Well according to some folks, republicans do tend to donate more to various charitable organizations than the dems.

But for myself, I will just use the Ebenezer Scrooge reasoning. Much more than 2000.00 of money I earned has been taken from me by the IRS and some of that is used for what can only be described as charity. But in addition to this "charity at gunpoint", I actually have contributed in excess of 2000.00 (after tax money) to a local pet adoption agency - paying for spay and neuter operations, donations of large amounts of pet food, cat litter and so forth.

While I'm a conservative (and an agnostic) - I always interpeted the "Render unto Caesar" as meaning pay your taxes etc. to the government - God has no need of material payments - so no tithing to support so-called ministers.

But the real questions is:

how fast will it run Ruby (on rails)?

They will be collecting "usage taxes" which are generally defined as equivalent to sales taxes in the amount owed to the taxing authority.

But for those of you hung up on things that are exempt from sales taxes, this is where it will get murky. So Amazon sells you something that has a combined tax rate of 10% (just for example and it actually gets split between 4 different authorities in your state). Amazon will charge you that tax, collect it and pass it on to your state. They will do this regardless of the actual tax status of the item due to tax holidays, eccentric local tax exemptions and even special tax exempt status for various non-profits or items for resale.

Now if you feel that you have paid a usage tax that you should not have because you or the items you purchase meets one of these tax exemption requirements, it will fall upom you to claim a usage tax refund from your state - just as it currently falls upon you to accurately pay the usage tax on all your online purchases that the seller has not already collected from you.

I suspect that the name of this town might be changed on the maps to "Bombheere", as soon as the pirates sufficiently annoy any of the nations with a military presence in the area.

 

Silly fool:

1> once you and all your lan party buddies lose your internet connections how will you co-ordinate a large lan party?

2> this will be used to quash opposition as folks espousing unpopular opinions will hit their three strikes whenever any bureaucrat takes notice of them.

3> Going to just sign up with another ISP after you strike out? Think again as it won't take long for a legal blacklist of "repeat offenders" to show up and be maintained in order to assure that the ISPs maintain their "safe harbor" status.

Now I'd like to think that this will be an unsustainable process in the long run, but it is Monday and the week ain't getting off to a good start.

I rather liked "Piltdown Man-made global warming" myself.

It describes the situation so much better after all. Just replace "evolution" with "climate change". We have vast amounts of evidence that climate is not static, great public excitement over the issue, and some researchers seduced by fame and power into producing the niche results that will further enhance their own prestige - and to hell with Science itself.

 

Who the fuck says I am a Christian?

Did I say that?

I associate irrationality with retardation. I did point to two of the most populous states to back up my claim. I added a third state - Michigan becasue it has a variety of special circumstances which I would normally let a rational brain discover.

Unfortunately, I think you fail at the whole rational thought thing - because you see it requires that you believe in it.

Why don't you try letting go of some of that hate and stop telling other people what they belive or don't believe and figure out what you believe in? I will leave you with this one observation - You seem to have a really bad case of "No true Scotsman" running through your head - might want to look into that.

Your point would lead to some interesting discussions with a Jesuit, and with any good Talmudic(sp?) scholar.

But I certainly do not claim all Christians are rational. Certainly not all men (or women) are. I suspect that rational womyn are about as common as hen's teeth - which is to say perhaps somewhat more common than the traditional literary unicorn.

I would expect a good argument could be made that there are roughly 4 times more rational Christians than rational atheists. Here is my reasoning:
Of the 6+ billion people on Earth, there are roughly:

2100 million Christians
  550 million non-religious (a grab bag - call them all atheists)

Among all groups of people you will find a certain number who are fairly tolerant of others, subscribe to a "live and let live" philosophy and are amenable to reasoned arguments on most topics. You will find (for example) experimental physicists who have religious beliefs and do not find them in conflict with theories on the creation of the Universe.

Among all groups of people you will also find a certain number who are extreme and dogmatic in their beliefs - call them nutjobs, fundies, what-have you. That holds true for atheists as well - I submit the level of vitriol expended by the folks whose heads are "assploding" from the mere use of the phrase "rational Christian". Especially since I never used that phrase in my original post - but it was inferred by some posters and they reacted strongly.

It appears my point was not clear.
I do not argue that the DC school system is execrable because of Congressional oversight.
I argue that because of the power Congress already has with regards to DC, that any "improvements" they wish to inflict on the rest of the nation should actually be put to the test in the DC system first. That the DC system is currently ranked dead last is actually a bonus - it in theory can only improve. If Congress does do something and the DC schools get better or worse as a result, we have at least one data point to help determine if this policy might be good for the entire nation.

Now I did further suggest that if Congress were to mandate changes in the DC system such that it were to be ranked around the midway point, then there would be a strong argument that those policies would benefit about half the states. But even getting teh DC schools ranked in the top 40 would suggest improvemnts for the bottom ten states.

You are replying to my original thread and I am the one who started with the DC schools. Who is this "we" you are talking about and who has the intellectually challenged posterior? Further, I have some standards and would never take carnal advantage of the "differently brained"

Silly insults aside, why do you consider the DC schools not to be an example of a school system that could be improved? I pointed out that the District of Columbia is specifically and legally Congress's "bitch". Congress can legeslate whatever they want with regard to the DC schools. .Let them legeslate that DC will be:

Hmm none of those would piss me off. But teaching proper techniques for oral sex as a graded class might be going a bit far - especially if my tax dollars are paying for it.

Taught well? via legeslative fiat? Excuse me while I laugh and then cry. Or do you mean it will be taught well or we can go back on my plan "B" - the public floggings and summary executions to cull the herd of piss poor (bottom 10% say)teachers, union reps,and admins? Once Congress has demonstrated that their ideas on how to fix educational deficiencies can actually work in the real world (yes, I said "the real world" and referred to "DC" - you may now laugh) - then we can have some confidence that we might do some good with their ideas.

..on your heinie here, but Hitler actually outlawed home schooling. I think we can safely conclude that the Nazis were pretty big on centralized control of their school system.

Other than flirting with Godwin (purely in the interests of historical accuracy mind you), I am in agreement that No Child Gets Ahead was a massive mistake. So was Head Start - which seemed to give great results, but by the fifth grade or so, there was no discernable diffeence in academic performance between kids in Head Start and those who were not.

It will be interesting to see just how much of our population must be competently educated to maintain our civilization. I suspect we are dangerously close to the tipping point - if we have not passed it already. The question I am asking myself is would it be better to start stockpiling guns and gold, or looking into emmigration and learning Hindi or Mandarin?
 

So what should be the metric? Congress "believes" in whatever will get them re-elected. Show me proof of something that works - and save the belief for separated-from-the-state church

You have something of a strawman argument here.

When experiments were done with water flouridation, the control community saw the results coming out of the experimental community and demanded their water be flouridated as well. Note that in this case, the "belief" that there was something better was being backed up with hard data. I submit that if Congress were to actually come up with an education policy that demonstrated significant improvement in the DC system, then other school systems adminstrators (and teachers unions) would find themselves having to explain just why they were not doing things the "DC way". It is entirely possible that they may have good and valid explanations for not doing things the "DC way", but they would still have to explain why their school system could not improve...

The countries that are kicking our asses...

Well, they have found a method that works for them. We have not and so I see no reason to permit the Feds to dictate - they have had 50+ years (since Sputnik) and the results have not been encouraging.

The part I don't understand is how you get from "less Federal interference" to "let the free market run everything".

The US consists of 50 states, one District plus some other divisions (Protectorates and Territories I think - blame my poor education for not remembering). I think that gives us 50 plus different laboratories to see what will work as our current system is demonstrably not working. I submit the "ass kicking" you cite as proof that the current system is broken.

I can indeed take one district when it is a district under direct Congressional control and say to Congress. Before you tell the rest of the country how to have better schools, prove it by making the scholls in DC better. If the way to improve the DC school system involves public flggings and/or summary execution of bad teachers and teacher's union reps - well then we will know something that works and could maybe be tried in other school systems.

Yes, that is over the top, (and yes I agree bad teachers are *part* of the problem). My point remains. "Don't tell us, SHOW us".

You make interesting assumptions. They are incorrect.

I don't have a problem with the Interstate highway system either.

More internet - you darn betcha - but I also think it should be metered so you pay for what you use. The rates charged should be such that the comm industry will have an incentive to improve it and increase speeds.

Less Education - Umm no. less Federal interfernce in education as the only school system the Federal gowvenmrnt is directly responsible for is ranked dead last in the country. If the Feds could demonstrate an ability to do better than half the country, then they would have an example worth looking at - for the half of the country they do better than.

Military hardware - Well the US is currently riding on the tiger there - the alternative may well be riding inside the tiger.

Less health care - less health care for whom? How much money do you donate to charity hospitals? Is it OK for me to hold a gun to your head to make you "donate" more? If it is not OK for me to do that, why should it be OK if it is the federal govenrment holding the gun?