Different Fraud

 https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1EuReZhsVz/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Define Biblical

 Dan and Art seem to have a difference of opinion of what it means when something is "Biblical".   They both use the term, but seem to use it to mean different things.   I offer this space for the purpose of allowing BOTH of them the opportunity to define "Biblical" with specificity and in detail so that their readers will know what they mean when they use the term.   

Problem Solved

 "1. Reasonable
2. Good
3. Godly/moral/advisable."

 

Dan got upset (Dan doesn't like the word "upset" so...) took exception to my description of  these terms as vague and subjective. Art didn't want Dan to use this to hijack the thread.  

 

Therefore, I decided that I would provide this space for Dan to be as objective and specific is he can, while honoring Art's desire not to contaminate his thread with this "off topic" diversion.  

Immigration Qustions

 I've written before about finding my grandfather's immigration paperwork after he died.   There were two questions that he had to answer which seem relevant today.   This was in the early 1900's and I'm paraphrasing the questions. 

1.  Are you a member of any organization  dedicated to the overthrow of the US?

2.  Are you a polygamist?  (Or that advocates or allows polygamy?)

If these questions are not on the current application, they should be.   I bet most of you can figure out why.  

BOT, Things That They Say Never Happen

 https://x.com/d_white_rabbit/status/2101702158492094480?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

" This is another case that completely broke my heart! Amina and Sarah were murdered by their father Yaser Abdel Said in an honour killing in Texas in 2008. He shot Amina twice and Sarah 9 times. Sarah called 911. Her last words were "Help, my dad shot me! I'm dying, I'm dying!". They were constantly abused by their father both physically and sexually, and their mother who had married Yaser Abdel Said at 14 knew but didn’t do much to protect them when they were alive either. It took the FBI 12 years to catch him because his son Islam, Sarah and Amina’s older brother, hid him for years. Sarah was 17 and Amina was 18 when he killed them and left their bodies in his cab because he felt like he couldn’t control them anymore.

https://a/status/2101065074534199636/video/1

https://x.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/2101065074534199636/video/1

 https://x.com/ericldaugh/status/2101800800058274197?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

"  Denver socialist candidate for mayor Shontel Lewis that her STEALING thousands in public food stamps QUALIFIES her to serve as mayor "I actually think that experience is what actually QUALIFIES me...I did something silly." You literally can't make this up — she says stealing from the taxpayer QUALIFIES her for mayor At least she's being honest, THAT'S WHAT SOCIALISTS DO for a LIVING This is actually a disqualification. We have enough fraud in America, especially in food stamps!"

 https://x.com/quantumguard17/status/2101312035149549709?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

" 

INFURIATING: Somali Maine State Rep. Deqa Dhalac announces her number one goal in office is to surge taxpayer money from America to Somalia. "Hopefully we will be able to help our former country Somalia!" Ban them from holding office.

https://x.com/wardaniel47/status/2101643470989296060?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

 " BREAKING: BOMBSHELL Minnesota auditor report just dropped and it confirms Tim Walz's Department of Human Services FABRICATED RECORDS and did not verify grant recipients, tried COVERING THEIR TRACKS, enabling massive fraud It just got 10,000X worse. WALZ MUST RESIGN. "Perhaps the most EXPLOSIVE revelation is that managers within DHS tried to cover their tracks by backdating and creating NEW DOCUMENTS." "Sent millions of dollars out the door in grants without making proper checks into who was receiving them. And that is not even the most jaw-dropping finding!" "One outrageous example, the auditors found a grantee that was paid $672,000 for one month of work WITHOUT ANY INFO on what they do!" "And the audit says the grant manager who paid it then left DHS a couple days later and became a paid consultant for that company!" "TO ME, THAT'S CRIMINAL." "During the audit multiple DHS managers backdated or created new documents to try to cover their tracks.""

 https://x.com/thegrayrider/status/2101786421291856044?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

" 19 year old Martinez Long was at a Dearborn mall where a fight escalated into another man shooting dead one person, shoot another and begin to recklessly fire inside the mall. Long drew his own pistol and killed the shooter stopping the gunfire. Because he didn't have a MI carry permit he was prosecuted and sentenced to 2 years probation. The presiding judge (pictured) made the statement, "what do you need a gun for protection in a mall, in the first place?” Think about that.

 

 

(Allegedly) Woody Allen On Antisemitism In NY

 https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1GJTfMfg4x/?mibextid=wwXIfr

"*Woody Allen is now 90- writing about antisemitism in NYC*

“You know, I always thought the greatest advantage of New York was that you could be neurotic there and nobody would notice. In other cities they send you to a psychiatrist if you talk to yourself. In Manhattan, they offer you a magazine column for it.

Yesterday I went to buy salmon. By the way, that’s probably the only stable Jewish tradition that survived Babylon, Rome, and my relationships with women.

I was walking through the streets of Brooklyn thinking about death. Not because I’m a philosopher — but because I’m already over ninety, even though originally I planned to stop at seventy.

And suddenly — a crowd outside a synagogue. At first I thought a famous psychoanalyst was appearing there. In New York, people are capable of standing in line for hours just to hear why their mother is to blame for everything. Though honestly, Jews already know that without lectures.

But no. They were shouting something about an ‘Intifada.’ And you know what amazed me most? How much energy these people have. Where do they get it from? I want to write my will after climbing two flights of stairs, and they’re already ready for a revolution before they’ve even had a proper coffee.

Someone there shouted something about ‘decolonization.’ Good Lord. When I was young, ‘colonization’ meant Aunt Frieda taking over our sofa for three months and refusing to leave. Today suddenly it’s a Zionist conspiracy.

In general, modern antisemitism has become much more intellectual. Once upon a time people simply hated us. Directly. Today they don’t.

Today some guy in a scarf, who looks like he writes poems about his own beard, explains to you with the help of Heidegger and Nietzsche why the very existence of Jews is a form of violence and a threat to humanity.

And I stood there thinking: at least in the past, the people beating us up didn’t have academic degrees. Today the pogromists arrive with diplomas from Columbia University.

Then one girl beside me said: ‘We’re against Zionism, not against Jews.’ That’s like my ex-wife saying: ‘I have nothing against you. I’m just against everything you say, do, feel — and especially against sleeping with you.’ The meaning remains the same.

Then someone shouted: ‘Zionists are Nazis!’ At that moment I felt my grandmother spinning in her grave so fast she could have supplied electricity to half of Queens.

By the way, my grandmother knew real Nazis. She hid in a basement in Poland with a man who coughed so loudly the Germans could have found them just from the sound of his bronchial tubes.

And today some kid from an elite college, whose greatest trauma in life was getting cold coffee at Starbucks, explains fascism to me.

Truly, I live in astonishing times.

Today everyone talks as if they accidentally swallowed a university library. Nobody says anymore: ‘Sorry, I’m an idiot.’ No. Today they say: ‘I’m deconstructing the hegemonic narrative.’

Listen, I grew up among Jews. We don’t deconstruct narratives. We create narratives.

I came home and turned on the television — because if you have anxiety, watching television sounds like a brilliant idea. It’s roughly like treating alcoholism with a martini on the rocks.

And there was Roger Waters explaining the world again. Rock musicians always frighten me when they grow older and start talking like paranoids who smell a conspiracy every time they see a black cat.

Then Kanye West appeared. You know, in my childhood crazy people at least looked crazy. Wild hair, old coat, pigeons, conversations with trash cans. This guy just puts on a black mask and says he loves Hitler. And then I realized: humanity has come a long way — from ‘Never Again’ to ‘Let’s discuss the nuances.’

And the politicians? The politicians say: ‘The situation is complicated.’

No.

Complicated is explaining to a Jewish mother why you’re still unmarried at forty.

But when a crowd shouts ‘Death to Zionists’ outside a synagogue — that’s not complexity. That’s a remake. And a worse one. No original script, but an enormous social-media budget.

And you know what really frightens me? Not the extremists. I’m used to extremists. I lived in New York in the seventies. Back then, you were already considered radical if you didn’t trust tap water and washed fruit with soap.

What frightens me is the speed with which ordinary people begin pretending that nothing unusual is happening. Human beings are creatures who adapt to everything. Even to a Jewish girl being pulled by the hair or a sidelocked boy being blinded with a strobe light.

We can get used to everything. War. Hatred. Coffee costing nine dollars. That last one, by the way, is especially difficult.

That night I lay in bed thinking: maybe humanity simply shouldn’t be given free time. Because the moment people get bored, they either start trying to save the world, or kill each other, or record podcasts about the health benefits of war.

And yet… if tomorrow someone marches outside a synagogue shouting about death to Zionists — I’ll go outside. Not because I’m brave. I’m the person who once fainted during a blood test. But because Jews too many times hoped that madness would disappear on its own. It never disappears. It just puts on a suit, goes to university, and opens a TikTok account.

But first… I’ll eat my salmon. I don’t want to die on an empty stomach. My Jewish mother would never have approved of such a thing."

Response To Responses For Abortion Arguments 2

 https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BH8dM3xVr/

"Abortion Arguments Series: Day 2 of 10

"The fetus isn’t a person so it doesn’t have human rights"

In this 10 day series, I'm addressing the top 10 abortion arguments with non-religious rebuttals. (schedule and links in the comments to the other 9)

Yesterday we covered the biology. Many pro-choice people agree the unborn child is alive, human, and a distinct organism.

Which is why they’ll argue this instead:

"Sure, it's biologically human. But being human isn't what gives someone rights. Being a person is. It's just a 'potential person'. A person needs more than DNA. It needs to be born, or viable, or conscious, or able to feel pain. An embryo is none of those things."

Let's take each of those four lines and see if any of them hold up.

—---------------

Line #1: Personhood begins at birth.

Tell me exactly what changes in the 30 seconds between being inside the womb and outside it.

The child's DNA doesn't change. Its brain activity doesn't change. Its heartbeat doesn't change. Its capacity for pain doesn't change. The only thing that changes is its location.

Clearly, traveling a few inches can't be what turns a non-person into a person.

—---------------

Line #2: Viability

They’ll claim: "Once the baby can survive outside the womb, then it's a person."

But think about what this actually measures.

When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, the Court put viability at about 28 weeks. Today, in a top hospital, a baby can be viable around 22 or 23 weeks.

So did babies at 24 weeks become people sometime in the last 50 years?

And in a rural hospital without a NICU, a baby born at 24 weeks may not survive. In a major city hospital, the same baby might. Does that child have personhood in one zip code but not another?

Viability doesn't measure anything about the child. It measures the medical technology available to the adults around it.

—---------------

Line #3: Consciousness or sentience

They’ll say: "A person needs to be aware. An embryo can't think or feel anything."

Well, you're not conscious when you're asleep. Or under anesthesia. Or in a temporary coma. Nobody thinks you stop being a person during those times.

We know it’s wrong to kill someone in those scenarios not because of what they’re experiencing right in that moment, but because it robs them of their future. Everything they would have thought, felt, loved, and done.

But here's the biggest problem with the "consciousness" argument.

How do we even know?

None of us remember being in the womb. None of us remember being a newborn either. How certain are you that you had consciousness even as a newborn?

So if consciousness is your threshold, at what exact moment does it switch on? And how confident are you in that answer?

Because if you can't say for certain, you're deciding life or death based on a guess.

That's like throwing a grenade into a room without knowing whether anyone's inside and just hoping nobody is. That's quite a gamble.

So notice the pattern. Every time someone raises the bar high enough to exclude the unborn, it starts excluding born people too.

Every one of these lines is a sliding scale. There's only one line that isn't a judgment call…

Fertilization.

It doesn't slide with technology or depend on someone's opinion: the moment a new human organism comes into existence is scientifically clear.

—---------------

Line #4: "It's a potential person."

This sounds sophisticated, but it isn't.

Here's the distinction that matters. A sperm is not a human being. An egg is not a human being. Those are potential. They're parts of someone else, and neither one will ever become a person on its own.

But once fertilization occurs, you don't have a potential anything. You have a living organism of the human species with it’s own DNA that will keep developing into an older version of itself.

And notice how selectively we apply this “potential person” reasoning.

Look at fetal homicide laws which we already have in the majority of states.

When a stranger kills an unborn child, prosecutors don't charge him with destroying a "potential person". They don’t just charge him with assault on the mother. They charge him with the separate death of the unborn child. In at least 38 states.

Somehow that same child is only "potential" when the mother is the one who wants to kill it.

To recap…

Every line drawn to exclude the unborn from personhood... birth, viability, consciousness, "potential," either slides with technology, can't be measured, or strips rights from born people too.

Fertilization is the only line that doesn’t move.

If you can't say exactly when a human being becomes a person, the answer isn't "so it's fine to kill it." It's "don't throw the grenade."

Tomorrow I'll address: "Abortion is healthcare." "