Be Afraid

[starise]

If I'm a hypocrite for attempting to give you the REAL definition of what Christian is then so be it. I think that if you really wanted the truth you would be slightly interested in the facts. Instead you demean the person bringing them to you and resort to the grade school name calling again. In any other study of something you would go to the source information to aquire the facts,that is if you were truly scientific in your investigations. If you think it is only my version look for yourself and see. Look at what the leader of the true Christians said. The view does narrow things down a lot...isn't that what we want when looking for facts?

I keep hearing something to the effect of this," We came and explained things to you, but you didn't defend your views and you ran away." Really?? I'm sorry I have a job that pays me an income and I need to go when I need to go. If you interpret that as evasive I can assure you it is nothing like that. I think that YOU sir seem to be using evasive tactics by 1. Making the sole determination that a matter is a done deal when in fact it isn't.2. Inferring that I am running from something. Kind of like pretending we are done when we aren't done and that I'm afraid to confront an issue.

So here is my challenge to you. I am willing to confront ANYTHING you throw my way. The only thing I ask is that we start out with a basic thought or point you think is valid. You haven't really done this yet, for the most part I have been copy/pasted with movies and other writers thoughts. I don't care what you start out with. But we both know that any subject can involve dozens of scientific disciplines. A good example would be the fossil record from an evolutionist view and then I'll counter with my view which may be in agreement of not. You have done nothing so far but bombard me with a bunch of material and expect inhuman response times to all of it....... simples.

Mike/Stoneheart I think I might know what you think lol!........ I read your posts, really man I am a busy guy and we both know what you posted so I'll respond without any quotes, is that ok? Stone you think I missed the point of the posts....maybe I did. I am open to enlightenment. As I see it we have all played the scenario I mentioned in response to your post.The point I was making is that it only seems to be ok if it isn't being done by an opposite viewpoint. Mike- We have free will. God is a rule maker. Men are rule breakers. What is a rule with no consequences? If men could bend Gods rules with no consequence God would not be God and men would be taking his place......one time I was leading some music for a group and a guy showed up who was an ok player but he immediately decided that he should take the reigns of leadership. I let him mow over me a few times and then I realized that I had a decision to make, either let him run the show ,clash with him forever.or let him have his way. But there can't be two leaders.He was trying to be passive about it, like...ok now we'll play here and do this and that and then we will do this. The WE WILL part bothered me because I was the guy who was supposed to decide that. I didn't mind him ASKING me and I likely would have concurred with him. It was the take charge thing that I felt was threatening my job.....so I walked away one night. Looked at him and said, here ya go, it's all yours now.

I think God is a lot like that. If you remember hell is a place prepared for the devil and his angels . God didn't intend for anyone to go there but some decisions have results that are far reaching. God allows you to do what you want without Him . Does God hate rebellion? Yes. Does He hate the rebellious? Yes I'm not going to sugar coat it. Wouldn't you be slightly angry if you had given your own son as a sacrifice to save them and they deny you even exist? When Jesus said , Not my will but Thy will be done it proves he could have backed out. When Satan took Him up on the pinnacle and tempted Him He didn't fall for it, instead He willingly layed His life down for anyone who accepts. There are more sides to this God than what those who dislike Him choose to see. The good side often goes unnoticed. It is usually the judge that is presented.

Reinassance Lady- I think I see now a little better what you are afraid of. Looking at this from another perspective we can see that an agenda is in place by a narrowminded few right now. I say that this is no different only that the difference is in the views and positions held. I don't think we have the most objective views of science in our classrooms. To me objective will eliminate a lot of the useless theories or at least offer alternative explanations when a subject is in doubt. It boils down to this in my thinking...either it was created or it wasn't simples. In a science class there is no need to discuss WHO might have created it, but if the facts lead to creation then it should be presented as a valid possibility.

 

[pixelsmith]

I'll bite... so.. what about the fossil record? I collect fossils dating back 400 million years. Are you going to suggest that they are rock formations or only 5,000 years old or some such nonsense? While on the topic of animal life forms, do you believe animals go to heaven?

 

[stonehart]

My intent there was to acknowledge your point, and I'm really glad we ended up landing on the same ground. Good discussion !

That was cool to read all.



You both ended up in more or less the same position LOL

 

[Muadib]

If I'm a hypocrite for attempting to give you the REAL definition of what Christian is then so be it. I think that if you really wanted the truth you would be slightly interested in the facts. Instead you demean the person bringing them to you and resort to the grade school name calling again. In any other study of something you would go to the source information to aquire the facts,that is if you were truly scientific in your investigations. If you think it is only my version look for yourself and see. Look at what the leader of the true Christians said. The view does narrow things down a lot...isn't that what we want when looking for facts?

I keep hearing something to the effect of this," We came and explained things to you, but you didn't defend your views and you ran away." Really?? I'm sorry I have a job that pays me an income and I need to go when I need to go. If you interpret that as evasive I can assure you it is nothing like that. I think that YOU sir seem to be using evasive tactics by 1. Making the sole determination that a matter is a done deal when in fact it isn't.2. Inferring that I am running from something. Kind of like pretending we are done when we aren't done and that I'm afraid to confront an issue.

So here is my challenge to you. I am willing to confront ANYTHING you throw my way. The only thing I ask is that we start out with a basic thought or point you think is valid. You haven't really done this yet, for the most part I have been copy/pasted with movies and other writers thoughts. I don't care what you start out with. But we both know that any subject can involve dozens of scientific disciplines. A good example would be the fossil record from an evolutionist view and then I'll counter with my view which may be in agreement of not. You have done nothing so far but bombard me with a bunch of material and expect inhuman response times to all of it....... simples.

As for your view on what constitutes a "true" Christian, it's irrelevant, since we're not talking about who conforms to the doctrine but whether or not someone who self identifies as a Christian is actually a Christian. Your definition is not, as you'd lead us to believe, a fact, but your own subjective interpretation of what constitutes a Christian. If we're going with subjective interpretation on who closely follows the doctrine, Stalin definitely doesn't qualify as a humanist, and it can be debated whether he qualifies as an atheist or not. That's why you're a hypocrite, because you'll disagree with that in the case of Stalin, but expect that everyone agree with you on your subjective interpretation of who is and is not a Christian. Not for "bringing the truth" as you so ridiculously put it. Not to mention that there are legions of people out there who would disagree with you as to what does or does not constitute a Christian. I don't care what Jesus has to say about it, if he even exists, he, like you, has to deal with the fact that people who self identify as Christian are considered Christian. Period. When a census goes out to determine who follows what religion, there is no "prove it" section, you simply pick what you want to pick and that's the end of it. Like I said you don't have to agree with the shit that gets done in the name of Christianity but you do have to acknowledge it. Whether you think they are"true" Christians or not is irrelevant to everyone but, well, you.

Now for the rest of your post, ok, I'll bite as well, this post was made almost exactly 1 month ago and has gone without a response from you, if one month is an inhuman amount of time to expect a response you must be one busy guy, much busier than the rest of us who also have things like jobs and income. Weird. Anyway you can start by explaining why you imagine your view on evolution to still be correct when the basic errors presented by your side of the argument (that you posted) are all laid out nice and neat for you. Not only are you full of it but you're a whiner, your position has been confronted many times on this site and this has gone unanswered every time other than "I know what I know because I know" then you disappear for a couple weeks and pretend like nobody refuted your statements, so yeah I think you are running.

If you're willing to engage then I'll be very interested to see how and why you defend these basic errors, for my part, I expect we won't hear a response to this for another few weeks when you pretend this post never happened, again.

starise said: ↑

Before you tell us how uneducated and idiotic these people are you should look into it.​

​

The Scientific Case Against Evolution​

​

I know you know these peoople and don't believe a thing they have to say. If you did you would have to completely ditch you thinking.​

Using ANYTHING from the Institute of Creation Research defeats any intelligent discourse on science and evolution, entirely because these articles are written by people who do not understand evolution and have no foundation in science. They seem to believe if they don't understand (or choose not to understand) something, it is therefore not valid. The arguments they use to defend their positions show a profound lack of understanding in science as they set up flimsy straw men to make their case, assuming they can convert others who also failed basic science class.

Using arguments from the site you gave:

First of all, the lack of a case for evolution is clear from the fact that no one has ever seen it happen. If it were a real process, evolution should still be occurring, and there should be many "transitional" forms that we could observe.​

We have drug-resistant bacteria and viruses, entirely because of evolution and it's something we are observing everyday. Seriously, you can Google this. You cannot research "antibiotic resistance" without doing considerable reading about the evolutionary and micro-evolutionary process (unless you read some bible-thumping site which uses wishful thinking instead of proven and observable facts - like the site you just gave). To better understands this, we should first discuss what evolution is rather than what an ignorant few tries to pretend it is. In terms of biology, the definition of evolution (taken from dictionary.com) is the "change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift."


This is exactly why we have drug-resistant bacteria and why, in our own lifetimes, we keep observing this evolution. The constant (and probable overuse) of antibiotics has forced the speedy evolution of bacteria as those which have not had mutations cannot survive and further produce other bacteria with these same mutations. In other words, this is the evolutionary process in action via natural selection - and it's why your doctor tells you to finish your antibiotics even if all symptoms of the illness are gone. Within viruses, we have even seen the evolutionary process take place within a few hours due to natural selection. We have also seen it happen within the reptile kingdom among a few months after witnessing the devastating affects of a hurricane on an island.

Many creationists get perturbed over the Darwin "walking fish" symbol, insisting that this is hooey because "fish don't walk" - which would be correct except for all the times they do walk. There are types of ambulatory fish that can travel over land for extended periods of time and are often referred to as "amphibious fish." Again, please Google this. It is also an example of a "missing link" creationists love to pretend doesn't exist. Google "Tiktaalik roseae" which appears to be a link between fish and tetrapods (four-legged animals).

Going on to the next point in your article:

Evolution Never Happened in the Past​

Evolutionists commonly answer the above criticism by claiming that evolution goes too slowly for us to see it happening today. They used to claim that the real evidence for evolution was in the fossil record of the past, but the fact is that the billions of known fossils do not include a single unequivocal transitional form with transitional structures in the process of evolving.​

This is, of course, complete bullshit. (Sorry, Gene, for my use of a naughty word.) First, I just gave an example of this happening today (drug-resistant bacteria and viruses, reptiles on a devastated island) and how it's being observed. There's also plenty of evidence in the fossil record. Just Google the whole "ambulatory fish" thing and "Tiktaalik roseae" . We see evolution in fossils all the time, linking dinosaurs to birds and fish to amphibians - and in the case of Tiktaalik roseae, eventually to tetrapods. From the fossil record, we can see that animals without backbones predate vertebrates. Fish appear prior to amphibians, which in turn appear prior to tetrapods. All of these show how the evolution happened and what traits appeared when, eventually evolving into new species.

All other arguments he makes are based upon his already provably faulty notions. He goes onto explain how badly he understands genetics and founds his logic on his statement that, "There is no reason whatever why the Creator could not or would not use the same type of genetic code based on DNA for all His created life forms. This is evidence for intelligent design and creation, not evolution."

Really? That's his idea of a "fact"? This man's brain is a slave and it's unfortunate that he's enslaving yours rather than asking for objective proof rather than wishful thinking. We see evolution in action every single day. We see it throughout the fossil record. He chooses to ignore this rather than challenge his belief in an invisible super-being.
Let me ask you this: Why even ask questions if all you need to do for an answer is say that "God is responsible"?

One final note: You may believe an article claiming it's a "Scientific Case Against Evolution" written by a man with a PhD after his name is somehow founded in solid science rather than a deliberate lack thereof. The late Henry M. Morris, PhD, got his doctorate in hydraulic engineering back in 1950 and later was a professor of civil engineering at the University of Louisiana in 1951.

Those are solid credentials - in engineering. It no more gives him the credibility to discuss evolutionary biology (or any biology) than someone with a doctorate in art history has credentials to operate on your hemorrhoids. The man got himself tied up with a Seventh Day Adventist who neither understood nor liked modern science and the rest, they say, is history. Morris continued to exploit the uneducated by insisting that the King James Bible should serve as a sort of ultimate authority in pretty much anything and everything. This should offer you a Pretty Big Clue about how he tries to explain science and why you shouldn't offer your intellectual validation to such a person.

One final thing you need to understand: Science is not about accepting things on faith without question. No scientist ever kicks back and says, "Well, my work here is done. There's nothing left to discover." Information is always being found and added to scientific debate. This does not mean that scientific debate is wrong. Most new knowledge only builds and expands on old knowledge. This is a far cry from saying "God did it because some old book says so."


Once you get done with that, in your own time of course, I'd like you to expound on what you meant when you said "Do we really know how the sun works?" What is it, exactly, that you think we're lacking knowledge wise about the workings of the sun? Please explain that to me because, frankly, I'm baffled by the sheer scientific ignorance of a statement like that because, in order for you to actually believe there's something we don't know about how the sun works, you would have to deliberately throw out all of the knowledge that we have accumulated about the workings of said sun, not to mention all the real world applications of that knowledge when it comes to things like nuclear power. Take your time, of course. Frankly, I honestly don't care if you ever address it since it's likely to do nothing for me other than make me chuckle but who knows? Maybe you'll surprise me.

After you finish with that, and again, in your own time, I'd like you to read this Wikipedia entry and tell me exactly why you disagree with it. In other words, where is the "science" in "creation science"? The one example you provided is sorely lacking when it comes to actual science, as pointed out by Ren. Lady and others. The entire premise of creation lies outside of science since there are no experiments or testable hypothesis that can be devised to prove that there even is a creator. So why in the world should it be taught in Science class when it has little or nothing to do with science? When you read the wiki entry, pay attention to the fact that early science did indeed incorporate many beliefs of creationism, the problem was that there was little to no evidence to back up these assertions. So where can we find evidence to justify a belief in creationism? Please don't say the bible, the bible has been interpreted many different ways by many different cultures and even in this day and age no one interpretation is universally agreed upon, so this doesn't count as empirical evidence for anything. I'll highlight the relevant portions of the text and you can dispute these as you see fit:

Science is a system of knowledge based on observation, empirical evidence and testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena. By contrast, creationism is based on literal interpretations of the narratives of particular religious texts. Some creationist beliefs involve purported forces that lie outside of nature, such as supernatural intervention, and often do not allow predictions at all. Therefore, these can neither be confirmed nor disproved by scientists.[196] However, many creationist beliefs can be framed as testable predictions about phenomena such as the age of the Earth, its geological history and the origins, distributions and relationships of living organisms found on it. Early science incorporated elements of these beliefs, but as science developed these beliefs were gradually falsified and were replaced with understandings based on accumulated and reproducible evidence that often allows the accurate prediction of future results.[197][198] Some scientists, such as Stephen Jay Gould,[199] consider science and religion to be two compatible and complementary fields, with authorities in distinct areas of human experience, so-called non-overlapping magisteria.[200] This view is also held by many theologians, who believe that ultimate origins and meaning are addressed by religion, but favour verifiable scientific explanations of natural phenomena over those of creationist beliefs. Other scientists, such as Richard Dawkins,[201] reject the non-overlapping magisteria and argue that, in disproving literal interpretations of creationists, the scientific method also undermines religious texts as a source of truth. Irrespective of this diversity in viewpoints, since creationist beliefs are not supported by empirical evidence, the scientific consensus is that any attempt to teach creationism as science should be rejected

Pay close attention to the part where it says that creationist beliefs are not supported by empirical evidence. So why do you think creationism has any place in science?

In closing and to be fully honest, I've edited this from it's original form and I don't expect you to answer these questions anytime soon. To be 100% honest, I hope you never answer them, not because I'm afraid of what you might say, but because it gets old explaining the same thing in different ways over and over again, only for the person you're addressing to gloss over them and pretend you never said anything. To pretend that "nobody has proven me wrong, far from it." I don't think I'll be the one to break through your land of magical make believe and bring you back to reality, I only hope that when the day comes that you do choose to rejoin us here in the land of rationality, you'll think back and remember good ole' Muadib and how he tried to help you get there sooner. You most certainly have been proven wrong, time and time again, and you will continue to be proven wrong as long as you continue to rely on the literal interpretation of a book written by ancient humans that suffers from contradictions, bold faced lies, translation problems and a stunning lack of evidence for many of it's wild claims. I'd like to leave you with a quote for you to think about and if you want you can address this also:

Creationists believe that man was instantaneously created by God, based on an account in a book called the Bible.

Several thousand years ago, a small tribe of ignorant near-savages wrote various collections of myths, wild tales, lies, and gibberish. Over the centuries, the stories were embroidered, garbled, mutilated, and torn into small pieces that were then repeatedly shuffled. Finally, this material was badly translated into several languages successively.

The resultant text, creationists feel, is the best guide to this complex and technical subject. —Science Made Stupid [1985]

 

[starise]

I'll bite... so.. what about the fossil record? I collect fossils dating back 400 million years. Are you going to suggest that they are rock formations or only 5,000 years old or some such nonsense? While on the topic of animal life forms, do you believe animals go to heaven?​

I think assumptions are made on both sides on the issue of earth age. It is said that science is something that can be produced under observable conditions. In the case of radio carbon dating, most texts books bring forward only the most favorable results and exclude the less than flattering details about it. I personally read through examples at least three itinerations of radio carbon dating that lead to the present one and each one was proven to be inaccurate . This last development is supposed to be the most accurate but even it has been shown to be less and less accurate past 6000 years. It is accurate to a degree and so far back in time but it isn't a truly effective tool IMO to rightly gauge the true age of something into the millions/billions of years. Some of the samples taken on formations that are supposed to be millions of years old are known to be much younger.....

A similar thing is happening with some of the intelligent design people who try and fit things much too literally at times. Any time someone seems so sure of an exact time it comes back to bite them . In Genesis 1:1 which says " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"..........then goes on to say the earth was without form and void,darkness was upon the face of the deep and so forth. Then it appears that God begins to work with the earth to make something from it. IOW, the way I read it could POSSIBLY mean that the "heavens and the earth" existed before day one of creation on earth. God could have terraformed an earth that had already been around for a long long time and this greatly changes the age of the earth.

The big bang theory holds that a big bang happened basically from nothing. The age of the universe is measured based of dissipations /distances and is another nice sounding theory that seems to make at least a little bit of sense but in reality we can't prove many of the claims made about it.....so it takes faith to believe it.

I personally hold to a much younger creation(around 10,000 years) although I won't attempt to put an exact date on it because I don't think either side can do that with any great precision.According to my views on the possibility of creation prior to the the Biblical 1st day of creation,the geology of the earth itself can be much older.

Do I believe animals go to heaven? To my recollection there is no Biblical support for this. My gut feeling is that they continue in some way, how I'm not sure. I have had some really fine pets and I would hope to see them again.

 

[Decker]

Republicans courting the Latino vote is about the funniest thing I've ever heard, just goes to show how absolutely deluded they are. "GTFO of the country but before you do, vote for us!"

That is solid Bullshit! The problem has been undocumented or illegal immigrants that entered this country illegally. I watched that demographic collapse emergency health care service in Los Angeles County. Live it before you speak it.

Decker

 

[Muadib]

I think assumptions are made on both sides on the issue of earth age. It is said that science is something that can be produced under observable conditions. In the case of radio carbon dating, most texts books bring forward only the most favorable results and exclude the less than flattering details about it. I personally read through examples at least three itinerations of radio carbon dating that lead to the present one and each one was proven to be inaccurate . This last development is supposed to be the most accurate but even it has been shown to be less and less accurate past 6000 years. It is accurate to a degree and so far back in time but it isn't a truly effective tool IMO to rightly gauge the true age of something into the millions/billions of years. Some of the samples taken on formations that are supposed to be millions of years old are known to be much younger.....

This is just nonsensical, do you think radiocarbon dating is the only tool we use when it comes to determining the age of the earth through rock samples? No...

Uranium-lead dating method

Main article: uranium-lead dating


A concordia diagram as used in uranium-lead dating, with data from the Pfunze Belt, Zimbabwe.[16] All the samples show loss of lead isotopes, but the intercept of the errorchron (straight line through the sample points) and the concordia (curve) shows the correct age of the rock.[11]
The uranium-lead radiometric dating scheme has been refined to the point that the error margin in dates of rocks can be as low as less than two million years in two-and-a-half billion years.[12][17] An error margin of 2–5% has been achieved on younger Mesozoic rocks.[18]
Uranium-lead dating is often performed on the mineral zircon (ZrSiO4), though it can be used on other materials, such as baddeleyite.[19] Zircon and baddeleyite incorporate uranium atoms into their crystalline structure as substitutes for zirconium, but strongly reject lead. Zircon has a very high closure temperature, is resistant to mechanical weathering and is very chemically inert. Zircon also forms multiple crystal layers during metamorphic events, which each may record an isotopic age of the event. In situ micro-beam analysis can be achieved via laser ICP-MS or SIMS techniques.[20]
One of its great advantages is that any sample provides two clocks, one based on uranium-235's decay to lead-207 with a half-life of about 700 million years, and one based on uranium-238's decay to lead-206 with a half-life of about 4.5 billion years, providing a built-in crosscheck that allows accurate determination of the age of the sample even if some of the lead has been lost. This can be seen in the concordia diagram, where the samples plot along an errorchron (straight line) which intersects the concordia curve at the age of the sample.
Samarium-neodymium dating method

Main article: Samarium-neodymium dating
This involves the alpha-decay of 147Sm to 143Nd with a half-life of 1.06 x 1011 years. Accuracy levels of less than twenty million years in two-and-a-half billion years are achievable.[21]
Potassium-argon dating method

Main article: Potassium-argon dating
This involves electron capture or positron decay of potassium-40 to argon-40. Potassium-40 has a half-life of 1.3 billion years, and so this method is applicable to the oldest rocks. Radioactive potassium-40 is common in micas, feldspars, and hornblendes, though the closure temperature is fairly low in these materials, about 125°C (mica) to 450°C (hornblende).
Rubidium-strontium dating method

Main article: Rubidium-strontium dating
This is based on the beta decay of rubidium-87 to strontium-87, with a half-life of 50 billion years. This scheme is used to date old igneous and metamorphic rocks, and has also been used to date lunar samples. Closure temperatures are so high that they are not a concern. Rubidium-strontium dating is not as precise as the uranium-lead method, with errors of 30 to 50 million years for a 3-billion-year-old sample.
Uranium-thorium dating method

Main article: uranium-thorium dating
A relatively short-range dating technique is based on the decay of uranium-234 into thorium-230, a substance with a half-life of about 80,000 years. It is accompanied by a sister process, in which uranium-235 decays into protactinium-231, which has a half-life of 34,300 years.
While uranium is water-soluble, thorium and protactinium are not, and so they are selectively precipitated into ocean-floor sediments, from which their ratios are measured. The scheme has a range of several hundred thousand years. A related method is ionium-thorium dating, which measures the ratio of ionium (thorium-230) to thorium-232 in ocean sediment.

Fission track dating method

Main article: fission track dating


Apatite crystals are widely used in fission track dating.
This involves inspection of a polished slice of a material to determine the density of "track" markings left in it by the spontaneous fission of uranium-238 impurities. The uranium content of the sample has to be known, but that can be determined by placing a plastic film over the polished slice of the material, and bombarding it with slow neutrons. This causes induced fission of 235U, as opposed to the spontaneous fission of 238U. The fission tracks produced by this process are recorded in the plastic film. The uranium content of the material can then be calculated from the number of tracks and the neutron flux.
This scheme has application over a wide range of geologic dates. For dates up to a few million years micas, tektites (glass fragments from volcanic eruptions), and meteorites are best used. Older materials can be dated using zircon, apatite, titanite, epidote and garnet which have a variable amount of uranium content.[27] Because the fission tracks are healed by temperatures over about 200°C the technique has limitations as well as benefits. The technique has potential applications for detailing the thermal history of a deposit.
Chlorine-36 dating method

Large amounts of otherwise rare 36Cl were produced by irradiation of seawater during atmospheric detonations of nuclear weapons between 1952 and 1958. The residence time of 36Cl in the atmosphere is about 1 week. Thus, as an event marker of 1950s water in soil and ground water, 36Cl is also useful for dating waters less than 50 years before the present. 36Cl has seen use in other areas of the geological sciences, including dating ice and sediments.
Luminescence dating methods

Main articles: Optical dating and Thermoluminescence dating
Natural sources of radiation in the environment knock loose electrons in, say, a piece of pottery, and these electrons accumulate in defects in the material's crystal lattice structure. Heating or illuminating the object will release the captured electrons, producing a luminescence. When the sample is heated, at a certain temperature it will glow from the emission of electrons released from the defects, and this glow can be used to estimate the age of the sample to a threshold of approximately 15 percent of its true age. The date of a rock is reset when volcanic activity remelts it. The date of a piece of pottery is reset by the heat of the kiln. Typically temperatures greater than 400 degrees Celsius will reset the "clock". This is termed thermoluminescence.
Other methods

Other methods include:

• argon-argon (Ar-Ar)
• iodine-xenon (I-Xe)
• lanthanum-barium (La-Ba)
• lead-lead (Pb-Pb)
• lutetium-hafnium (Lu-Hf)
• neon-neon (Ne-Ne)
• rhenium-osmium (Re-Os)
• uranium-lead-helium (U-Pb-He)
• uranium-uranium (U-U)

So are you expecting us to believe that all of these methods are flawed and none of them can accurately date anything past 10,000 years? Total nonsense. Here is how science arrives at the age of the solar system and the upper limit for the age of the earth:

Following the scientific revolution and the development of radiometric age dating, measurements of lead in uranium-rich minerals showed that some were in excess of a billion years old.[4]
The oldest such minerals analyzed to date – small crystals of zircon from the Jack Hills of Western Australia – are at least 4.404 billion years old.[5][6][7] Comparing the mass and luminosity of the Sun to the magnitudes of other stars, it appears that the solar system cannot be much older than those rocks. Ca-Al-rich inclusions (inclusions rich in calcium and aluminium) – the oldest known solid constituents within meteorites that are formed within the solar system – are 4.567 billion years old,[8][9] giving an age for the solar system and an upper limit for the age of Earth.

In order for you to be correct, we would have to throw out literally everything we have learned about the age of the earth, and the moon through moon rocks, and the sun through observing other stars in our galaxy and comparing them to our own. You're living in a fantasy world starrise, come back to reality. The evidence that the earth is billions of years old is overwhelming, young earth creationism is total crap.

 

[Muadib]

That is solid Bullshit! The problem has been undocumented or illegal immigrants that entered this country illegally. I watched that demographic collapse emergency health care service in Los Angeles County. Live it before you speak it.

Decker

Why don't you pay attention to the context of my post. Why don't you also pay attention to the fact that Latinos who have entered this country legally, often have relatives and family who are illegals and aren't likely to vote for the party who wants them to self deport. That's a complete and total joke, which is why them courting the Latino vote is so hilarious and unsuccessful. My post had nothing do with health care in Los Angeles and everything to do with why Republicans fail when courting the Latino vote and how deluded they are in even thinking it's a possibility when the Democratic party is all about giving the ones who aren't here to commit crime an opportunity to become citizens. Who would you vote for if you were a Latino?

 

[Decker]

Why don't you pay attention? What I was highlighting was that members of the Republican party have been attempting to highlight the problem with undocumented aliens that enter the country illegally and put financial strain the the infrastructure ... like emergency health care in southern California.

I get sick and tired of this political divide in the country and I am sick and tired of people pointing their fingers at, for example, the GOP and saying ... "Oh you stupid bastards! You repubs (and in my case conservative) are sooooo stupid. Hell, even the Latino's are too smart to vote for you. Yeah? Well, ain't things currently just grand with the Dem's in control? Like that 16 Trillion dollar debt that is growing by about oh .... $50,000.00 a .. wait for it ... it's coming ... $50,000.00 a second! Oh yeah, a second.

Decker

 

[Muadib]

Why don't you pay attention? What I was highlighting was that members of the Republican party have been attempting to highlight the problem with undocumented aliens that enter the country illegally and put financial strain the the infrastructure ... like emergency health care in southern California.

Which had nothing to do with my post, thanks for proving my point.

I get sick and tired of this political divide in the country and I am sick and tired of people pointing their fingers at, for example, the GOP and saying ... "Oh you stupid bastards! You repubs (and in my case conservative) are sooooo stupid. Hell, even the Latino's are too smart to vote for you. Yeah? Well, ain't things currently just grand with the Dem's in control? Like that 16 Trillion dollar debt that is growing by about oh .... $50,000.00 a .. wait for it ... it's coming ... $50,000.00 a second! Oh yeah, a second.

Decker

I would never say something like "even the Latino's are too smart to vote for you" since it sounds kind of racist. Sorry to break it to you Don, but the country has spoken and the conservatives, Republicans, whatever you want to call them have been beaten bloody, largely though their own ridiculous policies and stances on the issues. Take out your frustration on your own party instead of people who disagree with you. As for the debt, give me a break, nobody, including Obama, grew the debt more than the Republican who was in the White House for the 8 years prior to Obama. He's not perfect but the country is doing a hell of a lot better with him in charge compared to what we had before, if you can't recognize that you're in denial. Chew on this when you think about so called "conservatives" and the national debt:

Economist Mike Kimel notes that the former Democratic Presidents (Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Harry S. Truman) all reduced public debt as a share of GDP while the last four Republican Presidents (George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Gerald Ford) all oversaw an increase in the country's indebtedness

You're sick and tired of the political divide? Well, pull your head of your you know what and realize that this country has been divided along political and social lines since its inception, this is nothing new. There's never going to come a time when we all band together and sing Kumbaya together, people disagree on things, that's just the way it is. Life isn't as black and white as some of us would like to portray it.

 

[Muadib]

Here's more about the fiscal legacy of George W. Bush from someone who knows what they're talking about. According to him, conservatives have nobody to blame but themselves for the state of the economy and the national debt.

The Fiscal Legacy of George W. Bush

By BRUCE BARTLETT

Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul. He is the author of “The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform – Why We Need It and What It Will Take.”



Republicans assert that Barack Obama assumed sole responsibility for the budget on Jan. 20, 2009. From that date, all increases in the debt or deficit are his responsibility and no one else’s, they say.

This is, of course, nonsense – and the American people know it. As I documented in a previous post, even today 43 percent of them hold George W. Bush responsible for the current budget deficit versus only 14 percent who blame Mr. Obama.
The American people are right; Mr. Bush is more responsible, as a new report from the Congressional Budget Office documents.
In January 2001, the office projected that the federal government would run a total budget surplus of $3.5 trillion through 2008 if policy was unchanged and the economy continued according to forecast. In fact, there was a deficit of $5.5 trillion.
The projected surplus was primarily the result of two factors. First was a big tax increase in 1993 that every Republican in Congress voted against, saying that it would tank the economy. This belief was wrong. The economy boomed in 1994, growing 4.1 percent that year and strongly throughout the Clinton administration.
The second major contributor to budget surpluses that emerged in 1998 was tough budget controls that were part of the 1990 and 1993 budget deals. The main one was a requirement that spending could not be increased or taxes cut unless offset by spending cuts or tax increases. This was known as Paygo, for pay as you go.

During the 2000 campaign, Mr. Bush warned that budget surpluses were dangerous because Congress might spend them, even though Paygo rules prevented this from happening. His Feb. 28, 2001, budget message reiterated this point and asserted that future surpluses were likely to be even larger than projected due principally to anticipated strong revenue growth.
This was the primary justification for a big tax cut. Subsequently, as it became clear that the economy was slowing – a recession began in March 2001 – that became a further justification.
The 2001 tax cut did nothing to stimulate the economy, yet Republicans pushed for additional tax cuts in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2008. The economy continued to languish even as the Treasury hemorrhaged revenue, which fell to 17.5 percent of the gross domestic product in 2008 from 20.6 percent in 2000. Republicans abolished Paygo in 2002, and spending rose to 20.7 percent of G.D.P. in 2008 from 18.2 percent in 2001.
According to the C.B.O., by the end of the Bush administration, legislated tax cuts reduced revenues and increased the national debt by $1.6 trillion. Slower-than-expected growth further reduced revenues by $1.4 trillion.
However, the Bush tax cuts continued through 2010, well into the Obama administration. These reduced revenues by another $369 billion, adding that much to the debt. Legislated tax cuts enacted by President Obama and Democrats in Congress reduced revenues by an additional $407 billion in 2009 and 2010. Slower growth reduced revenues by a further $1.3 trillion. Contrary to Republican assertions, there were no additional revenues from legislated tax increases.
In late 2010, Mr. Obama agreed to extend all the Bush tax cuts for another two years. In 2011, this reduced revenues by $105 billion.
On the spending side, legislated increases during the Bush administration added $2.4 trillion to deficits and the debt through 2008. This includes $121 billion for Medicare Part D, a new entitlement program enacted by Republicans in 2003.
Economic factors added almost nothing to increased spending – just $27 billion in total. This is mainly because interest rates were much lower than C.B.O. had anticipated, leading to lower spending for interest on the debt.
After 2008, it becomes harder to separate spending that was initiated under Mr. Bush from that under Mr. Obama. We do know that spending for Part D has risen rapidly – Republicans phased in the program to disguise its budgetary cost – adding $150 billion to the debt during 2009-11.
According to a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan increased the debt by $795 billion through the end of fiscal 2008. The continuation of these wars by Mr. Obama added another $488 billion through the end of 2011.
Putting all the numbers in the C.B.O. report together, we see that continuation of tax and budget policies and economic conditions in place at the end of the Clinton administration would have led to a cumulative budget surplus of $5.6 trillion through 2011 – enough to pay off the $5.6 trillion national debt at the end of 2000.
Tax cuts and slower-than-expected growth reduced revenues by $6.1 trillion and spending was $5.6 trillion higher, a turnaround of $11.7 trillion. Of this total, the C.B.O. attributes 72 percent to legislated tax cuts and spending increases, 27 percent to economic and technical factors. Of the latter, 56 percent occurred from 2009 to 2011.
Republicans would have us believe that somehow we could have avoided the recession and balanced the budget since 2009 if only they had been in charge. This would be a neat trick considering that the recession began in December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.
They would also have us believe that all of the increase in debt resulted solely from higher spending, nothing from lower revenues caused by tax cuts. And they continually imply that one of the least popular spending increases of recent years, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, was an Obama administration program, when in fact it was a Bush administration initiative proposed by the Treasury Department that was signed into law by Mr. Bush on Oct. 3, 2008.
Lastly, Republicans continue to insist that tax cuts are highly stimulative, often saying that they add nothing to the debt, when this is obviously ridiculous.
Conversely, they are adamant that tax increases must not be part of any deficit-reduction package because they never reduce deficits and instead are spent. This is also ridiculous, as the experience of the Clinton administration clearly shows. The new C.B.O. data confirm these facts.


This article just further proves what most Americans already know, Republican economic policy doesn't work. Trickle down economic theory is nonsense, so is the myth that Republicans are "conservative" when it comes to spending.

As time goes on and this country becomes more and more liberal, which it will as it always has, Republicans are going to need to adapt or die. They've been busy trying to fight the future, but the future is coming whether they like it or not and if they don't realize this and change their policies and thinking, they'll go the way of the dinosaur, and that won't bother me one bit. You just have to look at the Middle East if you want an example of what happens when religious conservatism wins, I don't want my country to look like that, do you?

 

[starise]

If we're going with subjective interpretation on who closely follows the doctrine, Stalin definitely doesn't qualify as a humanist, and it can be debated whether he qualifies as an atheist or not.

What was he then?

Not to mention that there are legions of people out there who would disagree with you as to what does or does not constitute a Christian.

This is true they would be the people living under the facade metioned earlier in Matt. 23, or the people who really don't understand what a Christian is. In fact most people think a Christian is a person who trys to be good to get into heaven.

I don't care what Jesus has to say about it,

Really? Then you are in fact creating your own definition apart from the reality of the teaching.

Whether you think they are"true" Christians or not is irrelevant to everyone but, well, you.

You would be justified in this comment if I had added something to the definition or taken something away. How is it you seem so good at pinning everything down to an exact except for this?

Not only are you full of it but you're a whiner

Nothing like an intelligent debate..........I thought I had an opponent up to the task. You seem to be the one whining about now. I'm not even going to stoop so low as to bite on this.

I was just talking to a college science professor today and he is pretty firmly in the evolutionist camp and a heck of a nice guy. I had a brief discussion with him on the subject and during the course of our conversation he said that," both sides need to have a bit of faith in order to reach their respective positions". I might not have agreed with him on evolution but on that point I wholeheartedly agree. It was the first time I had talked to someone who was clearly intelligent and who was willing to make that very simple and straight forward admission.He even went so far as to tell me that he "struggles" with his view sometimes.

I am not whining when I say I don't have much time. I simply gave you a link to that site to get you thinking about a few key points. I will attempt to more clearly answer some of these points you raise here.

On your first point- The idea that changes happening now in bacteria/viruses can translate to entire species changing into other species over time is not something I buy into. Bacteria are designed to change however they are still always bacteria. Show me in a labratory an example of a bacteria becoming anything but a bacteria,no matter how many itinerations it goes through. These organisms should have at the very least started to become something else in the cell world if this idea were true . The variations are limited to a particular scope of function.There are proof of changes/adaptations/micro-evolution all around within a species.

I have caught some of the lung fish you brought up in your example. The fact that such a creature exists does not prove where it came from and there is no indication of it going anywhere else. Why would a fish want to come on the land? The only view from an evolutionary view is that over time fish somewhere must have lived in a place where water comes and goes,however if the water went away a gill fish simply dies. It doesn't adapt to a no water condition. If you threw me off a cliff I would be dead long before I could pass wing traits on to my offspring.So when did this happen? How did it gradually happen? According to your view a fish must have jumped out of the water and its body gradually developed the ability to stay out of the water. Fish could have been DESIGNED to live out of the water just as birds could have been designed to swim. The argument is that this took millions and billions of years. The true fossil record shows advanced species at places in the strata where they shouldn't be if they somehow evolved from lower species and the supposed lower species that should have been wiped out by natural selection are still thriving.

Probably the largest hurdle for anyone who believes in evolution to cross is the knowledge that we have about DNA. It is so very very complex. It would be like an 8 core Windows 8 computer assembling itself literally. Yet we are told that DNA assembled itself in a pool of muck billions of years ago. DNA needs to have an exact sequence to operate and we are not talking about simply one or two conditions here. It would be like a combination lock with a billion numbers. This came from a pool of muck? Really? I'm surprised that anyone can buy this line. You would have a better chance of winning the lottery a thousand fold than for DNA to make itself. Intelligent design is in fact science if the science points to it. Adaptation in a species is well noted.

I don't think that the creation view undermines evolutionary theory. I think science does a pretty good job of that.

I know there are some people here with either a low view of the Bible or a non view of the Bible. As much as I like you guys here I'm not going to do anything but shoot straight with you, if that means I don't get any of those likes, thats fine by me. I'm not really here to make friends if it means watering down something that I think could change your life. I still have a nice life elsewhere with plenty of social connections. I have a hard time believing that there is no hate here. I felt it from day one. Maybe not directed personally but directed toward religion/Bible and probably Christians. Only you know why this is if my description includes you. I think sometimes people choose a set of beliefs to avoid another set of realities.

The book you say is so full of myths is also chock full of facts and interleaved with passages that correlate one another on a large scale proving anything but randomness.

 

[Muadib]

I was just talking to a college science professor today and he is pretty firmly in the evolutionist camp and a heck of a nice guy. I had a brief discussion with him on the subject and during the course of our conversation he said that," both sides need to have a bit of faith in order to reach their respective positions". I might not have agreed with him on evolution but on that point I wholeheartedly agree. It was the first time I had talked to someone who was clearly intelligent and who was willing to make that very simple and straight forward admission.He even went so far as to tell me that he "struggles" with his view sometimes.

Cool story bro, how do I go about verifying anything you said here? If he struggles with evolution as compared to the view that God magic'd everything into existence then I feel sorry for him. It doesn't require faith to believe in evidence, and we have lots of evidence. You have none.

On your first point- The idea that changes happening now in bacteria/viruses can translate to entire species changing into other species over time is not something I buy into. Bacteria are designed to change however they are still always bacteria. Show me in a labratory an example of a bacteria becoming anything but a bacteria,no matter how many itinerations it goes through. These organisms should have at the very least started to become something else in the cell world if this idea were true . The variations are limited to a particular scope of function.There are proof of changes/adaptations/micro-evolution all around within a species.

See, right off the bat you're misunderstanding the point that was made. Nobody said bacteria change into something else, that's not how evolution works. What they do is develop traits that help further their survival, which they then pass on to successive generations. Look at the very definition of evolution and see what it says: the definition of evolution (taken from dictionary.com) is the "change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift."

Now show me where it says anything about changing into other forms. You say you've studied evolution, yet you have no clue what evolution actually is, you show that time and time again. This is why I laugh when people say "evolution isn't happening now because we don't see it happening" I have to laugh because what are these people expecting to see? Do you expect to see a gorilla at the zoo wake up one morning, put on pants and head down to the bank to open a checking account? That's not what evolution is.

I have caught some of the lung fish you brought up in your example. The fact that such a creature exists does not prove where it came from and there is no indication of it going anywhere else. Why would a fish want to come on the land? The only view from an evolutionary view is that over time fish somewhere must have lived in a place where water comes and goes,however if the water went away a gill fish simply dies. It doesn't adapt to a no water condition. If you threw me off a cliff I would be dead long before I could pass wing traits on to my offspring.So when did this happen? How did it gradually happen? According to your view a fish must have jumped out of the water and its body gradually developed the ability to stay out of the water. Fish could have been DESIGNED to live out of the water just as birds could have been designed to swim. The argument is that this took millions and billions of years. The true fossil record shows advanced species at places in the strata where they shouldn't be if they somehow evolved from lower species and the supposed lower species that should have been wiped out by natural selection are still thriving.

This is just as ridiculous as the rest of your argument. We have examples of fish that do come on land and can breath underwater, we have examples of fish that walk, it's in the paragraph itself, yet you obviously choose to ignore that, just like you choose to ignore everything that isn't compatible with your view. What the hell are you even talking about when you talk about throwing someone off a cliff? Once again this has nothing to do with evolution and proves that you don't understand what you're talking about. You make a lot of assertions but provide nothing to back it up, go ahead and show me the "true" fossil record and then we can discuss just what you're talking about because I can't divine it from your ramblings. The only thing I can divine is that you don't understand evolution. At all. Whatsoever.

Probably the largest hurdle for anyone who believes in evolution to cross is the knowledge that we have about DNA. It is so very very complex. It would be like an 8 core Windows 8 computer assembling itself literally. Yet we are told that DNA assembled itself in a pool of muck billions of years ago. DNA needs to have an exact sequence to operate and we are not talking about simply one or two conditions here. It would be like a combination lock with a billion numbers. This came from a pool of muck? Really? I'm surprised that anyone can buy this line. You would have a better chance of winning the lottery a thousand fold than for DNA to make itself. Intelligent design is in fact science if the science points to it. Adaptation in a species is well noted.

Once again, science does not point to intelligent design, if it did, we would teach it. Early science incorporated many ideas of intelligent design but these ended up being falsified and were discarded. You show your ignorance of DNA as well with this paragraph, first of all, nobody knows for sure where DNA came from, but many scientists think that it developed from RNA, I don't think anyone believes that it came from "a pool of muck" Here's an experiment that was performed that showed complex organic molecules can assemble themselves from basic chemicals, which could have lead to RNA, which could have lead to DNA:

Origins and biochemical evidence
By studying the basic biochemistry shared by many organisms, we can begin to piece together how biochemical systems evolved near the root of the tree of life. However, up until the early 1980s, biologists were stumped by a "chicken and egg" problem: in all modern organisms, nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) are necessary to build proteins, and proteins are necessary to build nucleic acids - so which came first, the nucleic acid or the protein? This problem was solved when a new property of RNA was discovered: some kinds of RNA can catalyze chemical reactions — and that means that RNA can both store genetic information and cause the chemical reactions necessary to copy itself. This breakthrough tentatively solved the chicken and egg problem: nucleic acids (and specifically, RNA) came first — and later on, life switched to DNA-based inheritance.
Another important line of biochemical evidence comes in the form of surprisingly common molecules. As you might expect, many of the chemical reactions occurring in your own cells, in the cells of a fungus, and in a bacterial cell are quite different from one another; however, many of them (such as those that release energy to power cellular work) are exactly the same and rely on the exact same molecules. Because these molecules are widespread and are critically important to all life, they are thought to have arisen very early in the history of life and have been nicknamed "molecular fossils." ATP, adenosine triphosphate (shown below), is one such molecule; it is essential for powering cellular processes and is used by all modern life. Studying ATP and other molecular fossils, has revealed a surprising commonality: many molecular fossils are closely related to nucleic acids, as shown below.

The discoveries of catalytic RNA and of molecular fossils closely related to nucleic acids suggest that nucleic acids (and specifically, RNA) were crucial to Earth's first life. These observations support the RNA world hypothesis, that early life used RNA for basic cellular processes (instead of the mix of proteins, RNA, and DNA used by modern organisms).
Experiments can help scientists figure out how the molecules involved in the RNA world arose. These experiments serve as "proofs of concept" for hypotheses about steps in the origin of life — in other words, if a particular chemical reaction happens in a modern lab under conditions similar to those on early Earth, the same reaction could have happened on early Earth and could have played a role in the origin of life. The 1953 Miller-Urey experiment, for example, simulated early Earth's atmosphere with nothing more than water, hydrogen, ammonia, and methane and an electrical charge standing in for lightning, and produced complex organic compounds like amino acids. Now, scientists have learned more about the environmental and atmospheric conditions on early Earth and no longer think that the conditions used by Miller and Urey were quite right. However, since Miller and Urey, many scientists have performed experiments using more accurate environmental conditions and exploring alternate scenarios for these reactions. These experiments yielded similar results - complex molecules could have formed in the conditions on early Earth.

This experimental approach can also help scientists study the functioning of the RNA world itself. For example, origins biochemist, Andy Ellington, hypothesizes that in the early RNA world, RNA copied itself, not by matching individual units of the molecules (as in modern DNA), but by matching short strings of units — it's a bit like assembling a house from prefabricated walls instead of brick by brick. He is studying this hypothesis by performing experiments to search for molecules that copy themselves like this and to study how they evolve.

So DNA likely evolved from RNA. Not from a pool of muck. You just continue to show your ignorance with that statement. You also exaggerate the complexity of DNA, the genetic code itself is complex, DNA is 4 relatively simple chemicals. DNA also does not need a perfect sequence to operate, there are errors and faults in DNA all the time, in fact, it's a natural part of DNA replication. Some of these errors become mutations and are passed on to the organisms offspring. If DNA repair was perfect and DNA sequences were perfect, there would be no genetic variation, thus there would be no evolution at the DNA level and there is, all the time.

As for the rest of your post it's just more blah de blah blah, worry about saving yourself from your own ignorance, the rest of us are doing just fine. Does it take a little faith to believe in evolution via natural selection? I would say no since we have a lot of evidence, but even if someone were to say yes, they'd still have to acknowledge that it takes a lot less faith to believe in something for which there is mounds of evidence, like evolution, as opposed to believing that a magical being created everything spontaneously and left no evidence of this great feat other than a book written by savages. The two aren't even in the same ballpark.

 

[RenaissanceLady]

That is solid Bullshit! The problem has been undocumented or illegal immigrants that entered this country illegally. I watched that demographic collapse emergency health care service in Los Angeles County. Live it before you speak it.

Decker

The assumption made by so many on the right is that to be Latino is to be illegal. I found little differentiation between these two topics among the GOP and their talking points. This is especially true if the Latino speaks Spanish at home, even if he is otherwise bilingual. The "Papers Please" law in Arizona only further compounded this issue, drawing the conclusion that merely being Latino is to automatically be a possible criminal.

This blatantly ignores three important realities:

1. Much of this country came from Mexico - and many people in this country have Hispanic ancestry dating to the time when the Southwestern U.S. was part of Mexico. They have family in (what is now) the U.S. and family in Mexico. Culturally, we've always had a fluid border with Mexico and those with any Hispanic ancestry would travel back and forth as needed. We cannot erase the fact that much of the population has Mexican ancestry from when we took that land from Mexico, nor can we erase the fact that these people still have strong Mexican ties. Lines drawn in the sand do not change this.
2. For all the talk (propaganda) about "illegal aliens" (Mexicans) hurting the economy, I find far more cause to worry about jobs being outsourced overseas and off-shore tax havens for billionaires than about a Mexican working for 35 cents an hour by picking fruit. The irony is that we refer to those billionaires who outsource jobs as "job creators" while the poor Mexican who is working countless jobs at far below minimum wage in order to improve the life of his family is a "drain on society." I'd also say that the billionaire with the tax credits and overseas tax haven is shrugging of his responsibility far more than the underpaid illegal immigrant. While the illegal immigrant may not be paying income tax (he'd be making far too little to pay it even if he was over here legally), he still pays taxes every single time he buys something from the store. This means far more of his income is going toward taxes than the billionaire, who in turn may avoid paying ANY taxes.
3. Blaming a failing health care system on illegal immigrants is like blaming the Gulf Coast for getting hit by hurricanes. Neither the illegal immigrants nor the Gulf Coast create the problems that affect them - though they may be disproportionately affected by those problems. Most undocumented workers are not going to get medical treatment unless it is absolutely necessary as they do not wish to be reported. For the same reasons, these workers may also be exposed to dangerous chemicals or job demands because they have no resources, no unions and no OSHA, thereby increasing their risk of being dangerously injured. This is another reason why big corporations often hire illegals to do the dirty work. On the other hand, millions of fully legal American citizens go without healthcare simply because they cannot afford it, their employment does not offer it or they have had a pre-existing condition that either denies them coverage or limits the coverage. For these people, a trip to the ER is the ONLY means of getting medical care - and the rest of us are stuck paying the bill. While you can blame illegal immigrants for this nightmare, I'll rightly point out how much it costs the two of us every single time a billionaire threatens to cut his employees' hours rather than pay an extra 4 cents per pizza in order to give them "Obamacare", or who pays the bill when multi-billion dollar corporations such as Wal-Mart pay their employees so little that they qualify for food stamps.

Yes, these billionaires are the "job creators" while the poor, undocumented workers at the bottom of the pyramid are hurting the economy and driving up healthcare costs. Meanwhile, down is up, black is white and brown is evil here in America.

 

[stonehart]

The assumption made by so many on the right is that to be Latino is to be illegal. I found little differentiation between these two topics among the GOP and their talking points. This is especially true if the Latino speaks Spanish at home, even if he is otherwise bilingual. The "Papers Please" law in Arizona only further compounded this issue, drawing the conclusion that merely being Latino is to automatically be a possible criminal.

This blatantly ignores three important realities:

1. Much of this country came from Mexico - and many people in this country have Hispanic ancestry dating to the time when the Southwestern U.S. was part of Mexico. They have family in (what is now) the U.S. and family in Mexico. Culturally, we've always had a fluid border with Mexico and those with any Hispanic ancestry would travel back and forth as needed. We cannot erase the fact that much of the population has Mexican ancestry from when we took that land from Mexico, nor can we erase the fact that these people still have strong Mexican ties. Lines drawn in the sand do not change this.
2. For all the talk (propaganda) about "illegal aliens" (Mexicans) hurting the economy, I find far more cause to worry about jobs being outsourced overseas and off-shore tax havens for billionaires than about a Mexican working for 35 cents an hour by picking fruit. The irony is that we refer to those billionaires who outsource jobs as "job creators" while the poor Mexican who is working countless jobs at far below minimum wage in order to improve the life of his family is a "drain on society." I'd also say that the billionaire with the tax credits and overseas tax haven is shrugging of his responsibility far more than the underpaid illegal immigrant. While the illegal immigrant may not be paying income tax (he'd be making far too little to pay it even if he was over here legally), he still pays taxes every single time he buys something from the store. This means far more of his income is going toward taxes than the billionaire, who in turn may avoid paying ANY taxes.
3. Blaming a failing health care system on illegal immigrants is like blaming the Gulf Coast for getting hit by hurricanes. Neither the illegal immigrants nor the Gulf Coast create the problems that affect them - though they may be disproportionately affected by those problems. Most undocumented workers are not going to get medical treatment unless it is absolutely necessary as they do not wish to be reported. For the same reasons, these workers may also be exposed to dangerous chemicals or job demands because they have no resources, no unions and no OSHA, thereby increasing their risk of being dangerously injured. This is another reason why big corporations often hire illegals to do the dirty work. On the other hand, millions of fully legal American citizens go without healthcare simply because they cannot afford it, their employment does not offer it or they have had a pre-existing condition that either denies them coverage or limits the coverage. For these people, a trip to the ER is the ONLY means of getting medical care - and the rest of us are stuck paying the bill. While you can blame illegal immigrants for this nightmare, I'll rightly point out how much it costs the two of us every single time a billionaire threatens to cut his employees' hours rather than pay an extra 4 cents per pizza in order to give them "Obamacare", or who pays the bill when multi-billion dollar corporations such as Wal-Mart pay their employees so little that they qualify for food stamps.

Yes, these billionaires are the "job creators" while the poor, undocumented workers at the bottom of the pyramid are hurting the economy and driving up healthcare costs. Meanwhile, down is up, black is white and brown is evil here in America.

 

[Decker]

The assumption made by so many on the right is that to be Latino is to be illegal. I found little differentiation between these two topics among the GOP and their talking points. This is especially true if the Latino speaks Spanish at home, even if he is otherwise bilingual. The "Papers Please" law in Arizona only further compounded this issue, drawing the conclusion that merely being Latino is to automatically be a possible criminal.
.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you missed where I stated illegal or undocumented. Now, all I have to do is decide if that was simply an oversight or deliberate.

Decker

 

[RenaissanceLady]

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you missed where I stated illegal or undocumented. Now, all I have to do is decide if that was simply an oversight or deliberate.

Decker

I'll assume you missed the point where I said that the GOP didn't distinguish between the two. I'll assume you also missed Every Single Point I made about illegal immigrants and the economy and healthcare. I only specified "illegal immigrants" and "undocumented workers" NINE TIMES in my post.

Now, all I have to do is decide if that was an oversight or deliberate.

 

[Randall]

That is solid Bullshit! The problem has been undocumented or illegal immigrants that entered this country illegally. I watched that demographic collapse emergency health care service in Los Angeles County. Live it before you speak it.
Decker

Our Renaissance Lady tends to think things through pretty well, but when Decker says he "watched that demographic collapse emergency health care service in Los Angeles County." And he says to, "Live it before you speak it." I tend to think that there is probably some truth there as well. I'm sure it's a much more complex issue than most people realize. Perhaps in the end it might be better to face the reality of the situation and do what some of the states are doing with marijuana laws, create some kind of triage system where the most deserving ( clean living, English speaking, literate ) can get legal and on the system and working and paying taxes like everyone else. At the same time work on sending the riff-raff ( illegal dealers, criminals and gangs ) back where they came from. That should give the rest some time and incentive to straighten out and work toward accepted integration. Just some thoughts. Maybe they're too simplistic too.

 

[RenaissanceLady]

Our Renaissance Lady tends to think things through pretty well, but when Decker says he "watched that demographic collapse emergency health care service in Los Angeles County." And he says to, "Live it before you speak it." I tend to think that there is probably some truth there as well. I'm sure it's a much more complex issue than most people realize. Perhaps in the end it might be better to face the reality of the situation and do what some of the states are doing with marijuana laws, create some kind of triage system where the most deserving ( clean living, English speaking, literate ) can get legal and on the system and working and paying taxes like everyone else. At the same time work on sending the riff-raff ( illegal dealers, criminals and gangs ) back where they came from. That should give the rest some time and incentive to straighten out and work toward accepted integration. Just some thoughts. Maybe they're too simplistic too.

Ufology and Decker, you desperately need a reality check:

Illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries are 50% less likely than U.S.-born Latinos to use hospital emergency rooms in California, according to a study published Monday in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

The cost of providing healthcare and other government services to illegal immigrants looms large in the national debate over immigration.

In Los Angeles County, much of the focus of that debate has been on hospital emergency rooms. Ten have closed in the last five years, citing losses from treating the uninsured, and those that remain open are notorious for backlogs.

By federal law, hospitals must treat every emergency, regardless of a person's insurance -- or immigration -- status. Illegal immigrants, who often work at jobs that don't offer health insurance, are commonly seen as driving both the closures and the crowding.

But the study found that while illegal immigrants are indeed less likely to be insured, they are also less likely to visit a doctor, clinic or emergency room.

"The current policy discourse that undocumented immigrants are a burden on the public because they overuse public resources is not borne out with data, for either primary care or emergency department care," said Alexander N. Ortega, an associate professor at UCLA's School of Public Health and the study's lead author. "In fact, they seem to be underutilizing the system, given their health needs."

Latinos' use of health services studied - Los Angeles Times

Try to remember where in the country I'm from and where I've lived most of my life (Texas and New Mexico). I have heard the bs about illegal immigrants and healthcare for a Very Long Time. FOX "News" even made it a talking point - and it was swallowed hook, line and sinker by Decker. As usual, it's based on..... bupkes.

I'm not going to ask that you like or even respect me but I am going to ask that you take the time to stop and think: We have tens of millions of uninsured in this country - all without having to rely upon illegal immigrants to bump up those numbers. What do you think happens when these uninsured ENTIRELY LEGAL Americans have a medical emergency?

By all means, explain it to me, or do I need to explain what this does to the cost of healthcare and ER visits?

A recent DROP in uninsured (thanks to Obamacare - you know, the thing the GOP wants to dismantle) brought the number of DOWN to more than 15% of the entire population being uninsured. This still means that more than 48 million Americans are uninsured, which is a drop from 50 million. In other words, because so many of our own cannot afford or otherwise cannot get health insurance, these hospitals in California and elsewhere in the nation had to close. Decker's talk about "Live it before you speak it" is entirely made out of bologna. He's not living it, as I've just proven. That hysterical speech only means he listened to a FOX "News" report and decided they had to be telling the truth about why these hospitals are closing, rather than admit the painfully obvious reality - that tens of millions of uninsured Americans are causing hospitals to close. You can thank those multi-billion dollar "job creators", such as Wal-Mart, for much if not most of this mess. Corporations such as Wal-Mart get tax breaks yet still keep their employees in abject poverty, refusing to even give their employees the hours needed to qualify for their company's health insurance. Every time a corporation such as this puts obscene profits over the health and well-being of their employees, the rest of us working folks have to pick up the tab in terms of food stamps and ER visits. The end result is that areas in poorer communities (though not necessarily communities that have a large number of illegal immigrants) cannot afford to keep open the hospitals. Corporate and medical greed put us in this mess. Illegal immigrants, who are avoiding the ER just as I stated in my earlier post, clearly and irrefutably are not.

You know something else? I'm as white as mayonnaise yet I've spent most of my adult life without health insurance, either because I would be dropped as soon as I needed it or because I couldn't get it in the first place due to some ugly pre-existings. The only reason I have health insurance right now is because my strictly platonic male housemate worked with me to legally become my "domestic partner" in order to get health insurance through his company - and the ONLY reason they haven't dropped me is because of Obamacare. I've had three surgeries because I finally have health insurance - which I might not have ever needed if my health problems hadn't become medical emergencies due to my being unable to receive medical care in the past. Such is the nature of being uninsured: Illnesses and injuries which aren't initially serious can quickly deteriorate into serious if not critical problems when medical help is unavailable/unaffordable. Waiting for an illness to become a crisis only further jacks up the cost of medical care - further burdening already heavily burdened emergency rooms.

True story: My housemate's closest friend (down in Pueblo, Colorado,) lost his job in the recession and his healthcare along with it. A dental problem became a crisis and later a life-threatening emergency when an infection in a tooth spread to his heart. He ended up in the hospital for weeks, without insurance, because he couldn't see a goddamn dentist when the tooth first started hurting. He's lucky to be alive, especially as tooth infections often follow the root into the upper skull and eventually the brain. A kid in Baltimore died a few years ago from this very thing. The other irony is that this turned an otherwise healthy adult male, mid-50s, into someone with a disability which might affect his ability to land another job. He'll also never again get health insurance if Obamacare is defeated and insurance companies once again are able to deny coverage for anyone who has had a pre-existing. It therefore makes far more sense to have a nationalized plan that treats people at the first sign of an illness, rather than allow the illness to become life-threatening crisis. THIS is entirely why so many emergency rooms close: Medical emergencies which could have been prevented rather simply at an early stage end up causing visits to the ER by people who cannot afford it.

So, is the "Christian" thing to do is to just let the uninsured die? Is a human life worth less simply because someone is (possibly) in this country illegally? What about the rest of us? Should I be denied coverage because I had scarlet fever followed by rheumatic fever at age three, which may have been the trigger for another chronic health problem that has lasted more than my entire adult life?

My personal reality is that, for reasons I don't care to discuss, I really don't want to stay here with my housemate. It's time I moved on yet I don't dare as I'll lose my healthcare. This keeps me in an uncomfortable situation and unable to go forward. You see, for a little over a year, my health insurance company (through the housemate) found a loophole that allowed them to drop opposite sex domestic partners. While this caused enough problems for them that they had to re-offer coverage to me back in July, during the year I spent without insurance, I ended up in the hospital with a medical emergency. Less than three days in the hospital came to over $25K. While I have a job that often pays rather well, I'm drowning in medical debt. The times I've spent uninsured plus the times my insurance wouldn't cover a medical problem has led me to owing about $100K overall. I'm one of the lucky ones, too.

Another true story: A friend (and my housemate's niece) just lost her husband due to problems related to Addison's Disease. He had lost his job and only just started a new one, which means he didn't have health insurance and had lost his life insurance when his previous company folded. She's now behind in the mortgage on the house where she raised her kids and several hundred thousand dollars behind in medical debt, with new bills occurring everyday. It's possible she'll end up owing more than $1 million once all the bills arrive. When she goes into bankruptcy and probably loses the house, who do you think will pay for hospital costs or the problems associated with yet another foreclosure?

Here's a hint: Neither of us need to blame this on an undocumented worker who is avoiding going to the ER at all costs. Please, spare me the "Live it before you speak it" bunk. I'm living it. My housemate's friend as well as his niece are both living it. You're using an excuse based on blunt racism to blame these ills on the illegal immigrant who is working the jobs you and I won't take, all for a fraction of minimum wage, often in dangerous working conditions. Please learn the difference between a reason and an excuse. Blaming our healthcare problems on illegal immigrants is an excuse that's meant to distract us from the reason. The actual reason for our mess is that corporate and medical greed are killing this country as well as the middle class. Every single corporation that decides to cut hours rather than pay for health insurance is another debt that is handed over to those of us who work and pay taxes. When we can't pay, hospitals go bankrupt. It really is that simple.

 

[Muadib]

"Live it before you speak it" is simply a way of devaluing the opinion of anyone who doesn't agree with you. The truth of the matter is, we're all living it, one way or the other, in this country and have been for a long time. Does Don think Los Angeles is the only place in the US who ever had problems with their medical system? As RenaissanceLady pointed out, blaming illegals and undocumented workers for the state of our health care system is a bullshit copout of the highest magnitude that only serves to distract us from the real problem. Greed.

Just look at the Republican response to "Obamacare" to see their tactics of making things up that don't exist and then selling them to the ignorant among us who don't bother to check. Here are some common Republican objections to Obamacare that turn out not to be true, what a shocker:

1. Obamacare is a huge tax increase:

There’s really no nice way to say it. Republicans and conservatives are lying to you about Obamacare. They failed in their attempt to get the SCOTUS to overturn the law. The judicial branch of our government under the power granted to them by our Founding Fathers, declared the law to be constitutional. In response to losing in court, Republicans and conservatives flooded the airwaves feverishly wailing Obamacare is the biggest tax increase in the history of the universe. History would disagree.
Let’s review the facts. Here’s a chart of the major tax increasing programs since the 1950s.

Obviously Reagan’s tax increases were much bigger. Obamacare is one of the smallest in 40 years. Furthermore, most of us will pay very little:

The largest tax increase in the law is on high earners, who will see their Medicare payroll taxes increase by 0.9 percentage point and who will also pay a slightly higher rate on investment income.​

In other words, the wealth holders who cashed in on the Wall Street scams are being asked to finally trickle down a little of their windfall profits for the good of our country. Which apparently to Republicans and conservatives is a mortal sin. They’re hysterically vowing to repeal the whole law and leave millions of Americans with no access to affordable health care.
Of course it’s useful to remember all these Republican Congresspeople will still have gold plated health care at bargain rates if Obamacare is repealed. Their coverage is safe no matter what they do to weaken your health care security.

2. Death Panels, Politifacts Lie of the Year for 2009 and something Paul Ryan lied to Florida voters about, again, in 2012:

PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: 'Death panels'

By Angie Drobnic Holan
Published on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 5:15 p.m.
Related rulings:

Seniors and the disabled "will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."

Sarah Palin, Friday, August 7th, 2009.
Ruling: Pants on Fire! | Details
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A winner in our "Lie of the Year" contest!
Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.
"Death panels."
The claim set political debate afire when it was made in August, raising issues from the role of government in health care to the bounds of acceptable political discussion. In a nod to the way technology has transformed politics, the statement wasn't made in an interview or a television ad. Sarah Palin posted it on her Facebook page.
Her assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings. Opponents of health care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink. Still others scratched their heads and said, "Death panels? Really ?"
The editors of PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking Web site of the St. Petersburg Times , have chosen it as our inaugural "Lie of the Year."
PolitiFact readers overwhelmingly supported the decision. Nearly 5,000 voted in a national poll to name the biggest lie, and 61 percent chose "death panels" from a field of eight finalists. ( See the complete results .)
This is the story of how two words generated intense heat in the national debate over health care.
• • •
The former governor of Alaska had been out of the headlines since she announced her resignation on July 3; the Facebook message instantly brought her back to the political stage.
"As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we're saying not just no, but hell no!" Palin wrote.
"The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's ‘death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
It wasn't the first time opponents of the Democratic plans for health care had raised the specter of euthanasia. In February, the conservative editorial page of the Washington Times compared plans for more funding for health information technology with eugenics programs instituted in Nazi Germany.
Democrats in the House introduced a bill July 14 that closely mirrored President Barack Obama's campaign promises on health care. The bill increased regulation of insurance companies, proposed a national health insurance exchange where individuals and small business could shop for plans, expanded health programs for the poor, and gave incentives to doctors and hospitals for efficiency and improved care. It did not promote euthanasia.
On July 16, Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of New York and a conservative health care commentator, suggested that the Democratic plan included a measure requiring seniors be told how to end their lives. "Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner," she said on a radio show hosted by conservative Fred Thompson.
PolitiFact gave McCaughey a Pants on Fire rating for that statement. There were no mandatory sessions proposed. Instead, for the first time, Medicare would pay for doctors' appointments for patients to discuss living wills, health care directives and other end-of-life issues. The appointments were optional, and the AARP supported the measure.
Nevertheless, Republican officials began amplifying McCaughey's comments.
House Republican Leader John Boehner issued a statement July 23 that said, "This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law."
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said on the House floor July 28 that a Republican alternative for health reform was "pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government."
Palin's statement then launched the health care debate into overdrive. The term was mentioned in news reports approximately 6,000 times in August and September, according to the Nexis database. By October, it was still being mentioned 150 to 300 times a week.
• • •
The phrase "death panels" appears to be original to Palin. A search of news databases showed no use prior to her Facebook posting.
History professor Ian Dowbiggin, who has written several books on medical history, euthanasia and eugenics, said he had never heard the term before Palin used it. He said the phrase invokes images of Nazi Germany, which denied life-saving care to people who were not deemed useful enough to broader society. Adolf Hitler ordered Nazi officials to secretly register, select, and murder handicapped people such as schizophrenics, epileptics, disabled babies and other long-stay hospital patients, according to Dowbiggin.
"It's not far-fetched to make the historical argument that as you get government more and more involved in health care, you create an environment that is more hospitable to the legalization of forms of euthanasia," Dowbiggin said. "But the Nazi example should be used very advisedly."
"This is an issue that's being exploited by political figures who are opposed to the health care legislation," he added. "They're trying to sensationalize the issue as much as possible to drum up opposition."
On Aug. 10, PolitiFact rated Palin's statement Pants on Fire. In the weeks that followed, health care policy experts on both the right and the left said the euthanasia comparisons were inaccurate. Gail Wilensky, a health adviser to President George H.W. Bush, said the charge was untrue and upsetting.
"I think it is really unfortunate that this has been raised and received so much attention because there are serious issues to debate in health care reform," she said at a forum on Sept. 3.
But some prominent Republicans didn't reject the death panels claim.
Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, told people at a town hall meeting on Aug. 12 that people "have every right to fear. You shouldn't have counseling at the end of life; you ought to have counseling 20 years before you're going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don't have any problem with things like living wills, but they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines you're going to pull the plug on Grandma."
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, asked about the issue on This Week with George Stephanopoulos , said, "You are asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there are clearly people in America who believe in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards."
• • •
Democrats responded by saying the accusation wasn't true and highlighting the actual Medicare provision and what it said.
That wasn't necessarily an effective strategy, said Drew Westen, a psychologist who studies political communication and advises Democrats on messaging. "Instead of stopping and asking themselves, 'What are Republicans trying to appeal to?' the Democrats rolled their eyes and said, 'Isn't this stupid,' " he said. "On one level, it was stupid, but on another level, it was hitting seniors very close to where they live."
People intuitively understand that health care reform is about lowering costs, and end-of-life care can be quite costly, he said. The "death panels" claim exploited fears that people already had. Rather than just saying the claim wasn't true, Westen said, a better response would be that there already are "death panels" — run by insurance companies.
"That's the response that should have been there, from the first day the attack was made," Westen said. "You never let an attack like this stand or go unresponded to in any 24-hour cycle."
The charge was raised repeatedly during August town hall meetings. The claim particularly caught the attention of seniors, said John Rother, a health policy expert with the AARP. "That's who's most sensitive to any suggestion of denial of necessary care or being told you can't get the care you need from your doctor," he said.
The town hall meetings highlighted the partisan divisions when it came to death panels. The claim, along with the Tea Party movement, excited the Republican base to mobilize a vocal opposition, Rother said. "If your start-out stance is being distrustful of government, then this fit right into your worldview." Though nonpartisan, AARP has generally supported Democratic efforts to pass health care legislation.
• • •
Two independent polls showed that about 30 percent of the public believed death panels were part of health care reform, both the week after Palin made the comment and a month later.
Yet seniors were no more likely to believe it than other age groups. The polls showed a closer correlation by party, with Republicans more likely to say that death panels were part of the plans pending in Congress. It's not clear whether Palin's comments swayed anyone who was undecided or unsure about health care reform.
"It touched a nerve of anxiety, and then there was a big response from the press and from experts that assured people that euthanasia wasn't anywhere near this debate," said Robert Blendon, a Harvard University researcher who studies public opinion on health care. "Most people, at the end of the day, did not believe it was being proposed."
As the furor over the phrase settled down, Democrats used it as evidence that Republicans were unreasonably opposing health reform.
President Obama rebutted the claim in a major health care address on Sept. 9: "Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple."
The phrase has been mentioned in the Congressional Record about 40 times since Palin's Facebook posting, but virtually all were Democrats citing it as an example of Republican intransigence.
"You know, GOP used to stand for Grand Old Party," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., on Nov. 7. "Now it stands for Grandstand, Oppose, and Pretend. They grandstand with phony claims about nonexistent death panels. They oppose any real reform." The House voted in favor of health care legislation the same day.
• • •
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, the Oregon Democrat who promoted the provision that allowed Medicare to pay for doctor appointments about end-of-life counseling, said he sees both positives and negatives from the controversy.
On the positive side, he said he's optimistic the Medicare provision will make it into the final version of health care reform, which is still pending in the Senate, and people had more conversations about making their wishes known for things like living wills or do-not-resuscitate orders.
"It really did energize people who deal with palliative care," he said. "Ultimately, it helped advance the cause of giving people more control over end-of-life decisions."
On the other hand, he said, the episode suggests that political distortions need to be confronted faster and more forcefully.
"It's a sobering prospect that political discourse is going to resemble hand-to-hand combat for the foreseeable future," he said.
That doesn't bode well for keeping average citizens involved in the political process, especially those who are independent or not particularly partisan.
"I think they're losing their appetite to wade through the vitriol, and I'm in the same boat," Blumenauer said. "We are moving to a point where we drive normal people away, and everybody else gets their news and increasingly opinion prescreened, going for days never hearing an opposing viewpoint. That gives me pause."
• • •
As for Palin, she told the conservative National Review in an interview on Nov. 17, the same day her bestselling memoir Going Rogu e was released, that she didn't regret her comments. (PolitiFact's calls and e-mail to Palin were not returned.)
"To me, while reading that section of the bill, it became so evident that there would be a panel of bureaucrats who would decide on levels of health care, decide on those who are worthy or not worthy of receiving some government-controlled coverage," she said. "Since health care would have to be rationed if it were promised to everyone, it would therefore lead to harm for many individuals not able to receive the government care. That leads, of course, to death."
"The term I used to describe the panel making these decisions should not be taken literally," said Palin. The phrase is "a lot like when President Reagan used to refer to the Soviet Union as the 'evil empire.' He got his point across. He got people thinking and researching what he was talking about. It was quite effective. Same thing with the ‘death panels.' I would characterize them like that again, in a heartbeat."


She doesn't regret lying about death panels because it got people to think and research what she was talking about, in fact, she'd make up the whole lie again. She compares herself to Reagan but I would disagree, Reagan was a liar and a borderline war criminal, Palin was just a liar. Bottom line, conservatives, Republicans, the right, whatever you want to call it, are not above blatantly lying to the American people to get their point across. Republicans lie and people die and they're supposed to be the religious party in this country? What a joke. You don't help your fellow man by lying to them and trying to deceive them into taking your position on the issues. The American people are tired of it, the only evidence you need is the resounding defeat of some of the biggest Republican liars in the last election.