How about a compromise?

Why don't we just stop turning a blind eye to religious child abuse? Punishing using violence and starvation to attempt to change a child's sexual orientation just the same as any other use of starvation and violence would be a good start. Refusing to allow religion as an excuse for genital mutilation would be another good place to start.

Parents who do these things to their children should be ashamed. They should at least wait until their kid is fully grown and can fight back and move out if they want to do these things.

Cutting my ex-parents out of my life was a choice I made in the end. Let's keep letting people like my ex-parents attempt to brainwash. That way there are more people like me who find religion utterly detestable. I just think it would be good to prevent any permanent damage to the child.

I can hate my parents, but I can't ever have genitals that function normally. I suppose circumcision works great for everybody else, but it didn't for me. But, I guess my parents, being rational grown-ups, knew that never having grand-children was a risk they would take. So, I hope they're happy with how it worked out.

Yes.

I just cast a paper ballot an hour ago. There are bubbles I fill in next to my choices, and then a scanner reads the ballot for instant reporting. Then, if there are any problems, the paper ballot, minus any way to identify who cast it, remains to be recounted by hand if necessary.

Paper ballots aren't perfect with regards to fraud. They still beat the pants off any electronic system, though. At best, electronic systems that print a paper trail that the voter can visually inspect are still vulnerable every way paper is to fraud. Any electronic voting machine that doesn't produce a paper trail should be presumed to be aiding in fraud.

Any perfect solution to fraud would be to eliminate anonymity.

I'm not sure why mechanical voting machines ever were used.

I don't have a problem with that. I would like to see the war on brown people^H^H^H^Hmarijuana come to an end, so I'm voting for Johnson. If that keeps Obama, the man who ended don't ask don't tell, in office, that's fine with me.

I also contributed to Johnson's campaign. Romney is a terrible idea for a lot of reasons. I don't understand why anybody thinks he'll be different from Obama, except that he might just reinstate don't ask don't tell. He sure as hell is not going to repeal federal Romneycare^H^H^H^H^H^HObamacare.

This is my strategy. I tell my employer: "Do you want to pay me overtime or do you want the account to slip its deadline? Your choice." If that's drama, get your head out of your ass. If you're not paid by the hour to code, you're doing it wrong. I keep hoping my employer will answer "yes, we'll pay overtime" but they never do.

What, is that somehow unfair. Well too fucking bad. My time is worth money.

Mod me troll, seeing as how family is the quickest to screw you over, even when times are good, how do they fit into it?

Survival equipment, friends, and seeds/food/land, that I can see.

I don't even want to imagine the religious schisms that would occur if life were found on Mars or Jupiter (or anywhere else it may be feasible).

I can easily imagine people killing each other, perhaps if Sagan's floaters and sinkers were discovered on Jupiter, over whether Jesus can save errant sinkers only or if Jesus can save errant floaters as well.

Think of the funding implications of sending men to Jupiter to preach the Gospel to only sinkers or to preach the Gospel to both sinkers and floaters.

It's all just so stupidly petty, so stupidly meaningless.

We'll see how long the federalism argument lasts once Colorado legalizes marijuana. Interstate commerce? What if I have private property in Colorado, and I only get high in Colorado? We'll see.

If only we had a federalism. The problem is that democracy isn't much compatible it seems. Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security (of which I won't see a single damned dime), highway funding, it's all bullshit. Everybody wants their free lunch.

I'm just waiting for the first state to legalize marijuana and regulate it like alcohol. It's going to be a shit storm, and we're going to very quickly find out who really believes in the federalist ideal and who doesn't.

I guess to stay on topic, I don't understand the attacks on the electoral college. The state governments essentially elect the president, and the president is only supposed to have limited powers. Lauding him or demonzing him for the economy is the utmost bullshit just asking for a monarchy back.

Perhaps humanity hasn't evolved enough to be worthy of federalist democracy yet. It can't seem to even grasp the basics.

Interesting. Hopefully we at least get a manned Mars mission out of it.

Damn it, I know that's too much to hope for.

So true.

Most of my memories of Christmas that involve my mother's side of the family illustrate the problem with supposing a war on Christmas, as though Christmas is something with a specific, unchanging definition.

My maternal grandmother had her views and interpretations of the reason for the season. My ex-father had different views.

Every family Christmas party would start out by getting ready which involved my ex-father making sure we understood all the intricate doctrinal points that my maternal grandmother and her church had wrong. My ex-mother, of course, went along with it since she had been excommunicated from that church for not giving me an infant baptism (something which, in my ex-father's interpretation, would send me to hell automatically, but in my maternal grandmother's interpretation was a sure-fire way to avoid hell).

So then we'd arrive at my maternal grandmother's farmhouse and we'd have a big gathering of the whole family. Everything was great. At least my ex-father knew to keep his mouth shut.

Afterwards, we'd practically be given a doctrinal de-briefing outlining all the theological points my ex-father's mother-in-law got wrong during her presentation of the story of Christmas.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Christians can't even agree amongst themselves what Christmas is about. It's as though they forgot everything that happened in Europe after that upstart Martin Luther decided to pin something on a church door, and they don't understand that if they continue down the path they're on, it's going to come right back to that.

No. It really can be as simple as it's not nice to harass people.

I don't know why "conservatives" feel the need to be so outspoken on things that don't matter. If my boyfriend gives me a ride to work and we hug before I go inside, and somebody comes out of left field screaming about how they shouldn't need to have me rub their noses in my sex life, I have every right to be offended or at least pissed at that person. Where's that person when the past three couples did the same thing that very morning? Oh, right, those couples were compatible with her/his views, and my relationship isn't.

Therefore, a girl + a guy in a PDA, perfectly fine, or at least below the threshold of theatrics. Half-girl + guy in a PDA, cue the drama. I don't get it.

I don't know if you're personally conservative, but I wish that "conservatives" would understand that I get tired of straight people rubbing my nose in their sex lives, too. If you're going to flip out because I'm talking about seeing a movie with my boyfriend, at least be logically consistent and flip out when somebody else talks about seeing a movie with her boyfriend.

I'm not sure if I should feel sorry, but I don't.

No, he did the wrong thing. The correct response is to attempt to make it look like the boyfriend is the one leaking the photos all over the place, if any response to a lack of personal responsibility is necessary at all.

He's probably lucky that she just blocked him and didn't attempt to take the drama much further. I've watched attractive women ruin friends' social lives. It's not pretty to watch, and it's even worse to watch guys who I thought were rational and mature experience omg-shes-hawt-brain-leak-out-ear syndrome and decide that despite all facts and evidence that he's going to somehow get laid by taking her side.

Then it's even more sad when the guy(s) taking her side still don't get laid. I don't know what's more pathetic, the airhead girl with curves or the desperate guys, or whether I should trot out my misogyny or my misandry. I guess stupid comes in all genders.