Who the hell defends this shit?

Oh no.

Without drugs there would *be* no rock and roll. You think songs like "I Am The Walrus" just write themselves?

Their particular church paid for both. Not the Mormon church as a whole, but the church that they went to. My uncle and his family are like super-awesome donators and all that mess, so they footed the bill for the reception to be held on church grounds and for the flowers in the church and stuff like that. it wasn't expensive, but it wasn't cheap.

I'm speaking only for myself. My cousins are Mormon. My father and uncle were raised Catholic, but one day the Mormons came knocking on my uncle's door and he and my aunt bought their spiel and became Mormon and they raised their kids in the religion. That alone, I don't care about. You believe what you want, as long as it doesn't infringe on my ability to believe what I want. That being said, they have a TON of problems with other Christian denominations, especially Catholicism. They wouldn't come to my grandmother's funeral....and that was his mother. They wouldn't go to the cemetery to bury her, they won't even go there to upkeep the graves of not only her, but my grandfather, great-aunt and great-uncle. They wouldn't come to my H.S. graduation, because it was in a Catholic church. They wouldn't go to my sister's graduation, even though hers was in a Baptist church just for spacial issues. There was no religious service at all, they just needed the room. When my cousin David got married 2 years ago, various members of the church spent the whole of the reception trying to convert us. They kept sending people over with pamphlets, books, it pissed my father off to the point where he knocked a table over and stormed out. My cousin and his new wife were embarrassed to tears by what was going on, but what could they do? The church paid for all this, they weren't going to bite the hand that fed them. I have family members who practice many different religions. My mom was raised Episcopalian and converted when she married my father. Her mother was Episcopalian, while my grandfather was a Methodist. My dad's father was Lutheran, and his parents were Catholic. Our family hasn't had 1/100th of the issues with the rest of our extended family as we've had with my uncle and his. It's to the point where my father and his brother don't speak anymore. When we were living in Georgia, WEEKLY we'd have Mormon missionaries on our doorstep, even after WEEKLY we'd politely tell them to buzz off. No other religious group gave us that kind of grief. It's like they can't and won't take no for an answer. That's what I hate the most. I understand it's important for them to spread the word of God and all that jazz, but when I say I'm not interested, take that for what I'm saying and don't come back the next week. My mind will not change in that time.

I eat hamburgers. I love hamburgers. I love chicken, fish and pork. In fact, I had pork short ribs for dinner. I do not support the microwaving of family pets. Cows, chickens, pigs.......they are bred to be food for humans. If we buy meat in this house, we try to buy organic as much as possible, so it's not pumped full of growth hormones and god knows what else. We also buy organic dairy and eggs.

I understand this. After I graduated from school, I like everyone else, went out in search of work in which to use this paper I spent $50,000 working to get. Seeing as I had no marketing/advertising work experience before college or even during school as I had no time to work, I started looking for entry-level positions, something where I could learn from more established employees, get some experience on my resume and work my way up. I applied to 30 different marketing/advertising agencies in the time between graduating and moving to North Carolina and not one place hired me. I knew it wasn't lack of experience that was the cause, as all of these jobs I was interviewing for said that experience wasn't necessary. It was aggravating as hell to see jobs that are clearly for you, yet you won't be hired for. So I completely understand how draining and hurtful it can be.

Yes Hermit, that's the point I was trying to make. That if you wouldn't put a baby in a microwave, why would you put a cat in a microwave? Why aren't more people punished more severely for acts of animal cruelty? Putting an innocent animal in a microwave and watching it die is just as horrifying as putting a baby in a microwave and watching it die. That's not saying you value the animal's life more than the human's life, that's saying you value a life. Period.

There will never be a viable third party in this country. Remember the Whigs? Yeah, neither does anyone else. BTW, don't ask people to try and convince you of something and then turn around and tell them they won't be able to. No one is going to bother because that's like telling someone to open a door and then as they're trying, tell them it's nailed shut.

See, now in this quiz, we aren't that similar.

And one more because I'm bored and it looked interesting: http://www.politicalbrew.com/politest.cgi Your results: On Non-Fiscal Issues, you rank as a Moderate Liberal (34). On Fiscal Issues, you rank as a Moderate Liberal (36). Your score is on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being fully liberal and 100 being fully conservative. On the map that comes up, I'm in the lower-left quadrant.

This is another one I found interesting; a morality-based political quiz. http://www.moral-politics.com/xpolitics.as...amp;choice=Long YOUR SCORE Your scored -1.5 on Moral Order and -1 on Moral Rules. The following categories best match your score (multiple responses are possible): 1. System: Liberalism 2. Ideology: Capital Democratism 3. Party: Democratic Party 4. Presidents: John F Kennedy 5. 04' Election: John Kerry 6. 08' Election: John Edwards

Crap. Better take the quiz again.

Conservative/Progressive score: 8 You are a social moderate. You think the progressive movement is overall well meaning, but sometimes it goes too far. On issues like abortion and affirmative action, you see the negatives of both extremes on the issue. You probably value religion, but at the same time you think it should still stay separate from the government Capitalist Purist/Social Capitalist score: 10 You're a Social Capitalist, you think that, left to its own, Capitalism leaves a lot of people behind. You think that Health Care should be free to all, that the minimum wage should be raised, and that the government should provide jobs to all that are capable of having them. You likely hated the Bush tax cuts, and believe that the middle class has gotten poorer, and the rich have gotten richer over the past several years. The far extreme of social capitalism is socialism. Libertarian/Authoritarian score: 2 You are libertarian. You think that the government is making way too many unnecessary laws that are taking away our innate rights. You believe that the government's job is primarily to protect people from harming other people, but after that they should mind their own business, and if we give the government too much power in controlling our lives, it can lead to fascism. Pacifist/Militarist score: 0 You're a Pacifist. You are angered that the United States thinks it should dominate the world through its military force. You think that the only time war is necessary is when we are in direct danger of being attacked. You also believe the US spends way too much of its money on defense, as we can practically cut it in half and still easily defend ourselves, and use that money to fix all our economic problems. Overall, you would most likely fit into the category of Democrat

I think it's wrong that the penalties for abusing an animal are far less than if you did that same thing to a human. Stick a baby in a microwave, you'll end up in jail for the rest of your life. Stick a cat in the microwave, barely a dent. I don't get it.

Most humans can fight back. If the human can't fight back because of age, disability or some other extenuating factor, then yes.....castrate them too.

The law, as I believe it to be constructed, says that if you kill a woman past a certain point in her pregnancy, and the fetus dies along with the mother, you can be charged with a double homicide, thus making you eligible for the death penalty (special circumstances). I believe that point is 6 or 7 months, or at least in her third trimester. The law in that instances states you are responsible for the deaths of two human beings, as the child would survive outside the womb if the mother delivered prematurely. However, if you kill a woman who is only in her first trimester, you are not guilty of two murders, but of one. I believe the charge is murder and then abortion in the first degree. So the law states you are only guilty of killing one human being, not two. In the first scenario, the fetus has all the rights of an already-born human being, as they are considered a human being under the law. In the second scenario, there is no human being in question other than the mother. So abortion is not the murder of another human being UNLESS the fetus is aborted past 6 months and there is no grave threat to the life of the mother. This is why I do not support partial-birth abortions unless the mother's life is in imminent danger. If you are 5 or even 6 months pregnant and you don't know by then if you want to be pregnant anymore, you're shit out of luck. If you're going to have an abortion, that decision should have been made a long time before you got to that stage. This is merely how I interpret things according to the law.

Involuntary castration for anyone who abuses an animal.

This is the picture of Twiggy that inspired my avatar. I've been asked several times who it is, so I thought I'd hunt the photo down for everyone:

I have no clue what you're saying. Please use the quote tags right.

The decision to have an abortion is not a rash decision. You don't just up and decide to have one and go on with your day. Trust me when I say, there's a lot of thinking and debating and reasoning and thinking some more that goes on when the subject is broached. No woman decides to have an abortion without thinking about it first. It's a serious decision to make and like any health-related decision, you don't rush into it.

Fathers can terminate parental rights in court to avoid paying child support for a child they don't want. The same as mothers can terminate parental rights. If the mother is pro-life and the father is not, and she has the child, he can go to court, tell the judge that he doesn't want to be financially responsible for a child he didn't want and that's that. She can't force him to pay child support, she can't come after him for a nickel. But men don't have equal say in a pregnancy, because they are not pregnant. It's not like a marriage where both are active participants. He can have a say all he wants, but at the end of the day, it's her body. If she wants to have an abortion, he can't stop her. If it were reversed and men could have babies, the same would apply. You can't force someone to abort and you can't force someone not to abort. No offense, but that's a pithy phrase. You don't know how tough pregnancy is, you're male. Suz has had a child, so she would know all the ins and outs of being pregnant. So no, you don't know. Decisions regarding a woman's reproductive organs and health are HERS to make, not anyone else's. Would you want someone deciding for you what to do with your dick? Input is one thing. An equal say is another. If I don't want to be pregnant anymore and my boyfriend says he wants me to be pregnant, I don't have to listen to him if I don't want to. He has no control over my body or what I do with it.

Child support is not the same as supporting the family. Supporting the family implies you're either the sole breadwinner or the one whose money goes to the bulk of bill paying. So many times, the amount of money these men are forced to pay by the courts don't cover a fraction of the actual bills the mother is forced to pay on her own. What am I talking about? Was I writing in Greek? If the woman gets pregnant, and decides she doesn't want to be pregnant anymore and opts for an abortion, if the father is against abortion, he can't make that woman stay pregnant. He has no right to force her to continue with the pregnancy if she decides something he doesn't agree with.

I don't know how true that is, though. Sometimes the mother is the disciplinarian and the father isn't. Or sometimes as was my parents' case, they were abused as children and didn't want to become abusers themselves, so they never physically disciplined their kids. My parents found other ways to punish my sister and I when we we misbehaved and they didn't have to lay a hand on us.