billvon

Of all the rationales for atrocities throughout history, none are so insidious as "God wants me to do it." Anything can be explained away with that rationale - genocide, murder, fraud, theft. Hey, God works in mysterious ways, after all! And we are just his humble servants carrying out his wishes that we take from the congregation and buy ourselves jets, blow and hookers! Take from Caesar what is Caesar's and all that. And Proverbs 21:5 - "The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.” God is telling them to not be poor. With that in mind it's unsettling to hear this come out of the new speaker: "And then at the end, when it came toward the end, the Lord said, ‘Now, step forward.’ ‘Me? I’m supposed to be Aaron.’ No, the Lord said, ‘Step forward.’ " Let's hope the next thing the Lord tells him to do doesn't involve young children, untraceable Cayman Island accounts, electoral fraud or an inconvenient (and turbulent) priest.

Right. I recall the right's "culture of life" that refused to give a 10-year-old who was raped an abortion that would save her life. And when she went out of state to get one, threatened to go after the doctor who saved her life. And is now refusing to abort a dead fetus that may just make the woman carrying it sterile. But hey, as long as they own the libs that's all that matters, right? You must have missed the last four years; the republicans have been ready to announce impeachement Any Day Now since he was first elected, just as soon as someone tells them what they can impeach him for. It tells you a lot about how republicans think that the impeachement was announced long before they had anything to impeach him for. Again, owning the libs as opposed to anything resembling justice.

Ah yes. So a parent who calls their child "it" or forcibly dresses boys up in girl's clothing might not get as much in the way of visitation privileges in a divorce that they would like. That actually sounds like a good thing to me.

No 20 year loss in achievement. We lost the equivalent of four months in math and three months in reading. That was the cost; the benefit was saving hundreds of thousands of lives. A fair trade IMO. True dat. Republicans should be loving this.

And you don't see the danger of allowing a politician to get away with financial and electoral fraud, rape and treason? He's already been found liable for financial fraud and rape. There is no question that he is an actual criminal. If you want to see an example of using a justice system to target political opposition, look at the current targeting of the Biden family. They couldn't find anything on Joe so they went after his son. They are now not allowing his son to testify publicly, because they fear the truth coming out. The party trying to hide the truth are never the good guys.

AB 947 is a consumer protection bill that restricts the ability of companies to sell information on a consumer's racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, or union membership. I think you might have copy-and-pasted from a right wing source that is somewhat loose with the truth.

We are not. But we are going to close schools when it snows and the roads become dangerous, because we don't want people to die unneccesarily when a temporary closure can avoid that. We did something similar during the pandemic.

Marjorie Taylor Greene explains one of the recent GOOD decisions that was made by Congress: "The whole NDAA deal was made between Speaker Johnson, Chuck Schumer, and the House Armed Services Committee. And people like me, we didn’t get to participate." And due to her being excluded - to republican's horror - a bipartisan deal was made, and the military was funded.

Yeah! And where are they NOW? Did we even get to keep them, or did we just give them away to some other country?

Not only that, if they don't return results immediately they are worthless. Just consider the worst failed government program ever - the Apollo program. It started in 1961 and they didn't launch a single person into space for SEVEN YEARS! And it cost over $100 BILLION in today's dollars! The worst failure ever.

As recently as 1983 I recall a few heated debates at MIT about the relative value of Bitnet vs Arpanet/Internet protocols for data transfer. A big argument for Bitnet, repeated quite often, was that it was developed without government money and so was more ethical. Not really true, since the NSF did put some money into it as well after it got off the ground. But it was seen as the "don't need no damn government oversight" option.

?? Surely you've been following the right wing narratives lately. Trump is a victim of Biden's vicious and partisan justice department. Santos is a victim of a left wing smear campaign. Conservatives are victims of insane woke agendas. Conservative businesses are victims of the liberal climate change lie. Children are victims of drag queens (but NOT GUNS!) Oh, and Trump is also a victim of a total of 14 women who unfairly accuse him of rape and sexual assault. Even though he actually raped one, and was in a picture with her, and mistook her for his wife, and paid off a porn star to not talk about him banging her, and bragged about grabbing women's pussys. That's not important. What's important is that HE is the victim here. Taking responsibility for their actions went out the window years ago.

You were literally saying that. However, if you are now backtracking and admitting that the government DOES subsidize gas vehicles, gas stations, oil companies and public roads, then great - you now recognize that subsidizing new technologies is nothing new for the US.

Well, not only that, but there is only one sane answer to that question even if it is asked - which is, of course, "no." But he couldn't bring himself to say that without qualifying it.

If Speaker's Corner had existed back in 1910: ================================================================ Naptha Heads I put pen to paper today to lament the latest lunacy arising from the liberal progressive elements of our society - the automobile. Everyone has seen these infernal contraptions by now, driving around cities and making life for ordinary people impossible. They have been touted as the solution to all our woes over disposal of manure, disease and noise in cities. But proponents of these demonic machines are either quite literally insane, or they have not thought it through. For example, take the fuel the dangerous things need. They can run on peanut oil, but verily we would need the entire country planted with peanuts to ensure a sufficient supply for them. They can also run on a naptha-like fraction of refined oil, but there are only 22 refineries in the US right now. Consider going from a family of four needing ten gallons of lamp oil a year to needing thousands of gallons to fuel their foul-smelling machine! We would need thousands and thousands of refineries and oil wells, an impossible proposition for centuries to come. Indeed the naptha comes with its own challenges. A man smelling naptha regularly becomes dizzy and sick, more like a publican in his cups than a useful member of society. Can the country live with these naptha-heads in all aspects of society, pushing their literally sickening fuel on the streets of America? And naptha heads do not consider how much road will be needed. Unlike horses capable of surmounting any rude trail or path, automobiles need paved roads, of a much higher quality than we see today. By one estimate, to accommodate automobiles we will need FOUR MILLION MILES of these roads in the next 100 years to deal with the traffic caused by these dangerous vehicles! That means that the US would have to build one hundred miles a DAY of roads, a ludicrous number. The most ardent road builders in the country, combined, can barely build ten miles of horse-navigable road a day. The naptha-heads are too dizzy from their own fuels to think clearly. Then of course there are safety issues. Old Dobbin will never trample a child if he can help it; a good horse will keep the populace safe and will get their riders home safely. With an automobile a second's inattention could lead the machine to crush a school full of children, or crash their driver at breakneck speeds into a stone wall. A horse will get anyone home safely, from the most timid woman to a man in his cups. Not so for an automobile, that must be managed constantly with an expert man's hand so as not to kill dozens. Can our society really accept dead children as a welcome price for this "progress?" And this does not count the risks that automobiles pose to our current reliable transportation. Backfires from cars have spooked horses who have then spilled their riders, and sent entire teams running from the satanic noise these things produce. Who will compensate these riders and drivers for their losses? And of course, unlike horses, these cars with their tanks full of oil or naptha can explode at any moment, raining fire and destruction on the heart of any of our fair cities. For decades now the US has prospered from reliable canal, rail and horse-drawn transportation. It would be insanity itself to switch from those to dangerous and unproven naptha-fueled contraptions that will kill thousands, and for which no infrastructure exists. Perhaps in 100 years we will have solutions to all the intractable problems that automobiles cause, and have the infrastructure to support them. Until that time, encouraging their use is pure insanity borne of naptha-addled minds.