birdog1960

and if a candidate ran on any one of those issues, he'd lose in a landslide. talk about a strawman. so how are citizens compelled to pay taxes if not by threat of punishment? the nature and the purpose? like a purpose that you see as worthwhile or that a majority of the electorate does? didn't we get obamacare through the same process and framework ( a majority of the electorate supported a candidate that openly embraced and promoted it)? wasn't it deemed constitutional?

therefore, it follows that any form of taxation is violent? a mandate for automotive liability insurance is violent? you can use any terminology you desire to describe this philosophy. my term would be "absurd". the basis, in a democracy, would be the will of the majority and that of the elected representatives of the majority.

ya see, we have these things called laws. there are many of them. they protect society from anarchy. and if you don't follow them, there are punishments including prison. this helps dissuade anarchy. i'm against capital punishment and torture. so, no violence in that model. ya'll aren't seriously proposing a society without laws, are you?

yes, it is.

guess not then. i think it's useful information. just passing it on. other people i've told have been unaware.

i have a few acquaintances in the grocery business. little secret they've told me and i've independently confirmed....shop the outside of the store. that's where the grown and killed stuff is. most of the stuff in the middle has been processed, amended or in some way worsened from it's original form. and for goodness sake, stay away from anything near the cash register.

i like kure beach which is a mile or two from carolina beach. no fast food. no high-rises and reasonable condos. my all time favorite is praia grande ("big beach") near lisbon, portugal. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Porto_Covo_-_Praia_Grande.jpg& . big waves and beautiful jagged cliffs surrounding. wicked undertow. they have very reasonable group surfing lessons with a few instructors (college kids) that speak english. but, damn, surfing is tough.

he was clearly an outlier. few lived til 90 then,,,few (but more) still do. when looking at plaster busts of the ancients (romans, greeks) in museums, their generally short lives always surprise me. my bet is that longevity in that age correlated with prosperity. it was the opposite of what we now see. the prosperous were fat and the less prosperous proportionally more thin or malnourished. when the norm was intermittent malnutrition and back breaking work, excess food and servants were survival advantages. obesity is generally and correctly correlated with poor health now (bmi, waist circumference) perhaps it was different when folks ate an excess of grain, eggs, fish and meat rather than fcs, mcdonalds and fried oreos. just my initial reactions to the question. possibly complete bs...

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/27/the_smearing_of_rachel_jeantel/. thoughtful people suck! nice job lady journalist.

here's the ticket: eat what you grow or kill (or some nice farmer kills or grows). stay away from anything that touches a factory or food "scientist". our ancestors were rarely fat and that's what they often did.

didn't get the chance to finish that thought.... the difference being that calories out (metabolism) changes as caloric intake does. instead of starvation, a better description would be caloric deficit. a caloric deficit engages a slowing of basal metabolism. people can compensate by increasing caloric burning through exercise. no doubt there is much to be learned. as the article states we have no cure right now. the best medications are pretty lousy. there's argument on which diets are the best: low carb, low fat, very low calorie etc and the data is inconclusive (with none of them being all that successful). satiety (feeling full) is key and many think high protein, low carb works best in this regard yet the long term success of these diets is not all that impressive. find a drug that turns off hunger (causes satiety) and were all thin) nevertheless, it does boil down to calories in/calories out. a deficit and you lose weight, a surplus and you gain.

ok, lets try again... it is as simple as calories in and calories out. the difference

this is absolutely correct. through evolution and a history during which much of the time, most people could obtain too few nutrients, humans adapted. the adaptation is that during times of relative starvation, our metabolism slows; precisely the opposite of what dieters desire. doesn't make weight loss impossible but it is much harder when one is working against the bodies innate compensatory mechanism.

convenient that we have no way to confirm or deny this contention but it doesn't matter. you might recall this: "thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets that they may be praised by others. truly, i say to you, they have received their reward. but when you give to the needy do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing..." and that's the last biblical reference or post i'll exchange with you. this is going nowhere fast. you're as likely to embrace religious based efforts for social justice as i am to embrace a flat tax.

have no idea where you get the idea that i support the use of violence and force to accomplish anything. i don't with the exception of the concept of a justified war eg WWII. but you're not really interested in a theological discussion. you're interested in cherry picking passages that support your "every man for himself" philosophy that you've put forth so many times here. that belief in my mind is the exact opposite of the central new testament theme. and governments are comprised of individuals. yes, govt's are us.

we finally agree. yes, you're confused. but keep trying.

we all interpret things differently (even for quotes as unambiguous as these).. i feel the passages aren't in support of a system that concentrates wealth so disproportionally with resulting suffering. you see something else. maybe the intent was something in between. i'm pretty certain what those passages mention are not manifested in the dog eat dog country we currently have.

how bout these 2?: love your neighbor like yourself. so in everything, do unto others what you would have them do unto you, for this sums up the law and the prophets.

so everywhere in the world that has national elections has more fraud and disenfranchisement than any of the us states? Is the UK a banana republic? Switzerland? Canada? Germany?... c'mon. you can do better than that. and what happened to your spelling and grammar? not that it matters but it's almost as if someone else typed this.

you didn't refute that a prez election was recently decided by scotus because of irregularities in a state's election system, didn't refute that there's plenty of history of states attempting and often succeding in eliminating certain targeted groups voting rights, didn't address that allegations and sometimes proof of election fraud are present in the current system, didn't refute that there exists a lack of confidence in the election process among the populace. so, am i to assume that you agree that these premises are true and factual?

about as insightful and specific as "all of them". care to expound on why "all of them" (the points about election issues) are untrue?

blah, blah, ayn rand liberterian, blah. which of my statements are untrue? and btw, i'm no athiest nor am i godless. i'm actually a quite dedicated believer. but what does that have to do with this?

which of my the points in that paragraph do you believe to be false? ginsberg gave several recent examples of the part you bolded in her dissent.

no. what we can find with state administered voting is redistricting and thereby rigging of results, hanging chads and supreme court decisions over who won a presidential election, fairly frequent complaints of voter fraud, multiple historical attempts at removing the ability to vote for whole groups of society and lack of confidence in the system by significant swaths of the populace. the fda has some problems but overall does a very good job in my opinion. we arguably have the safest food supply in the world. few drugs have been approved without good evidence of their safety and effectiveness. problems discovered only after millions of patients are treated are impossible to predict. in general, drugs are approved more quickly and with less study in other countries. i'd choose the fda's more conservative approach every time. now if we had a nationa formulary, prices would come screaming down...

what a load of feces. we're talking about id cards not something as complicated as assuring food and drug safety on a national level....oh, wait. passports are issued by the feds and have been efficiently distriuted and controlled. such an id program could easily be compared to what we currently have.