Steve Schacher

quote:What I have seen just didn't compare to the first 20 mins of Ryan That's probably because Spielburg and Hanks didn't want to recreate the movie. Besides, this is about the airborne troops who parachuted into enemy territory in advance of Normandy.

quote:Before anyone goes all Lieberman and suggests that we do away with online message boards altogether... At least we moved beyond borking...

quote:without the necessity of the graphical content seen in Private Ryan Oh? Did you see the episode (about 3 weeks ago) about the medic? Or the one the week later about Bastogne?

The Bay Area had an incident last year where a cargo ship was leaking oil off-shore as it was departing. Another incident involved another ship dumping its bilge or something. The Coast Guard tracked that one down a day later and hauled them back to shore. It's not the oil companies that are messing up the coastal waters -- it's the local city governments that exempt themselves from the toxic protections and cleanups. The city governments are the biggest polluters of the San Francisco Bay, but they want you to think that it's the refineries in the delta that are the problem. What gets me is when the left says that the attack is a result of the US policies in the Middle East and oil, yet the left is what drove us there because of restrictions on drilling here. As you can see from the following links, the oil companies are far from the largest polluters of California's coastal waters: From Mechanical Glitch Blamed for Oil Spill quote:An official of San Francisco Drydock Inc. said yesterday that Monday's oil spill was the result of an unorthodox system on board the government-owned cargo ship Cape Mohican that linked the ship's fuel tanks to a valve on its hull. Carl Hanson, managing director of the Pier 70 shipyard, said workers never suspected that oil was being held back by an ``external sea valve'' when they opened it for routine repair and cleaning, releasing more than 80,000 gallons of heavy bunker and diesel fuel into a floating dry-dock. From Ship Owner Fined $3.8 Million For San Mateo County Oil Spill quote:Anax admitted in September that the crew of its 717-foot tanker M-T Command spilled the oil and sailed away from the mess without notifying the Coast Guard. Hall also fined the M-T Command's skipper, Dimitrios Georgantas, $500 for his role in the spill and barred him from American ports for three years. From Tanker Captain Pleads Guilty in '98 Oil Spill Off S.F. Company to pay $9.4 million fine quote:The spill occurred on the night of Sept. 26, 1998, when the crew of the tanker Command, a Liberian-registered ship owned by Anax, attempted to illegally transfer oil from one holding tank to another. From SAN FRANCISCO Mercury Levels In Fish a Hazard, Bay Report Says quote:The East Bay research group, which tracks contaminants and exotic species in the bay, notes that the toxic element comes from a variety of sources. The most significant source is abandoned mercury mines, but diesel fuel combustion, consumer products that contain mercury and dental amalgams also contribute to aquatic contamination. ``Legacy'' mercury left over from the Gold Rush -- when it was used to separate gold from ore -- also is a problem. From Redwood City Settlement in Port Cleanup quote:U.S. District Court Justice Thelton Henderson in San Francisco approved the settlement May 10. Most of the 42 defendants are oil companies, including Chevron, Exxon and Texaco. The port hopes to get another $500,000 from a second batch of defendants in the next few weeks. But getting an additional $2 million chunk from the six largest defendants -- mostly federal government agencies such as Moffett Field and Hamilton Air Force Base -- is proving to be more difficult, Sidorenko said. From Foot-Dragging Needs to End On Bay Cleanup quote:These toxic hot spots are a legacy of mining, oil refineries, the U.S. Navy and other industrial and agricultural activity. We have known their location for the last decade, yet these silent killers continue to pollute. Several traditionally pro-environment legislators bowed to heavy lobbying by petroleum producers, the California Farm Bureau, ports and sanitation agencies, including the city of San Francisco. From Our Poisoned Bay Despite end to direct piping of sewage, pollution worse now than 30 years ago quote:The problem, scientists say, is that the bay is suffering from millions of tiny, diffuse sources of pollution. Considered separately, each is small, even inconsequential. But collectively, they are doing serious damage. Oil and gas spilled on streets, pesticides from farm fields and backyard lawns, polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxin buried in soil at thousands of small, contaminated sites -- they all flow downhill with the winter rains, ending up in estuaries and the ocean.

Three WHOLE weeks? And we haven't won yet? Why did we ever start this in the first place? I bet these are the same people who yell at the microwave oven after 30 seconds because dinner isn't done yet.

I love watching Band Of Brothers. It's just like the old TV series Combat!. Combat! followed a squad of soldiers from bootcamp to Normandy and through the war. It was actually a series of personality plays, usually focusing on the feelings of the men and how they handled the horrors of war. There was also plenty of WWII action. There were some exceptional episodes, like the one where the US and German patrols meet in a town at Christmas where a French woman is looking for her missing baby after an assault. Then there was the episode where Saunders is stunned after a bomb explodes and he fuzzily tries to make it back to his side. And then there was the episode where...

quote:Please clarify who you mean by 1000,000 fanatics? By fanatics, I mean the extremists who take literally the words of their religious text in order to entice the youth of their culture to give their lives in quests of mass destruction of those who do not believe. The 1,000,000 was an anecdotal estimate. quote:I find it interesting that you are willing to sacrifice the lives of a number of your countrymen to "win" this war. 1. I am not alone in thinking this way. 2. I am not making the decision to sacrifice anything -- people who go do so voluntarily. 3. Terrorism must stop sometime. If not now, then when? If not our countrymen, then whose? We were the ones attacked -- we are the ones who have to respond. quote:Who should these volunteers be? Members of your family? Alas, I don't have members of my family who are of fighting age. If I were younger, who knows? If I lost a family member (I could have, except for a last minute change of plans of my aunt), perhaps. quote:Why must the loss of lives be balanced by more loss of life? Because, in the long run, the loss of life would be greater if we were to do nothing. And the lives lost would be more civilian than military if we do nothing. If there is to be loss of life, then let it be the lives of those committed to the defense of this country, as they are the most trained to protect their lives. As for civilian lives of the opposition, they have their own rulers to appeal to. They are the ones who put their people into harm's way.

I agree that the interpretation of the Constitution changes over time. The problem that I have is when the interpretation changes back to an earlier form (away from a liberal interpretation and back to a more conservative one) and people are unwilling to accept it (after gleefully celebrating the original change in interpretation), labeling the forces for change as racist, sexist, homophobic, uncompassionate, elderly starvers, schoolchildren starvers, disenfranchisers, etc.

quote:Thoughts on how to appease terrorists? Eliminate them. You can't appease fanatics, especially fanatics willing to die for their cause. If it is simply a numbers game, then we will eventually win as there are 280,000,000 of us and less than 1,000,000 of them. If a quarter of them are in our country hiding in "underground sleeper cells," I assume that they are waiting for their signal to attack. I also assume that they have a "one-shot attack" as their lines of supply are either cut off, are very hard to maintain discretely, or the attacks are of the suicide variety. Therefore, attrition will work in our favor as they expend their ammo on whatever attacks are yet to happen. So, we absorb a few hits, make a few hits in return, and take more of a siege mentality regarding homeland attacks.

The environmentalists show pictures of pristine Alaskan slopes and Mt. McKinnley-like vistas, and say "We can't take a chance on damaging this." However, the area in ANWR that is proposed for drilling is flat, frozen tundra that nothing lives on, where the temperatures during 9-month long winters are as low as -70F.

quote:The only thing I Said was school SANCTIONED. In other words the Teacher/Principal/School worker - getting before a class and saying "Let us Pray". But what if the school teacher gets in front of the class and says "Let's have a moment of silence for each of you to do with as you please?" All that the school would be doing at this point is to give the student the time to spend as he/she sees fit. Would just giving them a moment at the start of the day be too much like sanctioning? How about all the other stuff that the teachers teach today that many feel are beyond the 3 "R's" and fall into social activism? Many people treat environmental activism as a religion -- call them the "Gaia" movement if you will -- would sanctioning extreme environmentalism be akin to promoting a religion? Again, we would have a situation where some people treat it as a faith, others do not recognized it such, and disagreements over who's right abound? Do we err on the side of caution and prohibit it or do we make a value judgment? If we make a value judgment on one person's disputed religion, do we allow value judgments on the others as well? All that I'm saying is that it isn't black and white when either: 1) religion is involved, 2) people are involved, 3)government is involved, 4) interpreting what constitutes government is involved. Therefore, you are right that we leave it up to the Supreme Court to interpret. If the Supreme Court goes one way this decade, they are free to change their minds in the next decade as generations pass and new centers emerge. I would suggest that we do not leave it up to the ACLU to decide. I don't know exactly when they started behaving like the fifth branch of government (behind the media at number four). The ABA is lining up behind them as the sixth branch with their supposed judicial nominee oversight. The events of 9/11 have caused this country to take a giant lurch to the right, and the ripple effects are starting to emerge more clearly now.

The problem with the liberal argument right now is that they know they have been proven wrong once and for all, but they haven't been able to bring themselves to admit it yet. They've had eight years to make policy changes, and they haven't worked. But rather than admit that it didn't work, they continue to say one more program, one more dollar... Columbine wasn't a result of hate (at least hate as we've come to know it). It was the result of some misguided kids who were ostracized by their peers and didn't have the emotional upbringing to handle adversity and loss. The WTC attack was not the result of USA policies. It was the result of fundamentalist hatred of anyone who opposes the extreme Islamic beliefs of this group of people. Consider what they are doing to their own people, especially the women? Is the Taliban treatment of their own people a result of USA policy? Is the Saudi protection payoff of the Taliban a result of USA policy? When the USA went into Somalia to help starving Muslims, when they went into Kosovo to protect the Muslims, when they went to Kuwait it was to protect Muslims. Bin Laden is a multi-millionaire from a wealth family. Why isn't he trying to improve the living standards of his own people instead of keeping the women uneducated and the men in rubble? The Democrats gave up on the gun issue last year when they finally realized that their main base, the unions, are also NRA members and weren't buying into gun control. Also, guns didn't bring down the WTC -- those planes were taken over with knives. Therefore, the conclusion is that guns don't kill people, people do -- and evil people will do evil things whether they have guns or not.

So, if you're willing to allow special consideration for civil servant/government workers to practice their faith, then why are you not willing to allow our teachers or students the same special consideration to practice their faith, as long as the required 8 hours a day are spent in the classroom?

Perhaps people are confusing government with civil service workers. Is my mailman "government?" Are the teachers down the street at the public school "government?" How do you reconcile the after-hours practice of religion if a government worker who is Islamic wants to pray towards Mecca in the middle of the day? What do you do in the winter when it's dark early and the orthodox Jew needs to be home before the sun sets on Friday? The idealistic view breaks down when it trickles down to the people, because the people ultimately have the first amendment protection on their side. People do not stop being citizens with all their protections because they work for a government office for a few hours a day.

quote:The workers are NOT the government, they simply facilitate it's functioning. Then what do you call school teachers? If the workers are not the government, then prayers in schools are not being sanctioned by the government. It is just the workers with common faiths practicing together for a moment.

The biggest problem with completely separating the Church from the State is that, when you break the State down to its lowest components, you get the People. And you can't make the People stop practicing their religion while they are performing their government roles, because many people consider their faith to be a part of who they are. We focus on the big symbols, like crosses and prayers, but nobody says anything about the little stuff, like wearing religious clothing (yamulkes, habits, turbans), jewelry, and the like. I had a state college humanities professor who was a priest. Should separation of church and state forced him out of the classroom? Do the workers in the government have to remove their necklasses with Crosses and Star of Davids? It's easy to say that we'll let the individual worker wear what he or she likes, but the larger State must not do certain things. But there is no larger State that does these things, it eventually falls back to us to do or restrict from doing things. And many of us are just not wired to compartmentalize something as fundamental as their faith, to be turned on and off depending on whether it is allowed or prohibited. The Founders were pretty clear about the things the put into the Constitution. If they meant for the complete separation of Church and State, they would have said so in plain words. They didn't. Many of the early settlers of the colonies were missionaries. There were Reverands as representatives at the signing of the Declaration Of Independence. I'm sure there were Reverands holding seats in Congress. They weren't trying to put a wall between Church and State, they were saying that the State can't prohibit the People from practicing religion.

Huh? I don't think that Mike was arguing for secularism, but just the opposite. The first amendment was not mandating secularism. It was saying that individuals have a right to worship the religion of their choice, or more appropriately, the government does not have the right to stop the individual from worshiping the religion of his choice. The fact that this is in the Amendments and not the body of the Constitution is significant. The Constitution is a limiting-powers document. It is intended to give the government a structure and responsibilities, but with limits on its powers. The most important limits are those listed in the Bill Of Rights. The Bill Of Rights is a declaration of the rights that are retained by the people. They cannot be taken away, or "abridged" by the government. The fact that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" is in the Bill Of Rights means that the people, not the government, have the responsibility to monitor regious activity. Freedom of speech and freedom to assemble go hand-in-hand with freedom to worship, and they are all together in the first amendment. However, as Charles reminds me in another thread, that's the way it should be but isn't. [ 10-20-2001: Message edited by: Steve Schacher ]

Usually, schools get around something like that by having a different denomination lead the prayer each week. If you cringe at the thought of Jesus siding with the other team, then wait next week and maybe Abraham will side with yours.

The whole point of the internet tax ban had to do with the purpose of taxes. Taxes are for paying your share of common-good services, not for extorting profits for no other reason than to pad the general fund of the state. When you have a physical store on the street, your sales taxes go towards your shared enjoyment of city services, such as police and fire protection. When you have a virtual store, what common-good services are your taxes supposed to be supporting? In these cases, the internet tax simply becomes the government taking a cut off the top of your profits.

The ACLU wants you to believe that any reference to religion is unconstutional. What people need to realize is that the Founding Fathers didn't want the state to sponsor a specific religion, not religion in general. In essence, it is okay (within government) to say "God Bless America," but it is not okay to say "Jesus Bless America" or "Allah Bless America." Remember, this goes back to England and the Church Of England. The Founders didn't want a government to dictate which religion people must follow. They only wanted to ensure that the practice of religion was not abridged. Isn't it odd that the Congress has a chaplain that opens each session with a prayer, but we can't have schoolchildren say "...under God...?" The issue of religion in the USA is becomming a tyranny of the minority.

I see that many of you are willing to impute noble intentions onto this man's actions, but his history, to me, makes him look like an agitator. I see from this article (and a radio report I heard yesterday) that many feel that he sued his way onto the fire department on claims of racial discrimination. Also, he is facing a weapons charge.

quote:Lets go back 40 years after WW2. and comepare a small part of the past to the present. These WW2 vets many of whom D-day survivors come back home to the sates in celebration of the victory, some of them come home to their farms in Wisconsin, Georgia, Michihan Illinois. Everyone in those towns and the farmers have guns, some of the farmers even know HOW to bore their own rifles and design their own gunshells(like my granfather). Well said. I've been watching the HBO series Band Of Brothers, and I can see exactly what you're saying. Either this country has forgotten where we came from, or this country is now full of people who have no connection to where we came from. I used to think it was the former, but I'm beginning to think that it is the latter.

So, the SC's a Freeper, too!!!

quote:Yeah, I saw that new law article over on Freerepublic. Do you post over there? I don't recall seeing a Jaguar, so you must use another alias if you do (I'm not asking, and I'm not telling). I post often over there under my alias.

You're going to love this one. I couldn't believe it was a random generation, so I saved it and generated it again, and then once more. The others were all different, so there isn't any hard-coding here. quote: My complaint about Pres. Bill J Clinton Some of my colleagues recommended that I write a letter about how a stockpile of Pres. Bill J Clinton quotes favoring conformism could fill a junkyard. This is that letter. Read on, gentle reader, and hear what I have to say. Pres. Bill J Clinton keeps trying to turn back the clock and repeal all the civil rights and anti-discrimination legislation now on the books. And if we don't remain eternally vigilant, he will certainly succeed. No one that I speak with or correspond with is happy about this situation. Of course, I don't speak or correspond with hate-filled savages, Pres. Clinton's acolytes, or anyone else who fails to realize that I'm sticking out my neck a bit in talking about Pres. Clinton's personal attacks. It's quite likely he will try to retaliate against me for my telling you that if you can go more than a minute without hearing him talk about vandalism, you're either deaf, dumb, or in a serious case of denial. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that many people are incredulous when I tell them that Pres. Clinton intends to use our weaknesses to his advantage. "How could Pres. Clinton be so uncivilized?", they ask me. "It doesn't seem possible." Well, it is surely possible, and now I'll explain exactly how Pres. Clinton plans to do it. But first, you need to realize that he has two imperatives. The first is to reap a whirlwind of destroyed marriages, damaged children, and, quite possibly, a globe-wide expression of incurable sexually transmitted diseases. The second imperative is to cause pain and injury to those who don't deserve it. When I first heard about his objectives, I dismissed them as merely manipulative. But when I later learned that Pres. Clinton wants me to play right into the hands of directionless, execrable fastidious-types, I realized that Pres. Clinton should judge not, lest he be judged. (Actually, what I take much more seriously than mawkish proponents of jujuism are the worst types of irritating, crafty dolts there are, but that's not important now.) I predict that any day now, people will generally agree that there will be public outrage if he tries to permit condescending utopians to rise to positions of leadership and authority. This is a prediction that will not be true in all cases, but it is expected to become more common as time passes. While this country still has far to go before people are truly judged on the content of their character, his reasoning is circular and therefore invalid. In other words, he always begins an argument with his conclusion (e.g., that mediocrity and normalcy are ideal virtues) and therefore -- not surprisingly -- he always arrives at that very conclusion. I'm sure you get my point here. Pres. Clinton is bad enough when he's alone, but he is even worse when he's joined by appalling, vapid smut peddlers. Maybe he has a reason for acting the way he does, but I doubt it. He needs to internalize the external truth that we are in trouble when hitherto reputable people teach indecent concepts to children. We can therefore extrapolate that his subliminal psywar campaigns are not an abstract problem. They have very concrete, immediate, and unpleasant consequences. For instance, he wants to silence critical debate and squelch creative brainstorming. Who does he think he is? I mean, his slurs are attributable to an ignorance born of fear. And let me tell you, he might destroy all tradition, all morality, and the entire democratic system when you least expect it. What are we to do then? Place blinders over our eyes and hope we don't see the horrible outcome? As everyone knows, Pres. Clinton neglects the impact that selfishness has on the soul. What you might not know, however, is that he thinks that he understands the difference between civilization and savagery. However, I will renew my resolve to replace today's chaos and lack of vision with order and a supreme sense of purpose. All in all, he is laughing up his sleeve at us. That said, let me continue. This letter has gone on far too long, in my opinion, and probably yours as well. So let me end it by saying merely that Pres. Bill J Clinton is unequivocally possessed by the devil.