strickj

[quote name='RobertNashville' timestamp='1352495222' post='842646'] So quoting a personal letter, not the Constitution, makes it a matter of law for you? Really??? I would say you are being extremely selective, to the point of being a contortionist, in picking what citations to use. [/quote] Seriously? I quoted the letter in which Jefferson, the father of the First Amendment, gave his and the Founders' intent of the First Amen. after you said that the Cornel Law link was simply a modern interpenetration. Stop "ROFFl" and degrading accredited sources and try to keep up...

[quote name='AK Guy' timestamp='1352494947' post='842642'] Re-read that Strickj. He says "establishment". Until recently that has been intepreted as the govenement not "establishing" a state denomitnation. Thus, the first part of that quote. "Between man and his God" hardly sounds like " between man and his God or lack thereof." [/quote] Maybe you should reread it. It doesn't say "establishing a religion". It says "make no law respecting an establishment of religion". Again, 200 years of case law trumps your opinion. Did you click the google search link for the Establishment Clause?

[quote name='AK Guy' timestamp='1352492783' post='842629'] No need to to rehash it here. [/quote] You bash my links. Do not provide credible information in return. Then, THEN tell me there's no reason to rehash it? I get it. [quote]It's still just a law professor's opinion of what the 1A actually says[/quote] No, it isn't. Fron the "father of the First Amendment": [quote]Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature would "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.[/quote] Stated while sitting president. Held fast for over 200 years. It is not just a modern day heathen opinion.

That's not from Wiki. That's directly from Cornell Law University. perhaps you would like to choose your own source: [url="https://www.google.com/search?q=estiblshment+clause&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=5hb&tbo=d&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&spell=1&q=establishment+clause&sa=X&psj=1&ei=oWWdUJf-K4qi8gSIiICIDg&ved=0CDAQvwUoAA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=c3f3e5f3c724b693&bpcl=38093640&biw=1252&bih=603"]https://www.google.c...iw=1252&bih=603[/url] Or perhaps you would like to continue to degrade my accredited source while not providing anything but an opinion from yourself...

[quote name='AK Guy' timestamp='1352490116' post='842604'] Freedom "of". Not freedom "from". [/quote] American taliban. read the Establishment Clause. The First has been interpreted the same way since Jefferson wrote "separation of church and state". From Cornel Law [quote]The [url="http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html#amendmenti"]First Amendment's[/url] Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” This clause not only forbids the government from establishing an official religion, but also prohibits government actions that unduly favor one religion over another. It also prohibits the government from unduly preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion.[/quote] This is not opinion.

[quote name='6.8 AR' timestamp='1352484613' post='842560'] We tell government what to do when we send candidates to office. We have been doing it badly for a long time. The government isn't supposed to run us. That's a pitiful misconception you have. We got the government we voted for. [/quote] Huh? Demanding religion to be removed from government does not mean that I want government controlling us. Quite the opposite actually. I do not want the government controlling, sponsoring and showing preference to any religion. Just like that pesky First Amendment says...

At the risk of being cussed out again.... There's nothing that the GOP could have done to win the presidency. Romney was just a horrible politician. He left the MA economy in ruins. He signed into law the largest and most sweeping piece of anti-gun legislation in history. Obamacare is nothing more than Romneycare rebranded. And worst of all, he lied about all of this as if it never happened. He said his AWB was a pro-gun law. He denied Ocare as being the same as Rcare, after boasting about it just a year or so ago. He was simply doomed to fail from the get go. As far as what the GOP can do in the future; They desperately need to drop the religious policies and that can be evidenced by Tuesday's results. They lost the 'wemens vote because of birth control and abortion. They lost votes because of gays. They lost votes because of "self deportation". Locally, best I can tell, every blue law that went up for vote lost in TN and GA. People are simply tiered of the church controlling Sunday booze. the idea that a "true Conservative with conservative values" can run on these policies and win is a thing of the past.

[quote] [b] What I learned on Nov. 6th 2012[/b] 2. The secular-humanist now outnumber the conservatives.[/quote] Pardon me for my confusion.

[quote name='ThePunisher' timestamp='1352407630' post='842000'] God gave man and woman free will of choice. If man and woman make bad choices, they suffer the consequences of such choice. Just like liberty is the right to choose, freedom is the result of the right choice. [/quote] But why is it against God's will to have O in the White House? That was the purposeof this thread. God is on Romney's side. I'm asking why y'all believe that. [quote name='6.8 AR' timestamp='1352407643' post='842001'] It doesn't represent God, but it does recognize God as a higher authority, and so do I. Your assertion about "In God We Trust" is wrong. Look at coinage from way before 1957. Whether or not there was some kind of law passed doesn't matter. The fact that people trust in God is evidently something you disagree. [/quote] Did you not read the thread? The assertion is taking God out of government is destroying us. An example used to prove that we have always been a Christian nation is "in God we trust". That wasn't added until 1957. The term's origination is irrelevant. [quote]And don't jawbone that some of them were deists. That's really tiring. Whether you believe in God or not, and trust me, that's up to you, Judaeo-Christian principles are all over our founding, the fathers and the ideas that separate this country from the rest of the world, other than Israel. [/quote] It really doesn't matter what out Founders were. What matters is what they fought for, said in their own words put in writing. [quote]You used to see the Ten Commandments almost everywhere until secularists and others wished to deface this country for all the wrong reasons. Principles can never be eradicated until they are destroyed or the people who hold those principles are destroyed. You will never destroy me because of my principles. So quit trying.[/quote] How is removing your God from government destroying your principles. Rhetorical question. The only answer to this is that you need the government to tell you what your principles are. And if the government can no longer tell you what your principles are, then your principles are destroyed.

[quote name='AK Guy' timestamp='1352350656' post='841670'] First, I never said we were founded on a specific religion. Judeo-Christian values is a very broad concept that includes all if the founding fathers root ideology even encompassing much of Islam. Deist included. Secondly, I guess all the scriptures chiseled into all if our federal buildings and monuments, the ten commandments watching over most of the highest federal court, the fact that every president, senator, judge, and congressman is sworn in on the Bible, and"In God We Trust" marked all over our currency (just to name a few) are definite marks of a secular humanist society. [/quote] Supreme Court has the Bill of Rights, not the ten commandments. Moses is not depicted as a religious figure. He is present with several other lawgivers. No one is forced to be sworn in on a bible. That is the choice of the one being sworn in. They can also choose to affirm. "In God we trust" was added in 1957 as part of war propaganda. Hard to argue against what our Founders actually wrote about religion and government. It's a real shame to piss on those men who fought to give us religious freedom from government. All that said, why is it against God's will to have O in office?

Yes! It's worth every penny being able to answer calls from your steering wheel!

[quote name='bentonbjones' timestamp='1352165965' post='839721'] I've been trying to figure a civilized way to describe this, so here goes.... Downtown Chattanooga, walking through the elevated walkway from my office building to the parking garage, I saw a young man wearing the popular "pants on the ground" style. He was walking diagonally into the street level parking. He continued walking across the parking lot in that "waddle" for lack of a better term, that we have all become familiar with. His hands were in the usual "oops" position, or so it seemed, at first. I realized after a second that one of his hands was in his pants, but not for long. He promptly exposed himself and WITHOUT STOPPING (but while walking zig-zag between cars for privacy), he proceeded to urinate across the parking lot. Still walking! I've seen people relieve themselves in public quite a few times, but walking is a new one for me. [/quote] Time saver.

[quote name='QuietDan' timestamp='1352163120' post='839680'] Actually, salvaging your one misbegotten vote is not worth more than 100 posts. Take your biased wiki-facts and check the context. What was the job loss in Massachusetts prior to Romney? What was the job loss after Romney? You don't know. It's pertinent. You didn't check. That makes you ignorant in the original meaning of ignorant. What's more, you are willfully ignorant. You were presented with facts. You ignored them. You know what your own mind is, additional facts to the contrary. It seems that your desire to be right over-rides your desire to understand. Do your homework. Pay attention. Otherwise, stick with your view in spite of being presented with evidence to the contrary by people who lived through the time and were actually there. Stick with your view. Live with it. Choke on it. You have now demonstrated that YOU ARE NOT WORTH correcting. You are a child and will apparently remain a child. Throw your vote away. Stomp your little foot in your rightness. Once upon a time, in a different century, they used to say "Don't trust anyone over thirty." One day soon, you will be over thirty, and you'll actually find out how ignorant and narrow your thinking is, and you won't pay any attention to yourself because you'll be over thirty. I've been in the military for well over three decades, longer than you've been alive apparently, and overseas a significant portion of my life in a combat zone "defending the country." And then, with other folks like me, we come home, and we come across silly little punks that make us think -- WHY DID WE BOTHER? We'd like to continue to "save the country" to the extent that we can, and little know-nothing, smart-ass punks stand up on their hind legs and spout self-righteous nonsense and refuse to be corrected. Fine. Throw your vote away. Vote for Obama for all we care. When we all sink into a Socialist, Marxist, Communist Hell-hole of ignorance, brutality and depravity, deal with it. We who defended your right to be a complete moron will probably be dead, either of old age or at some cross-roads barricade, and you can go through all the sweat and heartbreak and fight your own damn battles and learn the hard way, if you learn at all. [/quote] Thank you for your service.

[quote name='RobertNashville' timestamp='1352159168' post='839627'] Chill out...you are taking this far too personally. [/quote]Not taking anything personal. I Just seems you want to laugh at the factual statistics that I posed instead of actual providing information to the contrary. Going back to your professors comment. Did you professors accept papers with no sources at all?

[quote name='RobertNashville' timestamp='1352158265' post='839612'] So are you suggesting that so long as a source says what you need it to say, it doesn't matter where it comes from or what their bias might be? It sure didn't seem to work that way for my master's degree....those professors always insisted on "competent sources"; the Huffington Post and Wikipedia were not acceptable! ROTFLMAO [/quote] Laugh it up. At least I provided a backing instead of just laughing at you. [b]If my numbers are wrong then provide the correct numbers.[/b] I'll not hold my breath waiting on Fox news to say something negative about their poster child.

[quote name='RobertNashville' timestamp='1352148363' post='839498'] And just saying stuff is his (Romney's) fault could be labeled as nothing more than rationalization. [/quote] Why is it OK for everyone to blame the economy on O's failures but no one is allowed to blame the Massachusetts economy on Romney's failures? [quote].stats such as "lost 14% of its manufacturing jobs" is meaningless unless one is willing to look at all the relevant information and do actual analysis of data. Would they have lost 28% had Romney not be governor?[/quote] What did the Pope eat last night? [quote]Dose the governor of MA actually have any substantial control or measurable input into how many manufacturing jobs the state has or gains or loses? Were there trends happening nationally that were the driving forces behind that stats quoted?[/quote] He had an average that was double the national average. When romney ran for governor, he called himself a "CEO governor" and made promises that he would turn their economy around. He ran on the basis that he would have a huge impact on their economy and he failed. He's not allowed to say that a governor doesn't have an impact on economies now. [quote]Some of these questions may be unknowable but simply blaming Romney seems to a conclusion based more on convenience than evidence.[/quote] Kinda like blaming O for welfare phones and food stamps? [quote] Further, the other choice is anathema to the ideas of individual freedom and liberty. [/quote] Kinda like Mittens signing one of the largest (if not THE largest) and most sweeping piece of anti-gun legislation into law in history? Or creating Romneycare which is the same thing as 0care? Or the numerous religious opinion based policies and legislations that remove freedoms from everyone that doesn;t believe in the same bible?

[quote name='6.8 AR' timestamp='1352148150' post='839495'] Yep, garbage in, garbage out. Please try to look at your links with a tad more scrutiny, strickj. You know? Something called a Bull#### detector is a sometimes valuable tool. I'm not lambasting you for your link, just pay closer attention to what is written and who wrote it before you take affiliation with it. Polarization makes things confuzing, I know. I used to take snopes to heart. Not anymore. [/quote] Any site showing a negative on Romney will be biased against Romney? Duh. The numbers I posed are fact. Fact. Fact. Fact. I do invite you to research the facts that I posted yourself. Post the results here. And I expect a totally unbiased link

[quote name='6.8 AR' timestamp='1352067671' post='839063'] It isn't a fact just because someone posts their opinion. Quiet Dan already posted more relevant tidbits of information than saying all of those things you want to say are faulted by the last governor. There are more relevant pieces of information out there that will include demographic and economic shifts. MA is decidedly liberal if you haven't forgot. Romney was the governor. He had to deal with what the people of that state wanted, which I'm sure you and I wouldn't have wanted to deal with or live by. [/quote] It isn't an opinion. It is fact. [quote] [indent=1] [b]1. Ranked 47th in job growth[/b]: Despite Romney’s professed expertise in creating jobs, Massachusetts [url="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/06/02/232040/romney-obama-massachusetts-jobs/"]ranked 47th in job growth[/url] during his time as governor. The state’s total job growth was just 0.9 percent, well behind other high-wage, high-skill economies in New York (2.7), California (4.7), and North Carolina (7.6). The national average, meanwhile, was better than 5 percent. [b]2. Suffered the second-largest labor force decline in the nation[/b]: Only Louisiana, which was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, saw a bigger decline in its labor force than Massachusetts during Romney’s tenure as governor. The US Census Bureau estimated that between July 2002 and July 2006, 222,000 more residents left Massachusetts for other states than came to it. That decline largely explains the state’s decreasing unemployment rate (from 5.6 to 4.7 percent) while Romney was in office, according to Northeastern University economics professor Andrew Sum. At the same time, the nation as a whole [url="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/07/29/romneys_economic_record/"]added 8 million[/url] people to the labor force. [b]3. Lost 14 percent of its manufacturing jobs[/b]: Massachusetts lost [url="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/07/29/romneys_economic_record/"]14 percent of its manufacturing jobs[/url] during Romney’s time in office, according to Sum. The loss was double the rate that the nation as a whole lost manufacturing jobs. In 2004, Romney vetoed legislation that would have banned companies doing business with the state from outsourcing jobs to other countries. [b]4. Experienced “below average” economic growth and was “often near the bottom”[/b]: “There was not one measure where the state did well under his term in office. We were [url="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/08/421055/massachusetts-economy-romney-below-average/"]below average and often near the bottom[/url],” Sum told the Washington Post in February. As a result, the state was more comparable to Rust Belt states like Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio than it was to other high-tech economies it typically competes with. [b]5. Piled on more debt than any other state[/b]: Romney left Massachusetts residents with $10,504 in per capita bond debt, the [url="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/16/485035/romney-debt-massachusetts/"]highest of any state[/url] in the nation when he left office in 2007. The state ranked second in debt as a percentage of personal income. Romney regularly omits those statistics from his Massachusetts record, instead touting the fact that he balanced the state’s budget (he was constitutionally required to do so).[/indent] [/quote] [url="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/04/494282/5-facts-about-the-massachusetts-economy-under-mitt-romney/?mobile=nc"]http://thinkprogress...mney/?mobile=nc[/url] [quote][i]Census[/i] Bureau estimated 222,000 thousand residents [i]left Massachusetts[/i] for other states than came into it.[/quote] Now, before you pile on me for the links.... they were simply the first in google search. You can search yourself if you do not believe these facts. They are admittedly biased against Mittens but the numbers are still correct. Saying this stuff isn't his fault because Massachusetts is so liberal is nothing more than apologist excuse. He left Massachusetts with these problems while not even California or New York saw the same numbers.

[quote name='6.8 AR' timestamp='1352055578' post='838964'] I love your "facts" also, strickj. "Because of his failed policies" is your interpretation of the "facts", unless you are a Democrat in disguise.[/quote] It is not an interpretation. What I posted is\ how he left Mass. I welcome you to dispute these facts without without questioning my political leanings or using apologist excuses. [quote] Do you still hang on to the belief that his gun policies will carry over to the Fed as well?[/quote] Yes, I fear that he might. I do not believe there has ever been another governor that has signed such a large and sweeping anti-gun bill into law, [u]ever[/u]. It is a reasonable fear, is it not? Just four years ago we decided that he was an anti-gun politician and he dropped out of the running. And I believe it was 2008 when the NRA debunked his NRA endorsement claim. Buying an NRA lifetime membership is not enough to cover what he is. Jimmy Naifeh tried buying the R vote with an NRA membership, too, and everyone laughed him right off his majority throne. [quote]And as far as your not voting goes, you are certainly within your rights to do that, but it makes it difficult for you to complain about the outcome, at least credibly.[/quote] How come? Because I refuse to vote for the bunbag named Romney and Obama?

[quote name='mikegideon' timestamp='1352053425' post='838941'] Kinda hard to do that with the National Guard deployed. [/quote] They're too busy with the [url="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/victorias-secret-sandy/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Interesting"]Victoria Secret models [/url]

[quote name='QuietDan' timestamp='1352051995' post='838927'] You are certainly entitled to your own opinions regarding voting, but you are not entitled to your own facts. I was in Massachusetts while Governor Romney was the sitting Governor of Massachusetts. He lowered the unemployment rate and he balanced the state budget, [/quote] He didn't lower the employment rate. The employment rate was forced down by his failed policies. The unemployment rate was 4.7, but the US Census says that a quarter-million folks left the state during his governorship, largely due to his 14 percent loss in manufacturing (double nat avg). Kinda hard to have a high unemployment rate when everyone leaves! He left Massachusetts ranking the third worst state for job growth in the US. He "balanced the budget" but left the sate with the highest debt in the country. These are facts. Out of curiosity, did you leave Massachusetts because of a job loss by chance? [quote name='OhShoot' timestamp='1352052346' post='838929'] Aren't there other things at issue in Hamilton County? State rep if nothing else? You can always vote the independent guy against Corker as protest vote. Hell, I voted the independent against John Duncan and I don't have anything especially against him, just that he's a career pol. There were about 10 city/county referendums on ballot up here also, bound to be some down there too. - OS [/quote] Yes. Just do not see much change coming from the populars is all. This year truly sucks. I think I will sleep in and save what's left of my sanity.

This guy isn't voting. I refuse to vote for a gun grabbing, pussy legislating ex-governor that left his state in economic ruins. And I see no reason to waste my time voting for O (or 3rd party) in this state with this winner take all EC system.

See there.... this is what spanking leads to!

Now that he's all patched up, enjoy the pill-drunken loopiness.

[quote name='1morethan8' timestamp='1351739515' post='836992'] .. and I don't lie! [/quote] That's exactly what a liar would say. Suspicious. Very suspicious.