 65% for this movie is complete idiocy. And most of them are just complaints about the HFR and length of the movie, two horrible gauges for its quality - especially when most movie goers have been very positive about the HFR.

I think it was because Columbine was ground breaking. There had been school shootings before, but Columbine broke records both in terms of deaths, the level of planning that went into it, the cause, and its legacy. And until today, it was the deadliest grade school shooting in history.

Since always. It's been known to do things that kind of bypass things in extremely roundabout ways, but a blatant and obvious disregard of the constitution like banning guns would not work ever, and they will not ever try it. Don't be paranoid. Uhhhhh, source? I would be at an old woman with a pistol in her hand too. Unless you want to give me more context than that. How have they shown this? And why didn't any politicians push for more gun control during the last four or five shootings that took place this year?

Minor correction - they don't have mandatory gun ownership, they have mandatory military service and then give everyone the option to keep their assault rifle after they're discharged. Sorry, carry on. :X

Gun control isn't exclusively about banning guns. It's about regulating who can get them and what all they have access to. Enhancing background checks isn't going to lead to more violence, neither will preventing people from using high capacity mags, or certain types of assault weapons. But ultimately what we need right now is a serious culture change. Americans are simply too quick to resort to violence, and they ignore warning signs that people may be resorting to it. ---------- Post added at 02:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:18 PM ---------- Why be concerned about open and concealed carry? Nobody open carrying is going to go out and commit crime because they already have an abundance of attention on them, and those with concealed carry permits typically have to go through an extremely complex process to do so that involves making sure they're actually mentally fit to do so. Those are the least of our concerns - we should be concerned about the people disregarding the law to use weapons, not those that follow it. ---------- Post added at 02:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:20 PM ---------- A petition means nothing. The Constitution doesn't permit the government to take guns away, and so it will not happen. Also, Hitler? I don't think gun control is anything like what Hitler did....

I really hate politicizing things like this but seriously, how many is that this year? This is getting absolutely out of control. Something seriously needs to be done about gun violence, and America's gun culture in general. We can't just keep letting this happen with more and more frequency and keep doing nothing. These people shouldn't have to have died in vain.

No, I don't don't make it out to be worthless, I make it out to be harmless. There's a big difference. The treaty does not have the authority to force the United States government to do anything, and that is a fact. There is no threat to our sovereignty because there is no enforcement mechanism. It is important for reasons that I've already laid out. It builds the foundation for disability rights around the world, and the way the United States react to it sends a strong message one way or the other.

It's not a very good comparison, because UN treaties don't work that way. This would be like you're the owner of the largest corporation in the world, and a group of small businesses asked you to join a non-binding agreement promoting a certain business practice. They can't stop you from changing your mind down the road, because you have more power than the rest of them combined. The likelihood of us changing the ADA in a way that displeases the international community is so incredibly low I can't imagine it ever happening, and even if it did happen, there would literally be nothing they could possibly do about it. You're making this a lot more complicated than it really is.

I think it's pretty obvious that progress would be adding protections, and regress would simply be removing those currently in place. I don't see any reason why America would remove those protections, and if we did, I would be extremely concerned. But if that was our decision, it's not like a treaty would be able to stop us from adjusting domestic policy. We're America after all. Though I sure as heck would hope the world would at least express their disapproval if we decided to do that.

Like I told Slave of Elyon, the only way we would be breaking away from the confines of the treaty is if we were to actually regress. The treaty doesn't prevent us from making future progress. I think there are very different ways to get involved in the world's business. Getting behind international legislation that seeks to promote equal rights is vastly different than involving ourselves in another nation's conflicts or going to war. There's no doubt everyone can get behind the promotion of American values if done in a peaceful way that other countries like.

I wish pragmatism was more common. Realism is always better than idealism when that idealism simply doesn't work or have any practical application.

It's not a risk. You can't risk national sovereignty by passing a treaty based on legislation we have in place. There is absolutely no logical way it could possibly affect the way we do things, unless for some bizarre reason we were to decide to scrap or scale back the Americans With Disabilities Act. Which of course would be absurd. Just like the assumption that all international cooperation is bad and that this is a threat to our sovereignty. A treaty like this is a step in the direction of compelling those nations to do so. Many of them have abysmal treatment of disabled people, and this would set the foundation for them to change that. It does matter that we didn't approve it, because it sends a message. If the most powerful nation in the world didn't approve the treaty, the nation that was the basis for the treaty in the first place, then why should anybody care about it? Had we passed it, it would send the message that this does matter, it is a big deal, and it needs to be implemented by all associated countries. We have an enormous amount of clout in the international community to help get that done. By failing to pass, that clout is completely wasted, and it sends a message that disability rights don't matter to American, and hence, nobody else needs to care either. See above.

Wouldn't that be funny though? If people actually did leave the country over the election, and we saw a mass exodus of people fleeing what they perceive as socialism to a country that's much more socialist than ours?

They wouldn't. The treaty was modeled after our own Americans With Disabilities Act, meaning it would change literally nothing for us.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/04/despite-dole-appearance-senate-fails-to-ratify-disabilities-treaty/?hpt=hp_bn3 This really makes me sick. How in the world can people refuse to support a treaty like this that wouldn't even effect the United States, but would help the rest of the world? We had no obligation other than to ratify the treaty, and we failed. Despite the efforts of republicans like John McCain and the presence of Bob Dole himself at the vote, 38 heartless GOP senators decided disabled people aren't even worth saying yes to. All we needed were five more yes votes. What a sad day.

http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2012/sep/19/naacp/-person-voter-fraud-very-rare-phenomenon/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/25/voter-purges-republicans_n_1912190.html http://truth-out.org/news/item/10981-new-nationwide-study-of-election-fraud-since-2000-finds-just-10-cases-of-in-person-voter-fraud

http://votingrights.news21.com/article/election-fraud/