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Originally posted by Storymark:
And not even cleverly.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

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Originally posted by Storymark:
And not even cleverly.

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Did its job, did it not ?

Easiest marks in the 'verse.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Did its job, did it not ?

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Rap has several times admitted clearly that he wrote something for no other readon than to trigger others--in other words, he deliberately lied.

Once someone does that, they've lost all credibility for me.

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It's hard enough to accept that he might actually BELIEVE some of the things he posts, but his doing it to piss others off and get attention makes sense. Some of the things Rap posts go so far beyond mere partisanship, and off into the world of alternate reality, that it becomes pretty obvious he's trolling.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Belief in evolution among Republicans has dropped more than 10 percentage points since 2009, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.

Pew found that 43 percent of Republicans said they believed humans and other living beings had evolved over time, down from 54 percent in 2009. More (48 percent) said they believed all living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/12/30/publics-views-on-human-evolution/

There simply are no words...

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When I talk, I speak the TRUTH... at least the Truth as I see it, however flawed it may be.

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:


The only troll here is me,

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Originally posted by Storymark:

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:


The only troll here is me,

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You're too intelligent to believe that. He's a master troll.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The only thing I get out of 6IX's constant bird-dogging NIKI is that his life is dominated by "mommy issues".

Eeewww.

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
*face palm*

Come on guys. AuRaptor was clearly being satirical. This is just partisanism.

The only troll here is me, and maybe Jack.

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Do you think he BELIEVES this stuff he posts - despite all facts and logic that get presented to him to the contrary? Despite the fact that he repeatedly has to bail on discussing HIS OWN THREADS, sometimes quietly slinking away, and sometimes after declaring I WIN!

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When have you EVER - and I do mean EVER - seen him discuss even one of his own topics to a logical end?

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Nope, he's not here to discuss.

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Try what I did: simply copy/ paste a series of his posts as your reply in a discussion. You will see they're simply jabs - they're not about the topic, they don't contain information or logic, they don't even express a sincere opinion. They're aimed at the poster in a very aggressive way.

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Could AuRaptor be responding to people in the manner they respond to him? Or could he be quickly frustrated because he always is asked to answer questions he may not have the answers for?

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BTW, did Ison survive? There were some waffling news items, but then it fell off the radar. Do you know if it was ever decided?

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
I'm going with sociopath.

BorderlinePD has a lot of emotion invested into the interactions. They may be messed up, they may be destructive and self-destructive, but there's plenty of deeply felt emotion going on. That's definitely not rappy.

But enough about him. Personally, I have far more interesting things I'd like to discuss.

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BTW, did Ison survive? There were some waffling news items, but then it fell off the radar. Do you know if it was ever decided?

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:

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BTW, did Ison survive? There were some waffling news items, but then it fell off the radar. Do you know if it was ever decided?

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It did. The Bad Astronomy blog posted a picture of it recently for their top 2013 astronomy pictures.

I never saw it so I think it must not have been visible to the naked eye. I get up at five every day so I really should have been able to.

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
All of that describes me more than it describes Raptor.

*Sigh* and I get the distinct impression that was the point.

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Look, I'm just saying. There's a sort of philosophical rule of thumb out there called Hanlon's Razor. It makes more sense to me than the idea of AuRaptor being a diabolical mastermind ever will.

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Yes, I'm aware you're hearing this from someone who was at one time a 9-11 truther. I'm aware of the hypocrisy.

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:

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Originally posted by Storymark:

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:


The only troll here is me,

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You're too intelligent to believe that. He's a master troll.

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That I'm not a troll? I think I know me better than you do.

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Really? Cool! I had forgotten about that, but now that you mention it... I vaguely recall discussion of the pancake collapse thing. Was that you? So long ago!

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But honestly, if what you do is "trolling" you're not that good at it.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
Wasn't there an old saying in the 70's? It went, keep on ... something beginning with a tr. Maybe it was trolling. Well, I'm going with that. Keep on trolling!

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Has the Republican big tent evolved into a house of worship?

For several years, the two major parties have been moving gradually toward opposite poles: Democrats growing more liberal and secular, Republicans becoming more conservative and religious. But a survey out this week shows just how far and how fast the GOP has gone toward becoming a collection of older, white, evangelical Christians defined as much by religion as by politics.

The nonpartisan Pew Research Center recently released the results of an extensive poll done in 2013 on Americans’ views of evolution. Like other polls, it shows that overall views are stable: Sixty percent believe that humans have evolved over time, the same as said so in 2009.

But within those results, there was a huge shift in the beliefs of Republicans: 48 percent say that humans have existed in our present form from the beginning, compared with 43 percent who say we have evolved, either with or without help from a supreme being. That’s an 11-percentage-point swing from just four years ago, when 54 percent believed in evolution.

Forget climate-change skepticism: Republicans have turned, suddenly and sharply, against Darwin.

How to explain this most unexpected mutation? Given the stability of views on evolution (Gallup polling has found responses essentially the same over the past quarter-century), it’s unlikely that large numbers of Republicans actually changed their beliefs. More likely is that the type of people willing to identify themselves as Republicans increasingly tend to be a narrow group of conservatives who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible — or partisans who regard evolution as a political question rather than one of science.

The Pew poll also found that the share of Republicans who attend worship services weekly or more is 52 percent, up five points from 2009, and that the proportion who self-identify as conservative is 71 percent, up six percentage points from 2009. The party remains overwhelmingly white, at 86 percent, and the number of those ages 50 to 64 and 65 and older climbed seven points and two points, respectively.

Not all of these changes are statistically significant, but they are consistent with other findings. For example, an analysis of exit polls from the early Republican primaries in 2012 by Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition found that more than 50 percent of participants were evangelical Christians, a record high, up from 44 percent in 2008.

Republicans are by far the more ideologically homogenous of the two parties (seven in 10 are conservative vs. fewer than four in 10 Democrats who are liberal). Because Republicans were already about as religious as they could get, most of the growing gap in recent years has come from Democrats becoming more secular: The share of Democrats who say they never doubt the existence of God has dropped 11?percentage points over the past quarter-century, to 77 percent, while the proportion of Republicans who have no doubt is 92 percent vs. 91 percent 25 years earlier.

That’s what makes the evolution survey extraordinary: The Republican Party is achieving the seemingly impossible feat of becoming even more theological. Democrats and independents haven’t moved much in their views, while Republicans took a sharp turn toward fundamentalism. “The increasing gap isn’t surprising,” says Alan Cooperman, my former Post colleague who is now director of religion research at Pew. “What’s surprising is it’s the Republicans shifting, not the Democrats.”

As a matter of political Darwinism, the Republicans’ mutation is not likely to help the GOP’s survival. As the country overall becomes more racially diverse and more secular, Republicans are resolutely white and increasingly devout. If current trends persist, it will be only a couple of decades before they join the dodo and the saber-toothed tiger.

But give Republicans credit for this: They don’t just doubt the theory of evolution; they’re out to prove it wrong. If they believed in the survival of the fittest, they’d be expanding their racial and ideological diversity. Instead, they’re trying to demonstrate that devotion to God can trump the Darwinian rules of politics.

Keep them in your prayers. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-the-gops-darwinism
/2013/12/31/60c86524-7264-11e3-8def-a33011492df2_story.html?hpid=z2

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Magons, I am envious of the simple common sense of your people, compared to the bullshit we're going through here:

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A 2009 poll showed that almost a quarter of Australians believe "the biblical account of human origins" over the Darwinian account. 42 percent of Australians believe in a "wholly scientific" explanation for the origins of life, while 32 percent believe in an evolutionary process "guided by God".

A 2010 survey conducted by Auspoll and the Australian Academy of Science found that 79% of Australians believe in evolution (71% believe it is currently occurring, 8% believe in evolution but do not think it is currently occurring), 11% were not sure and 10% stated they do not believe in evolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution#Australia

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I have no problem with people believing there's some kind of "god" behind it all, it's only the complete dismissal of the concept that things evolve that blows my mind.

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Rap keeps it just nasty enough, just denigrating enough, that yeah, he's good at it.

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The Rap manages to keep his "self" out of things. He is completely focused on the one he's playing and adjusts himself to get what he wants. That's why he's so good at it. - M4P

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