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STP

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    Vermont legalizes gay marriage

    in Spray

    Posted

    Is that all you got? Pussy. I'd be really surprised if you said you had offspring because by the looks of it these posts will be your only lasting legacy. But hey, don't take it so hard, it's only spray or is that jist?

    Vermont legalizes gay marriage

    in Spray

    Posted

    I had very liberal--"live and let live"--beliefs when I was much younger and in college. That was then. The worldview of a conscientious person should change over time given the fluid nature of life circumstances.

     

    Am I right? I don't know. So you believe that the deeper eternal truths become evident in society over time, that government is the vehicle of change, and that an ideal society is approaching where human rights hold the highest value Uber Alles?

     

    Somehow I feel that these changes are substitute gratifications while the system is essentially flawed, that these changes serve as a pressure release valve, that a secular religion of existentialism rooted in materialism is exalted as the cult of the future. So back to the question. I will not commit to a yes or no answer.

    Vermont legalizes gay marriage

    in Spray

    Posted

    How can you be... ...when actually the issue is much more than allowing gays to marry?

     

    How can a person be this blatantly bigoted and blind to it? There is nothing more to the issue than allowing gays to marry - nothing. All that 'much more' IS the bigotry. Following your pathetic line of logic would return us to the days when states could outlaw interracial marriage so as not to infringe on racists' 'right' to raise their kids with the correct 'upbringing' free of gov't imposed mind-control.

     

    This is exactly why religious fundamentalism - anywhere and of any kind - is so dangerous to human rights and free, democratic nations.

     

    Whew, Joseph I'm devastated. :rolleyes:

     

    Why are you disrespecting me? Well, this IS spray. You think that my posts are who I am. So you put a label on me and that's that. The substance of who I am is that label. Well done.

     

    You don't know me. You don't know my voting record, etc. You make assumptions then you attack me even though I am just a messenger. Have you considered that I am purposely taking that position not as my base beliefs but rather from the standpoint that there are two sides to give voice to?

     

    You have couched your position so that one side is wholly right while the other side is grossly wrong. You suppress legitimate concerns as meaningless or trivial. My initial standpoint is that I believe it is an injustice to force others to conform by dictate. I can’t speak to the moral equivalence of the two issues, one being the discrimination against a group, the other being the method used to change society. The latter is the issue that I’m addressing.

     

    My understanding is that there is a third way that seeks to respect values on both sides, because to have otherwise, can only lead to conflict.

     

    namaste

     

    Vermont legalizes gay marriage

    in Spray

    Posted

    Opposed to this view are those who see each of us as aware of ourselves and our experience in a way that we can never be with respect to any other human being. Self enclosed, we are seen as needing to reach an understanding of the inner lives of others, somehow, on the basis of our own unique awareness of our inner lives. However, this denies us the comfort of a more direct closeness. We live forever with a gap between ourselves and others.

     

    Thus, the mushroom.

    Vermont legalizes gay marriage

    in Spray

    Posted

     

    :pagetop:

    1778 - 'free' [white] men get rights

    1865 - blacks [in theory] get basic rights

    1870 - minorities [in theory] get to vote

    1920 - women get to vote

    1965 to present - blacks fight for the rest of their equal rights

    1967 - interracial marriage rights recognized

    1969 to present - gays fight for equal rights

     

    Could it be a trend? Could it be our history? Could it be bigots are just afraid of our history because bigots of one stripe or another have attempted to block every one of these milestones in U.S. history.

     

    I have never had a problem with the recognition of the disenfranchised. I just find it interesting that 'you' use the same tactics that you rail against, i.e., pitting right vs wrong that you accuse Christians of doing? How can you be so legalistically rigid in framing the issue when actually the issue is much more than allowing gays to marry? Why seek to marginalize a larger number of people by calling them stupid or irrelevant?

    Country is going batshit crazy

    in Spray

    Posted

    My layman's theory is that it involves a profound feeling of lack of control. A revenge fantasy manifesting as the last act of will.

     

    Maybe it's the 'trickle-down' effect of our national psyche enacting the revenge fantasy of 911.

    Vermont legalizes gay marriage

    in Spray

    Posted

    Let there be 50 social experiments but don’t force any of these 50 to legally recognize what passes as acceptable by federal dictate.

     

    When I read this, I assumed it was infering to allowing a state like Vermont to be able to make local choices without a right wing christian-big government or George Bush style political ass-stomping telling them otherwise. Of course, allowing states the ability to chose there own path you may have states like Georgia having consent to marriage age of 13 or 14 and places states perhaps like Alabama allowing brothers and sisters to marry.

     

    Might even have prostitution in parts of Nevada. ....wait

     

    How come you're the only one that gets the gist of what I'm saying.

    Vermont legalizes gay marriage

    in Spray

    Posted

    I do not see why you do not understand a parent’s right to raise their children free from the interference of a government mandated social agenda. Why is that so hard to understand?

     

    So you actually believe that the will of the state invalidates the wishes of the parent? Tell me why government should force otherwise mature parents of children to conform to the state’s vision of the ideal society? And why should judicial activism be used nihilistically to remold society in some ‘enlightened’ vision of a select few? Isn’t this what could be properly termed the ‘tyranny of the minority’?

     

    And why is it that you not see the contradiction in your own views? You would call someone a bigot for having the conviction of their beliefs in raising their children free from your overbearing intolerant demands?

     

    So now (armed with your ACLU membership card), you’re a self-professed expert in constitutional law? Tell me, how far can we take this 14th Amendment? Does it protect individuals who practice lifestyle choices involving alternative marital arrangements such as polygamy? Does it protect pedophiles?

     

    In other words, does it require that others accept as normal what they consider to be deviant behavior? I’m not necessarily saying it’s deviant only that you consider if it is just for people to be forced to conform to someone else’s standard.

     

    Why is it so difficult to see the distinction between what is seen as genetically determined versus what is considered to be a behavioral choice? Inclusion under a protected status would be more readily accepted by society at large if that difference is rooted in an inherent basis and don’t tell me stories about the sexual behavior of animals as your pop science validation of your beliefs.

     

    Vermont legalizes gay marriage

    in Spray

    Posted

    Isn’t it hypocritical to apply your ideas of what constitutes tolerance to everyone especially in a society that is not homogeneous? If that were the case, then per community standards your vision of a just society would be acceptable. However, shouldn’t parents have the right to raise their children as they see fit? If those parents find that lifestyle unacceptable, should the long arm of gov’t force these parents to alter their mindset and consequently their children’s upbringing in order to form your vision of an ideal social order?

     

    Personally, I don’t strongly object to what consenting adults do behind closed doors and your example (hospital visit) makes reasonable sense but I also do not see this issue in the same light as racial discrimination. So, I object to any federal push to weaken the Defense of Marriage Act. Let there be 50 social experiments but don’t force any of these 50 to legally recognize what passes as acceptable by federal dictate.

     

    Rock hard?

    in Spray

    Posted

    ‘Do not settle for the limitations of your experience. Try to break it and move to the next level. If you do that, you will know there are many levels of reality outside and within yourself. Don’t settle for who you are right now.”

     

     

    Taken one way, the attitude expressed by the guru is part of what led us to the mess we're currently in, for instance, this attitude as a driver for someone experiencing dissatisfaction with his standing in life so that the idea of living beyond his means becomes dominant. When this happens, self-actualization becomes corrupted as hedonism or to put it another way, that higher ‘chakra’ goal becomes degraded to a lower ‘chakra’ endeavor.

     

    This is not to cast morality on the entire work. So the desired goal becomes paramount in perhaps a Nietzschean way, i.e., the methodology can be discarded when the end is achieved. The Vajrayana Buddhists speak of this as using a wedge to discard a wedge. The idea is not to get stuck in the lower ‘chakra’ which psychologically speaking means do not stay rooted like a tree to a lower state of being.

     

    On the other hand, the attitude is the beginning of change in situations such as slavery which could not have been overcome without the underlying need to break out.

     

    I believe that even though genetics primarily determines an individual’s potential and environment conditions how much of that potential is developed, sociocultural conditioning is key to being aware of limitations in the first place. Is this not what Rousseau meant in reference to society: "Man was born free; and everywhere is in chains"?

     

    So I believe that the revolution is at first personal but then ripples outwards toward society at which point it meets resistance or assimilation.

     

    Personally, I believe that the problems comprising the human condition cannot be entirely overcome within the larger society without us becoming something more than human or other than human. Our rearrangements of society will shuffle the problems around but not solve them. The establishment of a counterculture is again veiling the reality. We will then have to follow a path of transhumanism.

     

    AIG

    in Spray

    Posted

    I suspect that the value you cite represents the total value of all of the stuff that's covered by derivatives contracts, not the amount of the net uncovered losses associated with them.Having said all of that - it's not surprising that the crisis brought about by excessive leverage have inspired despite calls to re-introduce government price controls and government-run or sanctioned monopolies on wide swaths of the economy in response to the current crisis, and reduce or eliminate restrictions on trade (this is what most of the deregulation efforts from the Carter administration onward actually did).

     

    I suspect that what I posted about derivatives is a low-level rehash of a small portion of what you know about derivatives, but I thought it was worth sharing during the current populist - er - "moment."

     

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    There's nothing you said that I disagree with. You're right I don't understand a lot about derivatives, not many people do. It just seemed that the magnitude of those numbers is something extraordinary in itself. Like, oh, 93 million miles. 93 million is a hellva long ways (relatively) but not for a coronal mass ejection to reach the earth. Anyway, I thought those numbers were interesting.

     

    It seems that trust and confidence are more important than those numbers. Do I trust that the experts working on this mess will be able to keep matters under control?

    AIG

    in Spray

    Posted

    Then, there's the dawning realization that those greedy people involved in the derivatives business should have been recognized as a big a threat as any Islamic terrorist in terms of global effect.

     

    According to various distinguished sources including the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland -- the central bankers' bank -- the amount of outstanding derivatives worldwide as of December 2007 crossed USD 1.144 Quadrillion, ie, USD 1,144 Trillion. The main categories of the USD 1.144 Quadrillion derivatives market were the following:

     

    1. Listed credit derivatives stood at USD 548 trillion;

     

    2. The Over-The-Counter (OTC) derivatives stood in notional or face value at USD 596 trillion and included:

     

    a. Interest Rate Derivatives at about USD 393+ trillion;

    b. Credit Default Swaps at about USD 58+ trillion;

    c. Foreign Exchange Derivatives at about USD 56+ trillion;

    d. Commodity Derivatives at about USD 9 trillion;

    e. Equity Linked Derivatives at about USD 8.5 trillion; and

    f. Unallocated Derivatives at about USD 71+ trillion.

     

    What would be the relative positioning of USD 1.144 quadrillion for outstanding derivatives, ie, what is their scale:

     

    1. The entire GDP of the US is about USD 14 trillion.

    2. The entire US money supply is also about USD 15 trillion.

    3. The GDP of the entire world is USD 50 trillion. USD 1,144 trillion is 22 times the GDP of the whole world.

    4. The real estate of the entire world is valued at about USD 75 trillion.

    5. The world stock and bond markets are valued at about USD 100 trillion.

    6. The big banks alone own about USD 140 trillion in derivatives.

    7. Bear Stearns had USD 13+ trillion in derivatives and went bankrupt in March. Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers and AIG have all 'collapsed' because of complex securities and derivatives exposures in September.

    8. The population of the whole planet is about 6 billion people. So the derivatives market alone represents about USD 190,000 per person on the planet.

     

    --source: The Size of Derivatives Bubble = $190K Per Person on Planet

     

    As the April G20 summit in London approaches, it is worth noting that the trans-national play of derivatives has grown from USD 1.144 Quadrillion to USD 1.405 Quadrillion, ie, +22% worldwide.
    The global crisis has wiped a staggering USD 50 trillion off the value of financial assets — currency, equity and bond markets worldwide — last year, according to the Asian Development Bank.

    The truth that there are as many as “Eight Bubbles” [ATCA] at play and in the process of bursting together is understood to a greater extent now than in the past. We have gone from being able to “rescue the world” with less than USD 1 trillion in October 2008 to USD 11.6 trillion commitments in the US alone along with a further announcement of USD 1.2 trillion of quantitative easing by the US Fed in March 2009. There is a realisation worldwide including the G7 + BRIC + MISSAT that this is a USD 20 trillion problem and growing. As time goes by, the full extent of the collateral damage from the Quadrillion Play and 8 Bubbles burst is being revealed.

     

    The bursting process is taking the form of deleverage on an unprecedented scale. Even 1929 pales in comparison because the industrial production collapse witnessed over five successive years in the 1930s in the US is now taking place in five to six months, most notably in Japan.

     

    --source: AIG Bonuses Are A Smoke Screen . . . As Derivatives Bubble Grows 22% To $206K Per-Person-On-Planet!

     

     

    Honeypot?

    in Spray

    Posted

    Tactical weapons stolen from WSP vehicle

     

    The following weapons and police equipment were taken from the trunk of the vehicle:

    -Colt M4 5.56mm Carbine (rifle) with fully automatic capability, equipped with a collapsible stock, grip light and sight

    -H&K "Tactical" .40 caliber pistol, equipped with an under-barrel laser and light device

     

    Both these weapons were inside a black, hard-sided locked case.

     

    -Safariland Level 3 vest with "Police" on the body and "Washington State Patrol" on the sleeves.

    -Two noise/flash/diversion "Flash-Bangs" grenades

    -Six loaded 30 round magazines for the 5.56 mm M4 rifle

    -Five loaded 15 round magazines for the H&K .40 caliber pistol

    -Maycom handheld portable radio

    -ITT PVS-14 night-vision goggles

     

    It appears that the WSP vehicle was specifically targeted.

     

    Investigators found professional lock-picking tools left inside the trunk.

     

    In addition, an attempt was made another WSP vehicle parked nearby.

     

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