The cafe is OPEN on the Sunday thread
Shot by Dan | Enhanced with Pixlr Express
“Weird people follow you in the streets, you can’t sit alone in a restaurant or a cafe and read a book in peace, and I think everybody values those moments of being alone.”
Winona Ryder
Pop quiz: Who is Winona Ryder’s godfather?
Hint #1: He’s famous; many would call him infamous, and used to do a college lecture circuit with G. Gordon Liddy (who once busted him).
Hint #2: In April 1967, he bailed out Augustus Owsley Stanley III, Melissa Cargill, Michael Jackson and Rhona Ghissen after they were arrested following a routine traffic stop in Carmel, N.Y.
The answer is after the jump.
Answer: Timothy Leary!
March 17, 2013 - 11:40 AM
I thought it was strange that all those armed gun lovers at the civic centere yesterday felt so threatened by 20 folks armed only with signs and the 1st Amendment that they felt the need to force them to move away from the building. And some of them cheered when it happened. What wusses.
as we hurtle toward new heights of irresponsible government spending in virtually all things, let’s take a closer look at the evolution of COLLEGE COSTS since 1978:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-15/cost-of-college-degree-in-u-s-soars-12-fold-chart-of-the-day.html
The link contains a quote from Senator Tom Harkin, democrat from Iowa, saying “The cost of obtaining a college degree has increased by 1120% over the past 35 years. That, combined with shrinking incomes, is putting college out of reach for millions of young people”.
Well, I think Senator Tom Harkin has it all wrong. obama-care legislation has taken control over the government lending role previously performed by Sallie Mae and other companies, and is now the conduit through which copious amounts of tax dollars flow to young people for living expenses, and oh yes, college tuition, books and fees. Mr. Larkin doesn’t seem to realize that his party promotes further increases in spending, not decreases. So, I think that students will have more, not less, access to government funds for college…..and living expenses, in the form of continuing proliferation of government-backed student loans.
Most of us have been aware that the growth of college costs has been going through the roof, but little did I know that it has blazed way past the growth in medical care costs…by almost double. So, what do we know?
Well, we know that a higher percentage of high school students are going to college now than did back in the ’50′s, ’60′s, and 70′s. And, we know that a larger portion of those high school graduates aren’t even prepared for college, yet they still meet the qualification for student loans, and must borrow on the government dime to take “remedial” reading and writing courses. Hmmm.
So, just about anyone can qualify for government student loans, which include covering living expenses. What happens when there is high demand for a product or service? The price goes up. And, as long as the government student loan program doesn’t question the cost of which students need to borrow to cover, those costs will only continue going up. In essence, the government insures a steady stream of students to the colleges, while the colleges’ costs sky-rocket….and no one cares, ’cause it’s government money.
A potential solution would be to limit government-sponsored student loans to a benchmark of coverage and cost, and require colleges to accept that cost as payment in full for the government-loan sponsored students…regardless what the actual cost is.
And, another solution may be to recognize that students who don’t get the higher grades achieved by others in high school should not be entitled to borrow government funds in the same manner as those who have performed sufficiently well in high school.
To close, the increase in annual college costs over the past 35 years exceeds the corresponding increase in medical care costs by almost 100%.
Oh, I forgot. Guess what happens when loans come due, and the students can’t pay back the loans? Can you spell, “default”?
Why is it that every time there is a shooting they want to take away
everyone’s guns that did NOT do it?
Kristen, how’d your corned beef turn out?
It’s in the crock pot, Debbie. I’ll let you know tonight.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/03/17/sorry-but-atheism-is-religion/?intcmp=features
Great article for Dan, Justin True, and Mike Scott
Hey Debbie it turned out great. I used some weird roast cut – arm roast or something it was called, part of the last beef we bought – and after brining for the week just put it in the crock pot all day with the potatoes. Big hit wth everyone, but next year I’m going to try and start a day or so earlier so I put it in my phone to remind me.
Yay, Kristen!! The first time I cured beef with the recipe I use, I didn’t use a brisket. I used some other cut of beef that was really lean and it was wonderful.
OK I missed a recipe somewhere.
Link, reference, or repeat please.
“as we hurtle toward new heights of irresponsible government spending in virtually all things, let’s take a closer look at the evolution of COLLEGE COSTS since 1978 . . .[PLUS 464 more words].”
–Frank
Frank, are you engaging in deliberate distortions for sh-ts and giggles with that post, or are you really so unaware that you believe the pap you wrote?
Dave Hicks, comments #27 and 28 from this thread on Lindsey Nair’s blog. It got a little off topic.
The recipe I use, isn’t your usual boiled corned recipe, but it’s killer good.
http://blogs.roanoke.com/fridgemagnet/2013/03/good-lard-this-recipe-looks-good/
I haven’t seen any comments from Justin True for a while.
DaveH, I’d told Debbie that I was going to try corning my own beef this year. I just read a bunch of different recipes and dove in. If you try it, I suggest using a ziplock bag to manage the mess.
Pp links to some opinion piece from a professor at Liberty. Not sure who’d be swayed by anything from there.
Dave H, comment # 25 on Lindsey’s blog also has a link to a cure your own corned beef recipe. I haven’t tried it, though.
Re: my last
I use about 1 cup of kosher salt, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, varying (don’t measure but use a bunch or each) amounts of cinnamon stick, mustard seeds, peppercorns, cloves, allspice, juniper berries (if I can find them), bay leaves and ginger. Heat the marinade / brine over a high heat until the salt and sugar have dissolved. Place the brine into the refrigerator until it is cold. Marinade brisket (or whatever lean cut) in the brine in the refrigerator for about a week (turning it every other day, or so..
From there on, I do the typical onion, carrot and celery and cabbage routine in a crock-pot.
I haven’t cured my own corned beef in a long time, but I’m going to start doing it again, after being disappointed in buying it from restaurants the past couple of years. The beef, cabbage and potatoes I bought from a longtime downtown restaurant last year, was awful. I bought some from a “good” downtown place this year, and while I got a lot for my money, the potatoes were hard, and the corned beef was tough. I had a little of the beef and cabbage for lunch on Friday, and brought the rest home and cooked it in a pot for a while Friday night, with some broth and pickling spices, until the meat was tender.
Frank,
The 2 legislative actions, at the national level, which created the current system of federal funding for students attending colleges and universities are outlined below. One was initiated by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower and the other was initiated by Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell who was a Democrat. I took out a NDSL loan to help pay for my college expenses. I paid it back within 5 years of earning my bachelor’s degree.
The National Defense Education Act (NDEA), signed into law on September 2, 1958, provided funding to United States education institutions at all levels.
It was one of a suite of science initiatives inaugurated by PresidentEisenhower in 1958, motivated to increase the technological sophistication and power of the US alongside, for instance DARPA and NASA. It followed a growing national sense that U.S. scientists were falling behind scientists in the Soviet Union, catalyzed, arguably, by early Soviet success in the Space Race, notably the launch of the first-ever satellite, Sputnik, the year before.
The act authorized funding for four years, increasing funding per year: for example, funding increased on eight program titles from 183 million dollars in 1959 to 222 million in 1960.
A Pell Grant is money the U.S. federal government provides for students who need it to pay for college. Federal Pell Grants are limited to students with financial need, who have not earned their first bachelor’s degree, or who are not enrolled in certain post-baccalaureate programs, through participating institutions. The Pell Grant is named after Democratic U.S. Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, and was originally known as the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant. A Pell Grant is generally considered to be the foundation of a student’s financial aid package, to which other forms of aid are added. The Federal Pell Grant program is sponsored by the United States Department of Education which determines the student’s financial need. The U.S. Department of Education uses a standard formula to evaluate financial information reported on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for determining the student’s expected family contribution (EFC).
For the 2010–2011 school year, 7 of the top 10 colleges by total Pell Grant money awarded were for-profit institutions.[5] This may be in part due to the large enrollment numbers at many of these institutions; in Arizona for example, the University of Phoenix had an enrollment of 380,000 students.
College costs have indeed increased at a significantly higher rate than other costs to most people. I will make some comments as to why I think costs have risen so much, but first I want to deal with my current college. Ten years ago, the staff and faculty of my current college was staffed at approximately the 50% level by members of the sponsoring order. What that meant was that the cost of providing the education my students received involved paying for health care, room and board and a small annual stipend to half of the college’s employees. This current year, I have 1.5 FTE faculty/staff positions filled by members of the sponsoring order. What that means is that our college budget has to account for 33.5 fulltime positions staffed by lay people. Funny thing is those people not only expect to recieve healthcare coverage, a retirement plan, but also a competitive salary. Believe it or not, we’ve filled about half that gap through gifts from donors and endowment income. The rest has to come from students.
In addition to that one factor, we’ve added to our full time staff to account for the mental health counseling needs our students have. We have also increased our security personnel to assure that our campus is safe. Our utility costs have increased significantly as have our costs of providing the constant updates needed in technology required to provide the programs and services required at colleges and universities today.
Ten years ago the financial aid budget at our college totalled less than $100,000 annually. In the current year that budget will exceed $1,300,000. That money comes from endowment earnings and from gifts I and other members of my staff work diligently to receive from private donors.
Let me close this comment by saying that during the current academic year my college froze its tuition and fees. The Board of Trustees just approved, at my recommendation, that tuition and fees for 2013/14 be reduced by 4.7%. The board of trustees committed to fill any revenue loss from that decision through their personal gifts to the college.
It is interesting that since the action taken by my college’s board, Purdue University and St. Joseph’s College in Indiana have announced that they are freezing tuition for 2013/14. I will make other comments on this subject.
Where does one find juniper berries, by the way? I’ve got several recipes that call for them, but I haven’t the slightest idea where to start looking for them.
Interesting, Ron. I’m sure for all the parents of college aged kids on here, this is interesting reading.
Re: Laura at 7:32 pm
The last I found locally was from a “health food” store that sold “Frontier Natural Products.”
Frank,
Some additional information that I would like to share with you. In 1986 total undergraduate enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities was 12.7 million. By 2010 total undergraduate enrollment was 21 million. Think about the expansion of facilities, staff, etc. such an increase in demand required of colleges and universities to meet that demand.
While you might be surprised, state appropriations for public colleges & universities have gone down in the last decade. There is an expectation at the state government level that students and their families pay a higher portion of the cost than previously was true.
Let me talk specifically about my state of Indiana. Since the 1980s a need based grant program, funded with state appropriations, has been in place to support the neediest students have access to higher education. It has been, by all measures, a very successful program. However, it is also not cheap. In the last 4 years the legislature has cut the funding for the program by 40%. A proposal moving its way through the legislature currently would cut the appropriation by an additional 20%. That is happening despite a $2 billion “rainy day fund” balance. The 20% cut will save the state approximately $30 million in the next biennial budget. My college, through successful fund raising, has offset half of the loss of aid for our students thus far. Doing so, while freezing and now reducing our tuition, adds to the budgetary challenges.
I attended a town hall meeting with area legislators yesterday morning. During that time I had a private conversation with one of our area’s legislator’s and pointed out the decline in state support for higher education in Indiana over the last 5 years. In response to my inquiry about when the legislature might consider increasing its funding for higher education his response was, “Well, we can’t make prisoners pay, but we can make students pay.” For this legislator, it seems, that those who are in our prisons are a higher priority than state residents attending colleges & universities in the state.
Finally, let me add that the cost of attendance at my college is the lowest of any independent college in the state. We’ve worked hard to keep that way. The “average” student who attends my college receives at least $3000 annually in financial aid from our resources. Those resources include endowment income and annual gifts from donors. That is in addition to any state and federal aid those students receive. Many receive more than that and some receive less. I don’t believe my college is unique in providing such institutional aid Frank.
College tuition, in my view, has increased at too great a rate over the last 20 years. Wherever I have served I have worked diligently to minimize that increase. I haven’t always been successful. Despite that Frank, there are legitimate reasons for the increasing costs, some of which I have outlined in these two comments.
so, Dan, are you suggesting that college costs haven’t risen at a rate of 2x the rate at which medical costs have risen? Are you saying that college costs aren’t a problem?
Where am I wrong, Dan?
Surely you do realize that way more people these days are borrowing the money to pay college tuition and cover their living expenses (which I guess includes “play” money…) than used to…which coincides with way more people GOING to college than used to (including those who need to borrow the money to be able to take the remedial courses so that they can eventually READ and WRITE well enough to be able to take college courses in the first place…), don’t you?
In the job market we have, please tell us how well recent college grads are doing with finding jobs…ANY jobs, after graduation. Then, please tell us how they will be able to pay back their loans, after they take their 12 month deferral. By the way, a mix of college loans totalling $25 thousand dollars at an average rate of about 6% will cost about $300/month.
I think that’s something to think about, even if you prefer to ridicule it.
The solution would be for our colleges to begin to do more of what Ron May’s college is doing, don’t you think? Except here in Virginia, our’s are doubling down and raiding the fees much higher than inflation.
When is enough, Dan?
Laura: there are numerous suppliers online of juniper berries. Eats Natural Foods in Blacksburg only has them when they’re in season (fall). I won’t have any available until October, though I’ve planned to massively prune most of my common junipers in a few weeks, so I doubt I’ll have more than a peck or two.
In other food-related news, I can get fresh banana leaves delivered from Florida at a dirt cheap price (as in, pay the shipping and they’re free in any quantity). I use them for pit cooking, but they’re also great for wrapping meats on the grill or smoker. The fleshy leaves actually steam the meat and add a nice flavor. It’s absolutely perfect for fish.
pistol pete@6
Always a day late and a dollar short with a bad argument to boot. We hear this all the time and it’s a stupid argument. Why didn’t you look up the counter argument before you posted the silly opinion.
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Atheism_is_a_religion
gdad, # 1 comment about the wusses. i don’t know you but i would bet money you fall into the sme catagory as tiny tim. tip toe thru the tulips, spring is just a few days away!
Hey Ron,
Thank you for not ridiculing my post, and for agreeing with it’s premis…which is that college costs have risen almost 2X higher than medical care costs have risen in the same time period. As you note, loss of tax-payer funding is falling rapidly, at least for public colleges, and is the harbinger of the rise in costs to students…hence the rise in the amounts of student loans. And, it appears as though the drop in tax-payer dollars is being transferred directly to student and family borrowers by the colleges. How long can that continue?
It looks like you are leading the way in Indiana in trying to control what appears to the lay-person as out of control costs. I believe you are fortunate to recieve state funding for your private school…I don’t think that is available in Virginia for private colleges, but I could be mistaken.
I’m curious…how much do your students borrow now, vs. what they borrowed 10-12 years ago? You mentioned some financial aid figures, but I don’t think you included the borrowings by students.
My lay person opinion is that colleges, both public and private, need to make considerable inroads toward cutting even more costs than they already have. The recent WSJ article on the University of Minnisota’s cost situation appears to me to be particularly egregious.
In my opinion, the only way to effectively rebuild college coffers is to rebuild the economy. And, good for you for being proactive and leading your college staff to control what they can, and reduce tuition, instead of crying the blues and continuing to raise tuition like public colleges are doing in Virginia.
Mary Croft, AKA Occupy Loser, again stood with a sign that meant nothing. Liberals are just so stupid. It will remain that way. About 6 weeks away until TED NUGENT!!
Maybe Dan can get on that NRA list finally!!
Hey, your boy Obama has doubled the price of ammo, and more than doubled the price of gun sales and NRA memberships!!
How’s that gas price going??
stephen a, I’m not the armed-to-the-teeth guy who was afraid of a few people carrying signs.
So is everyone with a “Bob” name a flatliner?
Frank,
I talk with students and their parents nearly everyday about the cost of attending college. My staff and I work carefully with them to outline a plan that shows a path to paying for college.
Virginia offers what is called the Tuition Assistance Grant to students attending independent colleges in Virginia. Below is a link to that program in Virginia. It is not need based.
http://www.schev.edu/students/factsheetvtag.asp
Students today are borrowing more simply because they can. I don’t agree with all the aspects of the federal student loan programs. It is too complex to discuss here. Understand that colleges are not permitted to “qualify” the borrowers. Additionally, parent loans are permitted. But I digress.
Parents and students need to seriously look at “net costs” of attendance. What, after institutional, state and federal grant aid does it cost each year to attend? How can I pay for those costs? What education do I want for my child and what can I afford without bankrupting them and me?
Virginia is blessed with a great public & private higher education system. My youngest son has 2 degrees from one of those public universities. Believe it or not, but public university tuition at Virginia’s universities is not outrageous. The community college system is even better. Some private colleges in Virginia are pricey.
Ultimately, parents and students have to choose where to attend. I tell parents that you have to figure out what is the best fit for your son or daughter. Recent research out of the University of Texas indicates something that I think is critical. That study showed that students who start higher education at a two year college, even if only for one year, are more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than those who start at a four year college or university. If they actually earn an associate degree before transferring they have a 3 in 4 chance of earning a bachelor’s degree. The current 6 year graduation rate at 4 year colleges and universities is about 52%. 75% chance versus 50% chance. You choose.
Bottom line is that citizens are going to have to ultimately choose whether the people we incarcerate are more important to our future than those trying to earn a college degree, transform themselves and transform the communities in which they live. That’s the challenge Frank.
Re: gdad at 10:42 pm
OK, Ill bite on the troll.
What evidence do you have that the armed-to-the-teeth guy was “afraid of” (not just disagreed with) the few individuals carrying signs?
Nobody asked me, but I’d say that anyone armed to the teeth is afraid of something. If they’re armed to the teeth at the sleepy Roanoke Civic Center on a beautiful afternoon, they’re afraid of their own shadow in the time of President Black Guy. But my guess is that particular gun fanatic is scared of the first amendment’s power to translate into political momentum, whereas he knows that guns can’t do anything but create violence against people and/or objects.
“Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them. “
-Walter Kerr-
Laura, have you checked Fresh Market for juniper berries?
Obama controls the price of NRA membership? Who knew.
BTW Laura, if you go to Fresh Market, juniper berries would in the spice section. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them there.
Some people sleep less than I do…
The co-op in grandin has juniper as does blue ridge hydroponics on Williamson road
Mike, I would counter that our culture worships lots of things besides the one true God. I sometimes spend too much time on my smartphone, and realize that it might be becoming a ‘god’.
Religion is what you put your faith in. You put your faith that there is no God although you cannot prove it. I would argue that your faith in that is much stronger than many Christians belief in God.
Thank you, Dave Hicks, J.M. White, and Debbie for the tips on where to find juniper berries. I’m not far from a Fresh Market so I’ll try there first, and if not successful will look elsewhere. At least now I know where to start!
Thanks Ron.
Below is a link to the University of Minnisota report I had mentioned earlier. The essense of the article, I believe, is that the institution (and I don’t think that the U of Minn. is all alone) has become inundated with a proliferation of personnel “fiefdoms” which, according to the institution’s CFO, Richard Pfutzenreuter, have become too many to count. Pfutzenreuter says, “while he can track the cost of heating a particular floor of a building or of serving a cafeteria meal (like they really have “cafeterias” any more, right?), he can’t specify elements of the hierarchy such as how many people report to each manager. The Human Resources system doesn’t track that, he said, “because it wasn’t a priority in the past.”
Anyhow, you apparantly see the problem as “too much money goes to the penal system instead of to higher education”, and, while I think you may be at least partially correct on that, I believe that universities would serve the public better if they did what you did, and began to roll back their tuition fees.
Well done, sir.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323316804578161490716042814.html
OK, Dave H, if the guys just disagreed with the sign carriers, why go through the bother of moving them? It’s just 20 people with signs outnumbered by hundreds with guns (and knives and God knows what else).
Frank,
I no longer have an online subscription to the WSJ so I couldn’t read the entire article. However, U. of Minnesota, like UVA, VT, and Wm & Mary in Virginia, are multibillion dollar corporations. I’m sure that if each institution would sit down and do a line by line examination of its budget they would find positions not needed & perhaps even programs not needed.
I was, for 11 years, a faculty member at a major public university. During the first 3 years of my appointment, the taxpayers supported my position. However, from the 4th year through my 11th year I had external grants to support not only my position, but positions of 4 other full time employees of the university. University faculty have to publish, get grants and other activities to keep those positions. The research grants I received also paid the “overhead expenses” for the 5 positions they supported. That meant that the rent, utilities and other expenses related to providing myself and the other 4 employees was charged to my research budget. The reality was that the university had already paid for the building, the utilities and other costs were paid for by state appropriations and student tuition revenue. Thus the “overhead expenses” charged to my grant basically went into a quasi-endowment account. What that permitted the university ultimately to do was to create an endowed account that would pay for my position’s expenses should I ever achieve tenured status, which I did, but not continue to receive external grants to otherwise pay for my position and others. Additionally, when I taught 2 undergraduate classes each semester enrollment in those courses typically exceeded 350 students. That’s 4 courses per year times 350 students times whatever the standard tuition rate was at the time. The graduate courses I taught had much smaller enrollments, but the tuition rate was typically double the rate charged to undergrads. Does every faculty position pay for itself in that way? No!
What I will say about the CFO at Minnesota is that if the univesity’s HR system doesn’t permit him to track the number of employees reporting to each mananger he needs a new HR system. Those systems exist and they are no more expensive than not knowing where the positions are appropriated. I would say further that if he, as CFO, can’t find one he shouldn’t be in the job.
One college at which I served as Dean had an endowed faculty member who was tenured and had an average annual enrollment of students totalling between 20 and 30 students. The degree program he had led years before had been eliminated years earlier, but because of his tenure and the endowment in place he continued to teach what were basically elective classes for students who needed such electives. When the faculty member retired, we went back to the donor who had created the endowment and renegotiated the purpose of the endowment in order for the income to be put a more productive use.
My point in this is that multi-billion corporations, whether for profit or not for profit, can find ways to eliminate fat and waste. Doing so tends to make them leaner and more efficient. However, it is not always easy to do.
gdad:
“OK, Dave H, if the guys just disagreed with the sign carriers, why go through the bother of moving them?”
Why didn’t the protestors get a permit to be there and pay for a space like the rest of did? Typical behavior on their part, infringing on the space the promoter leased. I expected nothing less.
Ron,
Holy cow, Ron. I had no idea of what is the quagmire that is academia…per your second paragraph in your most recent post. Are there graduate level courses on academic financial management? …and I raise the question seriously. Sheesh, I thought health care finance is an indeciferable quagmire…
I think President Kaler, by ordering the study in the first place, is trying to understand what he faces as he goes about managing the costs of his institution. And, I commend him for doing so. What he has found is in my opinion, not only frightening, but also enlightening in terms of what comes next.
gada, you have to realize that during a gun show the area outside in front of the civic center is needed for the gun toting fat guys and smokers who are so stridently convinced that they know best how to save their own lives.
I should have known John W would be one of those folks worried about 20 people carrying signs. How much gun-selling space did those 20 people take up, John W? Were some of your buddies denied their chance to load up?
sorry, gdad, I misspelled your handle. Or did you really inspire In-A-Gdad-Da-Vida?
BTW, how much does the VCDL pay for a table at a gun show when they aren’t in the exhibit space proper, but set up outside in the lobby?
Well said, John Wilburn. Those folks, and their supporters, are happy to thumb their nose at the local law…instead of reaching into their pockets to actually FOLLOW the law.
Figures gdad would applaud that kind of scoff-law behavior.
Pistol Pete@40
“Religion is what you put your faith in…”
Sorry dude. I know how this works. You get to deliver a personal definition of what religion is and point out how one belief I have makes it part of the definition.
You don’t get to determine how I personally come to my own decisions. Which is what you attempting to do and which is the assertion of the silly article you posted.
Atheism is simply a belief that there is no god or gods. It is a statement of one specific belief, nothing more. Whatever you or the Liberty University “opinionators” wish to ascribe to this singular belief are creations to advance an apologetic argument.
Of course I can’t prove there isn’t a god. I can’t prove you don’t have monkeys in the trunk of your car or that there’s a celestial teapot in orbit around the earth. It’s not up to me to prove there’s a god. It’s up to the person making the claim that there is one. I am not. Here’s a little Bertrand Russell for you……
“Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”
The fact that I don’t know also makes me an agnostic as well. You can be both.
Neither of these, atheism or agnosticism are matters of faith. Neither is the overuse of a cellphone, which you somehow manage to conflate as a matter of faith.
Why, Frank, the sign carriers simply made a mistake and when it was pointed out to them, they complied without argument and moved. Hence, no damage done. Where’s the scofflawing? The gun toters would have done better to just man up and ignore it. But I guess when you’ve got an army of 20 pacific people carrying signs facing you off, you need to take drastic action.
I’m THE only Bob that matters!!!!!!!! There’s my “tell”!!!!!!!!!
Poor Dan. Maybe you can get your name mentioned on O’Reilly like your buddy Radmacher, his biggest accomplishment in life!
How many baby’s were killed on Peter’s Creek while Mary Croft was protesting?
What happened to OccupyRoanokeVA? Oh yea, it’s the Freeda Cathcart show! WoppDeeeDoo!!
you are getting boring, gdad.
#55 I see that you can’t point out any actual scofflaw behavior, Frank. Protesters are told they can’t actually protest in that space and as a result politely move. Thanks for acknowledging that.
yeah, yeah, yeah, gdad. give ‘em an inch, they’ll take a mile.
Hey Bob
do ya think freeda will compete with steve c’s favorite show, jerry springer?
The gun toters would have done better to just man up and ignore it. But I guess when you’ve got an army of 20 pacific people carrying signs facing you off, you need to take drastic action.
Not that I support them, but does that mean protestors in front of Planned Parenthood are ok now?
I just hope the next C&E Gun Show in Salem is free from rabble. Not because I think they shouldn’t have an ability to protest, but just because I’ve seen enough protests, and know that all too often, someone (regardless of side) eventually takes it too far and creates conflict.
Anti-gun protests at a gun show are about as likely to influence someone’s mind as a pro-vegan protest at a steakhouse. All it does is make the protestors feel good about what they do…it’s not changing anything.
#57 “give ‘em an inch, they’ll take a mile.”
Please provide some proof those protestors “took a mile”.
Waiting….
OJ, I agree that protesters at a gun show will not change any minds. It seems useless, but then I also don’t understand protesting in front of the Supreme Court, and yet thousands do it.
As for protesters in front of PP, they are already allowed, just not blocking the doors or shouting in the faces of women trying to use PP’s services — including non-abortion services.
When a protester at the gun show can make a person already at their lowest point feel even lower then I might agree with the analogy to protesting at Planned Parenthood.
I am not big on protests on someone’s property, at a business or protesting an event. The disruption is rude and agreed it changes no minds. If they want to protest, hold your own event and do it that way. It is less offensive and you might get more people to come out and support it.
I do not support the protesters at Planned Parenthood because that is harassment IMO and I do not support the gun show protesters for the same reason.
I support the First Amendment rights of the protestors and don’t care if they want to protest whatever, but they should follow the rules. The promoter has a leased space that includes the parking lot. Every pro-gun rights protest that I have ever been part of has followed the rules to the letter and would never have trespassed in the first place. I also don’t know why they want to embarrass themselves…. All 12 of them. They wind up as pure entertainment. “More than 20″ was a completely made up number, BTW.
Sandi loves a good baby killin’!!!!!!!!!!!
Re: gdad | March 18, 2013 at 3:48 pm
Not having a rss feed for each individual thread, I don’t keep up with subsequent comments as I did in the old RT site.
However, on a snowy morning going way back works, for me.
Maybe the better question is why do you think one set of demonstrators should be bound by “rules” and another set of demonstrators not bound?
Re: Sandi Saunders | March 19, 2013 at 4:04 pm
Well done, Sandi
Actually, Dave H, I never said they shouldn’t obey the rules. I simply said that IMO the gun toters looked silly.
Besides, comparing the two is ridiculous. PP protesters were chaining themselves to doors to block entrance and they were screaming in the faces of women who were either already under enormous strain or who were simply there for advice or birth control. The PP protesters often refused to move and had to be handcuffed and dragged away screaming. Please show me where the gun protesters were doing any of those things. Everything I’ve seen said they were peaceful and quietly complied when told to move. Do you have evidence otherwise?
#64 Bob loves a good lyin’