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Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[REDSTATEWARD]

  ...if you need a religion to tell you what to do, you aren't moral, just obedient.

Which underscores a founding principle of the USA.
We are free to explore all sorts of religious beliefs to establish our individual moral compass.
I doubt you have not done the same.

Sort of like following the law when the law is wrong.

Not even close.
“ Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,
Render unto God what is God’s. ( or words to that effect)
The Former is subject to a vote
The Latter is your choice

[kiidcarter8]

Heh

USTA - what are we doing here?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/21/tennis/carlos-ramos-serena-and-venus-williams-spt-intl/index.html

[josh]

https://slate.trib.al/yUI9cuq?fbclid=IwAR0ZlPWPsxsXhmptElcqct5s22MgHcuqFXVt74qXSrs2L2Wd7FF3hZWJ3V0

Brazil has fires all over the place, but the government doesn't seem to care.

Repeat after Bambi: "Man-caused climate change is a hoax, man-caused climate change is a hoax, man-caused climate change is a hoax, man-caused climate change is a hoax!"

How could our destroying forests all over the globe possibly influence anything?!

[HamiltonIII]

If you need a religion to tell you what to do, you aren't moral, just obedient. Sort of like following the law when the law is wrong. :-



So morality is a mutable thing?

[josh]

  ...if you need a religion to tell you what to do, you aren't moral, just obedient.

Which underscores a founding principle of the USA.
We are free to explore all sorts of religious beliefs to establish our individual moral compass.
I doubt you have not done the same.

Sort of like following the law when the law is wrong.

Not even close.
“ Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,
Render unto God what is God’s. ( or words to that effect)
The Former is subject to a vote
The Latter is your choice

Yes, Ward, we already know that you approve of slavery.

Religion is not always right, either.

Some issues should not be subject to voting, Ward - that's why we call them "inalienable rights."

It is also true that we have the right to explore "all sorts of religious beliefs." We even have the right to figure out our morality absent religion, struggle though you may with that concept.

SCOTUS can err in favor of law and be immoral. And wrong.

Deal with it.

[josh]

If you need a religion to tell you what to do, you aren't moral, just obedient. Sort of like following the law when the law is wrong. :-



So morality is a mutable thing?

How do you get that from what I wrote?

[kiidcarter8]

But I thought you guys liked Biden.

[REDSTATEWARD]

  ...if you need a religion to tell you what to do, you aren't moral, just obedient.

Which underscores a founding principle of the USA.
We are free to explore all sorts of religious beliefs to establish our individual moral compass.
I doubt you have not done the same.

Sort of like following the law when the law is wrong.

Not even close.
“ Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,
Render unto God what is God’s. ( or words to that effect)
The Former is subject to a vote
The Latter is your choice

Yes, Ward, we already know that you approve of slavery.

LOL    Well at least you didn’t call me “ deplorable”!

Religion is not always right, either.

Who maintained it was?

Some issues should not be subject to voting, Ward - that's why we call them "inalienable rights."

Glad you support Them. But they are the result of a vote.

It is also true that we have the right to explore "all sorts of religious beliefs." We even have the right to figure out our morality absent religion, struggle though you may with that concept.

That’s not a struggle. That is common sense.

SCOTUS can err in favor of law and be immoral. And wrong.

Then change the Law.

[Hairy Lime]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/08/17/southern-poverty-law-center-hate-groups-scam-column/2022301001/

While I was missing lunch, a crime scene played out in the office lobby below me. My coworker and friend Leo wasn’t armed, but he had played the quick-thinking and inadvertent hero, disarming a young man on a mission to kill me and as many of my colleagues as possible. The gunman had packed his backpack with ammo and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches — later admitting that he had planned to smear them on our lifeless faces as a political statement. Leo took a bullet in the arm but managed to hold the attacker until law enforcement arrived.

I wrote and edited for the Family Research Council, a public advocacy organization that promoted the principles I have cared about since childhood: protecting the family, promoting the dignity of every human life and advocating for religious liberty. It reads like a tagline, but it’s also just what I believed and the way I chose to match my career with my convictions.



I never expected that everyone would celebrate or share my beliefs. But I did expect to be able to discuss and debate these differences without becoming a political target in an act of terrorism, the first conviction under Washington, D.C.’s 2002 Anti-Terrorism Act.

The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled us a 'hate group'


It was the type of violent incident that one could expect a group that purportedly monitors “hate,” like the Southern Poverty Law Center, to notice, research and decry. In fact, we were on the center’s radar but for all the wrong reasons. The assailant acknowledged later in FBI testimony that he had selected our office precisely because the SPLC had labeled my employer a “hate group.”

It has always been easier to smear people rather than wrestle with their ideas. It’s a bully who calls names and spreads lies rather than thoroughly reading a brief’s legal arguments or challenging the rationale underlying a policy proposal. The SPLC has chosen to take the easy path — to intimidate and mislead for raw political power and financial benefit.

For years, former employees revealed, local journalists reported and commentators have lamented: The Southern Poverty Law Center is not what it claims to be. Not a pure-hearted, clear-headed legal advocate for the vulnerable, but rather an obscenely wealthy marketing scheme. For years, the left-wing interest group has used its “hate group” list to promote the fiction that violent neo-Nazis and Christian nonprofits peacefully promoting orthodox beliefs about marriage and sex are indistinguishable. Sometimes, it has apologized to public figures it has smeared, and it recently paid out millions to settle a threatened defamation lawsuit.


These shameful secrets are no longer hidden in shadows. The New York Times, Politico, NPR and a host of other mainstream publications are reporting on the corruption and widening credibility gap...

Bigots come in disguise, often.

Indeed. They often wrap themselves in religious views to cloak their homophobia, for instance.

[josh]

  ...if you need a religion to tell you what to do, you aren't moral, just obedient.

Which underscores a founding principle of the USA.
We are free to explore all sorts of religious beliefs to establish our individual moral compass.
I doubt you have not done the same.

Sort of like following the law when the law is wrong.

Not even close.
“ Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,
Render unto God what is God’s. ( or words to that effect)
The Former is subject to a vote
The Latter is your choice

Yes, Ward, we already know that you approve of slavery.

LOL    Well at least you didn’t call me “ deplorable”!

Religion is not always right, either.

Who maintained it was?

Some issues should not be subject to voting, Ward - that's why we call them "inalienable rights."

Glad you support Them. But they are the result of a vote.

It is also true that we have the right to explore "all sorts of religious beliefs." We even have the right to figure out our morality absent religion, struggle though you may with that concept.

That’s not a struggle. That is common sense.

SCOTUS can err in favor of law and be immoral. And wrong.

Then change the Law.

Duh.

[josh]

Back to school sale in Texas:

https://allthatsinteresting.com/texas-gun-store-school-sale?fbclid=IwAR2c2aJW2YBg4CVzHy-ScjQcVVLm_VhuhTkk9sWFGgOxjd0RMgSDM1WFS-0

Discounted guns.

[josh]

http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/AAG8n7f?ocid=sf&fbclid=IwAR0xsATNwdUgafgniDW9-8Tq0VxXiU8Yd_j2tzmoQh5vwCDE2mVpu4Ewn48

President Trump wanted to give himself the Medal of Honor.

[facilitatorn]

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Barack Obama- February 2008

Obama led the democrats to complete control of The Federal Government and in the course of governing lost both Houses of Congress and 900 democrat seats in 50 states.

I don’t think that was the “ change” he was seeking.

He treated republicans like they were part of a political party and not a criminal organization, a mistake no one will ever make again.

[HamiltonIII]

If you need a religion to tell you what to do, you aren't moral, just obedient. Sort of like following the law when the law is wrong. :-



So morality is a mutable thing?

How do you get that from what I wrote?

It's what you wrote.

You imply that following one's religion is automatically acting in dogmatically, and therefore, by extension not necessarily moral. You then said that following a law when the law is wrong would be the same thing. Ergo, following the law is wrong, when one decides it is, and therefore any moral tenet that compels one to follow the law goes out the window.

So, it appears that your moral compass, is ill-defined, or changes according to whether you would choose to follow a religion or a law. Hence, your morality is mutable. In other words, if nothing is wrong  (breaking the law, acting outside one's religious teachings) then everything is right.

I really don't think that is what people are striving for in the world.

So, you really sound like Trump, whose own morality appears to be hyper-elastic, able to be bent at will in order to work inside or outside the law, or outside the teachings of his religion---which appear to have been derived from the teachings of Norman Vincent Peale, whose church Trump attended.

It seems as though the lessons he learned there were perhaps overlearned, or they fit neatly into the idea that if nothing is wrong then everything is right.

From wikipedia: Peale's works came under criticism from several mental health experts, one of whom directly said Peale was a con man and a fraud.[14] These critics appeared in the early 1950s after the publication of The Power of Positive Thinking.
 
One major criticism of The Power of Positive Thinking is that the book is full of anecdotes that are hard to substantiate. Almost all of the experts and many of the testimonials that Peale quotes as supporting his philosophy are unnamed, unknown and unsourced. Examples include a "famous psychologist",[15]:52 a two-page letter from a "practicing physician",[15]:150 another "famous psychologist",[15]:169 a "prominent citizen of New York City",[15]:88 and dozens, if not hundreds, more unverifiable quotations. Similar scientific studies of questionable validity are also cited. As psychiatrist R. C. Murphy exclaimed, "All this advertising is vindicated as it were, by a strict cleaving to the side of part truth," and referred to the work and the quoted material as "implausible and woodenly pious".[16]


So, how is morality mutable, or is it fixed at a certain age, personal in nature, and not open for criticism, unless it fits your idea of eactly what it should be when.

 

[HamiltonIII]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/08/17/southern-poverty-law-center-hate-groups-scam-column/2022301001/

While I was missing lunch, a crime scene played out in the office lobby below me. My coworker and friend Leo wasn’t armed, but he had played the quick-thinking and inadvertent hero, disarming a young man on a mission to kill me and as many of my colleagues as possible. The gunman had packed his backpack with ammo and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches — later admitting that he had planned to smear them on our lifeless faces as a political statement. Leo took a bullet in the arm but managed to hold the attacker until law enforcement arrived.

I wrote and edited for the Family Research Council, a public advocacy organization that promoted the principles I have cared about since childhood: protecting the family, promoting the dignity of every human life and advocating for religious liberty. It reads like a tagline, but it’s also just what I believed and the way I chose to match my career with my convictions.



I never expected that everyone would celebrate or share my beliefs. But I did expect to be able to discuss and debate these differences without becoming a political target in an act of terrorism, the first conviction under Washington, D.C.’s 2002 Anti-Terrorism Act.

The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled us a 'hate group'


It was the type of violent incident that one could expect a group that purportedly monitors “hate,” like the Southern Poverty Law Center, to notice, research and decry. In fact, we were on the center’s radar but for all the wrong reasons. The assailant acknowledged later in FBI testimony that he had selected our office precisely because the SPLC had labeled my employer a “hate group.”

It has always been easier to smear people rather than wrestle with their ideas. It’s a bully who calls names and spreads lies rather than thoroughly reading a brief’s legal arguments or challenging the rationale underlying a policy proposal. The SPLC has chosen to take the easy path — to intimidate and mislead for raw political power and financial benefit.

For years, former employees revealed, local journalists reported and commentators have lamented: The Southern Poverty Law Center is not what it claims to be. Not a pure-hearted, clear-headed legal advocate for the vulnerable, but rather an obscenely wealthy marketing scheme. For years, the left-wing interest group has used its “hate group” list to promote the fiction that violent neo-Nazis and Christian nonprofits peacefully promoting orthodox beliefs about marriage and sex are indistinguishable. Sometimes, it has apologized to public figures it has smeared, and it recently paid out millions to settle a threatened defamation lawsuit.


These shameful secrets are no longer hidden in shadows. The New York Times, Politico, NPR and a host of other mainstream publications are reporting on the corruption and widening credibility gap...

Bigots come in disguise, often.

Indeed. They often wrap themselves in religious views to cloak their homophobia, for instance.

No doubt. They also wrap themselves in indignation, selective and false interpretation of history, and massive quantities of hypocrisy.

Take the Catholic Church, for example, during World War II, and the lead-up to it. The "Venerable" Pius XII cut quite the number of deals with Herr Schickelgruber, didn't he?