Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith
Posted on December 12th, 2007 by bile Categories and Tags: Uncategorized, Christmas, Department of Education, House of Representatives, House of Representives, Iraq, politics, United StatesResolved, That the House of Representatives–
- (1) recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world;
- (2) expresses continued support for Christians in the United States and worldwide;
- (3) acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;
- (4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;
- (5) rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and
- (6) expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world.
Why do we pay people to do this? 372 Ayes, 9 Nays, 10 present and 40 no votes. It was introduced December 6th and passed the 11th. They can’t do something constructive like end the war in Iraq, shut down the Department of Education or throw out NAFTA?
15 Responses to “Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith”
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December 13th, 2007 at 7:57 am
There seems to be a lot of this crap. Also, Ron Paul seems to vote yes for a lot of it. Going back to October 2007, he has voted "Aye" for the following:
Recognizing the 100th anniversary year of the founding of the Port of Los Angeles
H CON RES 147 Recognizing 200 years of research, service to the people of the United States, and stewardship of the marine environment by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its predecessor agencies, and for other purposes
H RES 744 Recognizing the contributions of Native American veterans and calling upon the President to issue a proclamation urging the people of the United States to observe a day in honor of Native American veterans.
H RES 762 Supporting the goals of National Bullying Prevention Awareness Week
H CON RES 222 Commending NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia on the celebration of its 90th anniversary on October 26 and 27, 2007
H CON RES 182 Supporting the goals and ideals of National Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Awareness Week
H R 2089 To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 701 Loyola Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana, as the “Louisiana Armed Service Veterans Post Office.
H RES 635 Recognizing the commencement of Ramadan
H R 3325 Corporal Stephen R. Bixler Post Office Designation
H R 2276 Corporal Christopher E. Esckelson Post Office Building Designation
It’s surprising that congress spends so much time naming post offices and recognizing holidays. It should also be noted that Ron Paul voted against the resolution bile wrote about.
December 13th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Also, if you want to get a real feel for how retarded this is, read the amount of words devoted to thanking people for not shooting each other.
December 13th, 2007 at 8:44 am
The post office stuff is very common. They come in waves usually. Just another reason to marketize it. I’ve no problem with the idea of the resolutions if they are used in particular ways. Primarily for criticizing other members or branches of our own government. The speeches are normal. During a filibuster they will read the Bible or tell stories about their childhood or pets. Anything to waste time. They also have to kiss constituent ass. Ron Paul actually didn’t vote against H. Res. 847… he didn’t vote. He was in Iowa at the time.
December 13th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Good point about the "no vote". This stuff pains my brain. Post offices should be run by the communities in which they deliver the majority of their mail. A national set of post office standards should be adopted, which the community post offices will follow if they choose to deliver mail nationally.
December 13th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Would you support legalizing competition? They have a statutory monopoly on all but extremely urgent mail and use of your mailbox. Those who have tried to compete were put out of business by the feds.
December 13th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Nice black background in the text editor.
In this instance I have no problem with legalizing competition. I do however think that in most cases a monopoly will naturally occur. I tend to view competition as wasteful, but the current system is pretty screwed up.
I think the best way to do this would probably have community-based local delivery services and national level services that distribute to the local services. I think at most you’ll end up with a couple of national carriers and one local carrier per community. The community carriers may be set up sort of like franchises by a larger national organization, I’m not sure. The community services will effectively have a monopoly because of the specialization of their knowledge. The national service will have something close to a monopoly because of the capital required to compete.
If I had my druthers I’d establish worker-owned businesses to meet the demand for these services. I think it’s a relatively pliable setup that would meet everyone’s needs. Oh, I should also note that the funding for these programs would come from the cost of services provided, not from tax dollars.
December 13th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
I’m using the CSS from the theme so you can tell what it will look like before posting. You will notice I altered blockquotes to be more than just indents.
I can’t remember the quote… but there is the one about the mathematician vs the engineer. There is a disconnect between the numbers and reality. I think you have that problem. As mathematicians/scientists we can see how more information and intimate bindings can create optimized systems. As an engineer we need to realize that simply doesn’t apply to humanity. People are driven not by efficiency but by desire. Efficiency can be a side effect of that desire through competition. The greater the competition generally the greater the efficiency needed to continue existence. Scarcity of resources also creates the necessity for efficiency. You can’t continue your existence if you can’t provide for the consumers. Take a look at all the companies and governments which were handed "unlimited" resources and how well they were handled. The post office was a mess from all accounts before they had UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc. to compete with. You can see it just in the past couple years.
Your desire for monopoly for efficiency is fantasy land… and frankly scary. That reasoning leads to theoretical monopilization of just about everything. Why do we have so many operating systems or platforms or word processors? (check subsection "Getting Beyond Nanny State Patent and Copyright Monopolies") Different computer providers, internet providers, clothing providers, food providers? Do you actually believe a statutory monopoly in any of those would end up efficient in any way? What you are asking for is for desire to be disregarded for the "benefit of the whole." It won’t work… it couldn’t work. You are pitching a system for robots not humans.
December 13th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
I think you do a good job outlining the disconnect in your second paragraph. I believe humans naturally desire efficiency to meet the needs of the whole.
As far as my scary vision of monopolies don’t forgot I’m not going to force you at gun point to do what I say, so it can’t be that scary. At worst I’d attach a social stigma to counter-productive competition. Let’s say you’ve got a problem with the postal service, rather than devoting resources and time to something new, use the existing infrastructure and reform it. Note I used the word "pliable" in my example. I’d pin the same sort of stigma on competition that the open source community pins on forking someone’s source. You can do it, chances are you’ll do more harm than good, but you can. In the few cases where you actually have to, people will support you.
Concerning me pitching a system for robots as opposed to humans, are you saying you have less faith in the human race than I do? Historically I think very little of the human race. You could probably find some great quotes of me bashing it. That being said I think just about any human could see where I’m coming from.
Anybody else care to weigh in on this? Am I really that nuts? beetlbumjl, xyz, invisipunk?
Also, I looked up the term statutory before posting, just in case that comes up. I had only heard it used in the phrase "statutory rape".
December 13th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
The thread doesn’t address this, but my comment relates to religion and its importance in elections. I found Romney’s recent speech defending his Mormonism unnecessary, but even worse was his assertion that freedom requires religion. If only these folks were in attendance of that speech.
December 13th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Ha! Good picture.
December 13th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Can you point out examples of this? If needed I could probably provide thousands of examples of what I said. If what you said was correct don’t you think that the thousands of years we’ve been on the plant would have resulted in some utopian efficiency machine? Every monopoly ever has been wasteful and inefficient.
I didn’t say it was scary because you advocated it through force… I said it’s scary and then went on to talk about what you are advocating goes against human nature and the only way to implement them is to turn people into effectively robots. You can’t change people’s desires through ‘education’ as you talk about. The Nazis, fascists, marxists, maoists all had propaganda and ‘education’ institutions and yet many people still had desires for private property and individual freedoms.
This has nothing to do with faith. It has to do with the fact that what you advocate is not something humans collectively can implement. It represents the antithesis of most human traits. You are asking people to generally all agree on things. To work for a single ethereal goal. You are treating people as if they were reprogramable like a computer not fairly unique autonomous individuals with naturally conflicting desires. I fail to understand how you don’t see this. History (especially the last 150 years) is filled with examples where people have tried to get people to implement some arbitrary social system and failed.
December 14th, 2007 at 9:42 am
Stop me if I’m wrong:
In this argument you will push the practical side. You will say my ideas are Utopian and urge me to point to historical evidence that they can work. You may sight historical evidence that your ideas have been proven to work. You will claim my ideas are unnatural.
I will claim that I am unconcerned with the practical and that my ideas require a change in thought facilitated by equal educational opportunities. I will also claim your ideas are unnatural. I will also claim that my ideas are justified because they coincide with a universal morality structure that exists for reasons I cannot explain.
From here we split. You will either:
In turn I’ll probably either:
If you still want to have the argument that’s fine, but I think we’ve had it before. The only new info I’ve really got to add to the debate is stuff from my recent readings on anarcho-primitivism.
December 14th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Uh oh…
December 14th, 2007 at 10:09 am
And I’m saying that that is not possible. That equal education opportunities will not create what you want. You fail to accommodate for human diversity. If you aren’t pitching a system which can actually exist than I fail to see this as anything but an attack on what man is. Bosco’s grand vision for what a perfect human should be. Not what they can be and still be humans. What you profess is not humanity.
My ideas are quite natural. They are based on thousands of years of evidence of human tendencies. They work in conjunction with aspects of humanity which cannot be changed by ‘education’ but perhaps molded or at least dealt with. You are assuming those tendencies don’t exist. IMO you may as well be trying to educate people to breath underwater.
Therefore… I fail to see the point of you arguing for these things. I don’t believe a collective of homosapiens could ever act in the way you want them to act. If there were a group of agents which acted how you envision I would not think them to be humans. And given that you can’t argue where this universal morality structure originates from nor show evidence of it’s existence… you are attempting to argue faith and I’d like to think we here all know that thousands of years of faith based arguments for the existence of a god or gods have produced nothing of substance.
December 14th, 2007 at 11:44 am
It reminds me a racquetball, when you’d hit a high lobber to the front wall and that gym teach lady would be like, "Uh oh… you gonna get it honey".