NBVegita

A few too many...just a few too many...

The reason why you won't let me in is because my awesomeness would overwhelm the squad and it would turn into another veggie worshiping cult. Gd admirers.

First problem with your equation is that only about half of that money is going to create new jobs, approx 400 billion. So your number would at best be ~8 billion. Second you would have to assume that all if the money has been spent creating those jobs, most of it, although allocated to do so, has not actually been spent. Again I've never argued that you cannot state a number of jobs created, as you can directly record the number of positions your administration personally created. That's the problem with these numbers. Directly from one of the paragraphs above, no matter what the unemployment rate jumps to, even a number that they swore their package would prevent, they simply use the age old "Well it would have been much worse" argument, which is the same lame argument that Cheney has be blathering about concerning national security. Ultimately I disagree, I find it impossible to get even a solid estimate of jobs saved. Short of if a company states it's going to lay off X people, the government gives them money and now they say they don't have to lay off X people. Then on the inverse side you look at the fact that even with stimulus help GM just lost a large amount of employees, which I personally agree with as bad as it is. Again you're in a political speculation because an economist aligned with you could try to massage the data to show great numbers saved and an economist against you can massage the numbers in the opposite direction. Ultimately you've got a number that is wholly unmeasurable and is based, short of the jobs created off speculation. Definitely not a number a president should be touting to defend his "wonderful" stimulus package, unfortunately it's the only number he can make look positive right now.

pft. Veg > all. gg.

pft. SMG is for noobs. gg.

Lol so because a republican says a statement, true or not, it is worth nothing, simply because it's from a republican? Well I always knew you thought that way it just about time you actually said it!!! Heck even Baucus sees a problem with it. He's not lying a little, he's making up a fictitious number to try to defend his ludicrous stimulus package that isn't worth the paper it's printed on, let alone the nearly one trillion dollars it's spending. To go along with that, what in that article is the author stretching? There is a big difference between giving someone the benefit of the doubt and doing what our media is doing. Hell the national media makes more love to Obama than his own wife does. And I agree with you Lynx. The problem with Obama is going to be when the rubber needs to meet the road. As of now he hasn't needed to actually do anything, and short of exploding our budget even more, he hasn't.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124451592762396883.html I do have to say that I not only agree that the president is making a bogus claim on this matter, but also with the assertion in the article that this never would have flown under the Bush administration. It appears that as it was trendy to tear apart every aspect of the Bush administration it is equally as trendy to allow things to slide past the microscope on Obama's administration. I feel the media needs to be a bit less bias. If Bush had done the same thing a year ago, you couldn't find a news outlet not reporting on it. Ironically I bet this post will be the first most of you have heard of this, heck this article was the first I'd heard/seen published. Just to clarify, I'm not so much attacking the Obama administration, although I hate when people mislead you, I'm more so attacking the bias of the media.

I roughly agree with Lynx. Obama talked a very good speech, but the application of what he said is monstrous. Just the politics between Israel and Palestine are ridiculous, and it seems that no matter which side we endorse, we make an enemy for every enemy we lose, and the middle east is demanding we take a side. All together, if any of his speech can actually be successfully manufactured, it is great, yet I'm not so confident that it can be at this time.

<3

See Ace I disagree with the fundamental concept that people would attack her for being against interracial marriage, simply because it is legal. It's the moral implications, more so than the legal, why people are criticizing her. Immediately if you speak against interracial marriage you are labeled a racist. Also, as Bak stated, it is only legal because we as a society deem it to be acceptable.

Agreed.

And this is the only place I feel we disagree. I agree that there are positives and negatives, but I don't think you can label religion as a whole a detrimental force, based on the fact that there are so many varying levels of practice and the fact that there are so many undocumented events. Like I posted above, similar to the news today, you rarely see historical documentation of positive things, normally things make history/news only with negatives. I personally don't feel there is enough evidence on the positive to even relate it with the negative. Of course we could almost tie this back up above, but our philosophical fundamentals are different. You philosophically believe religion to be more detrimental than good, I philosophically don't believe I can make that judgement based on the lack of documented evidence for one side of the argument.

I agree, but I don't agree with the double standards that if we harass her for her opinion its ok, but if you harass someone who's pro-gay you're a bigot. I say if you're going to let people harass one another, let them do it equally.

I personally think all this outrage over her is seriously crazy. The same people who in one breath support their own freedom of speach and don't want people harassing them for their lifestyles and ideas are harassing someone else. I say let everyone have their own opinions, we don't want a country full of sheep.

Ok, instead of going into another painful quotation and dissection debate, I'll take that statement as you are presenting it, thus effectively ending my involvement in the argument. From my initial post I've simply been arguing that religion is useful. If you accept positive aspects of religion, then you also have to accept the positive effects it has on its followers, thus meaning that it is useful, to some degree, for some manner of time. Thus you concur with the fact that I believe religion can be useful. The rest of the tangents we've been on really have little or nothing to do with that basic argument, so with that said I'll ask that this stays on the topic of "Is religion useful". I apologize for taking this so far off topic, and if you want to continue the above debate sever, we can start a new topic.

lol? Did you not read: "First off there are many levels of religion."? Lol. Simply because I did not list out all of the degrees of religious following inbetween fanatical and casual does not mean I'm saying its only one or the other. Note the SOME in my sentence. Note how I didn't state "Some are fanatical and the rest are casual". further more I then posted: Thus further clarifying that I don't believe it is one or the other. Nice try at cherry picking. And as for passing athiesm on, its very easy to do. Just as someone can pester you with the concept of being one with God, someone can pester your belief in God.

and I think it's in the realm of ~350 infections in the entire world...with ~6.7 billion people...that means 5.22 x 10^-8 % of the world population is infected by it... Hell ~60,000,000 Americans each year get the influenza virus alone. Just to put some perspective on it...right now you're about 70 times more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to catch this virus.

I've never really had a problem with the DMV in NY. Also I've never had to take a test, paper or vision to renew my license. Root got owned by the DMV.

First why is religion delusional? Simply because you don't have proof that god exists makes it delusional? So I supposed anyone believing in gravity was delusional...until it was proven? Anyone who believed we could fly to the moon was delusional...until we flew to the moon? In fact under that definition, anyone, who has ever had belief in something that is not yet proven is delusional. Not saying that God will ever be proven, or dis proven, but it is a far stretch to call people who believe in god delusional. So I would argue that the belief in religion is not delusional, or shall I say, no more delusional than in science where something is not proven. Before we go further arguing this, you must believe something is true/exists in order to try to prove it. For example, if no one believed we could fly to the moon, no one would have tried it. I would argue that a fear of death does not give you a greater survival probability. As many people react many different ways to fear. Some people if a car loses control and heads towards them will dive out of the way. Other will be frozen in place by that same fear. There is the fight or flight instinct where under immense stress different people will lose common sense and fight in a hopeless situation, or run like the blazes. Also the belief that you are heading to a better place does not remove your fear of death and you still have the fear, or sorrow, of leaving your loved ones behind. I disagree that you are not dealing with the pain. Everyone copes with any situation in a different way. Just using death as an example some people may turn to drugs, use alcohol, run a marathon, go to the gym, pick a fight with someone, listen to music, drive for hours, cry for hours, talk with friends, talk with family, bury it inside, ect. Religion is just another mechanism to help people through strenuous situations. People who are religious don't ignore their problems any more than those non religious people do. The only difference is that for person A, beating a punching bag makes them feel better at the end of the day where person B feels better praying to God(s). I disagree that you must sacrifice rationality and/or productivity with religion. First off there are many levels of religion. Some people are fanatical, some people are casual. In radical cases do people lose rationality? Sure. But you name me one radical group where people don't? Radical activists, radical politicians, radical religions...well shoot radical people in general will always lose rationality and thus productivity based on the foundation of their radical beliefs. So I will state that you must sacrifice rationality and productivity concerning a strong belief in anything radical. Also rationality is a relative concept. To you, believing in God is irrational because you cannot prove God. Another man may believe that with all that science can speculate on, and that which it can't, it is irrational to believe that there is no God. On the extreme everything has endless negative possibilities. If you look at just the negative effects of every social or political institution, especially on a radical scale, as you are with religion, you will find the majority of your comments are paralleled in each of those institutions. I'm not stating that religion is infinitely good, wonderful or any of that. Furthermore I appreciate the negative aspects of religion, thus why I don't formally believe in organized religion, but in the side of the argument I am presenting I am posting the cases in which religion is useful. Even though I don't personally follow an organized religion, I have studied many religions and can thoroughly understand and appreciate the usefulness of religion in peoples, of all statuses, lives.

The problem is Bak that the initial account you use is an extreme. Plus the difference is that religions are normally based on the concept of good, where as the gang you're talking about is based completely against the morals of society. (How those morals are dictated is a different discussion for a different topic) Yes religion has done bad things throughout the course of history and that is all, most specifically, non religious people ever focus on. It is very easy for someone who is non religious to simply look at religion as someting stupid, controlling and utterly unneccesary. It is very much like the government, we as a people love sensationalization. If the government does 1000 "good things" for the people, the one thing that gets the most publicity is the one bad thing done. In the media, if a druggie finds "God" and recovers, that doesn't make the news. When a serial killer is delisional and kills in the name of god, that does make the news. I mean just look at the publicity that Islam has gotten. It's at the point where for the majority, of at least Americans, Islam and radical are interchangable. Which is utterly not the case. Believe me, I am in no way religious, but I see the good religion can do in peoples lives, people who need, what they view as a positive outlet in their lives. Am I excusing all of the religious transgressions that have happened in history? No. The thing is power corrupts. Every government in history has been corrupt some way. It just so happens that relgions have out lasted all of these governments, thus giving you more ammunition for attacking their validity.

Based on your last sentence you could substitute religion with government, law, or any other form of control. As stated previously:

Bak you can only saturate the medical field with so many jobs before it will become like any other sector. Most of the medical field is already severely saturated and under funded. Also, as I've stated previously, it doesn't do an accountant any good to open up a highly trained job in a field he has no expertise in. Same thing with the factory workers and . Note to be a medical expert takes years of schooling. How many people can afford to put themselves through more school at this time? As for your account of the economy in WWII, that is false. First, the great depression ended, in America in 1933. WWII started, in Europe in ~1939. Second I do believe that we recovered from the great depression because we had a severely undervalued dollar, then we acquired massive amounts of gold that effectively increased the dollar to one of the strongest global currencies. It's a simple concept. You need to employ the unemployed. The medical field is no more the "field of the future" as is the utility, financial, construction, or technological fields are. These are all fields we cannot live without for the foreseeable future. I state again, the only way government spending can bring recovery to the stock market is by increasing faith in investors, which this plan in no way does.