LittleWyvern

You're still assuming that everybody that is in financial trouble right now is in financial trouble because they're stupid and careless, and that nobody has learned anything. I have rebuttals (mostly appeals to history and personal experiences), but there's no way I can debate against a stubbornly held prejudice. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here. :)

But is that before or after inflation-adjustment?

There's no possible way to make sure any and all rescue money goes only to those who have made good decisions but got stuck in a bad financial situation that was not their fault at all. There will always inefficiencies in the system (it comes with the market): it then becomes a question of how much inefficiency one is able to take. While most of us may not agree with everything in the stimulus bill, I think we can all be thankful that some of the money is going to actual people, not just failed banks and automakers (...and insurers of failed banks and automakers).

You say that as if everything bad that happens to a person is because of their own stupidity. I think it's more accurate to say that people are looking more to the government to solve perceived social problems.

Even if this attempted economic rescue is a shift toward "socialism lite," I doubt it will be lasting. Remember the Conservative Coalition after the New Deal? It was more of a realization that many of the New Deal programs were no longer needed, and so were dissolved.

I think it's important to maintain a good balance between the two. Something, at least, between the two extremes (speaking US-centric historically) of Hoover and FDR.

That wasn't what I was asking. I was asking if you had any data evidence that natural disasters have gone "beyond ridiculous" in the US, as I'd like to look at the data out of curiosity.

Can you show that all natural disasters in the US have been in a sharp increase in recent years?

In my view, the letter of the law is what exactly is written in the laws. Using the Word of Wisdom, this would be not drinking coffee, tea, alcohol, etc. The problem with following only the letter of the law is that we really don't learn anything. For example, not drinking coffee because that's what the Word of Wisdom says means we don't know what to or not to drink when given something not explicitly mentioned in the Word of Wisdom. Following the spirit of the law, on the other hand, goes above this. The spirit of the law is the principles derived from the letter of the law. Using the Word of Wisdom again, one might say the spirit of the law is "Don't become addicted to anything." Of course, one still must follow the letter of the law, but knowing the spirit of the law allows someone to make informed decisions on whether or not to eat or drink something based on the principles of the law.

Yeah, that's how I usually hear it meant. If this is a prejudice I apologise. Ah... so I guess it's a "I hold these values, I think these values are awesome, America is moving away from these values and I don't feel very comfortable" sort of thing, is it? Still, though, as the US becomes more religiously diverse (in its demographics), it makes sense that which values people choose to hold will reflect that.

The thing is that people often use "Christian Nation" when they say it should stay a "Christian Nation", and everything that isn't "Christian" is bad for the country, un-American, etc. It's antidisestablishmentarianism in a sense.

As much as I think the Democrats may be a bit too eager here, I like this way better than the Republican's "I'm not talking to you at all" strategy.

When the founders said "Once nation under God," it wasn't a God that any LDS Church members (or many Christians for that matter) will recognize. We've already had a loooooong thread about the Deist concept of God. I think a large part of the draw of America in the early days is that there was no state religion. America wasn't meant to be one certain religion. At the time of America's founding this was basically unheard of in Europe and elsewhere.

Yeah, geology does a handy job at refuting this theory.

I don't think the Veil goes both ways. EDIT: ...I'm going to miss having the scriptures.lds.org text search on my mission.

Hm. I don't see this so much as a decline in the amount of Christians than a decrease in the amount of religious people. Whether this is bad for the United States is probably an unanswerable question (define bad). I think people of non-Christian religions and even atheists/agnostics/etc. can be just as morally and ethically sound as Christians are, if that's what the OP is worried about.

IT'S TO THE LEFT OF THE 'A' KEY.

Aw, it doesn't work in linux now? I liked it better when there was just links to the videos, so it was easy to download and re-encode them.

Uhh... What other conclusion are we to derive from this?

What, would you rather the banks fail under bank runs?

I'm not surprised. The combination of polarizing speech of GOP spiritual leaders (Limbaugh, Beck, etc.) and an enamored Democratic Congress makes me wonder why the gap isn't bigger.

I don't think the government has a backdoor in windows either, but linux runs way faster on my old laptop than vista, so I use it all the time

You could always use linux then. :) Wha? The key concept of net neutrality is keeping the government and internet service providers from regulating the internet. Explain to me how keeping the government's regulation of the internet at the bare minimum somehow helps the government take over the internet. You may want to read the wikipedia page again.

Article This is very interesting. I went to the Sunday morning session and only saw two of these people... but it was really cold.

For those of you worried about the government taking over the internet, I think it would be good to learn about the concept of network neutrality (especially the end-to-end principle), which I think we all should support. The FCC is our friend here.