The Glade 4.0

Kairtane - Because his point is so weak without it, yes he does. Elmarnieh is having a hard time lately in Hellfire because several of us are tired of his prideful diatribes.

Having met you (only once, but it was a good time and a good conversation), I can state with confidence that you are not retarded. Neither is your statement here.

Small rural volunteer fire Departments are more common than the much larger city ones because there is so much more sparsely populated rural land in the US than in the cities, yet most of the population lives in the larger cities and are served by the government paid large fire department employees. What would be a more accurate point is how many people are served by volunteer fire teams and how many people are served by the large fire departments. Even the much smaller volunteer fire departments tend to be sponsored by the government in some way or another.

Since your statement was 'broken into' and not 'being broken into' Elmarnieh's assessment is once again misleading, inaccurate and dangerous. If your house has been broken into you want the police report so your insurance company will pay your claim, and to let the police know what was taken (if its recovered or pawned, you could get stuff back) and that there is a burglar that has been working in your neighborhood. Elm's macho statement about guns being protection is highly overrated. According to the police officers I've spoken with, more homeowners get shot with their own guns than ever shoot the robbers - but the homeowner shooting the robber is the story you will see on the front page.

Elm's rant about taxes is his standard rant about taxes. He is now and will always be a small government supporter. This is not a bad thing and it is a valid position, but it is fairly unrelated to your statement. Elm doesn't seem to believe in federal support of local public employees, no matter what field they are in. Your statement did not address the issue of whether the public employees are paid with federal or local funds. It just listed government employees that we go to when things go bad.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

No, but due to the silliness that is having Heckfire and leaving Hellfire to be a cesspool, it's not discouraged.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Because we all know that the only crime the police ever deal with is burglary. Also, people are always home when their houses are broken into, and if they are they always defeat the intruder in a gunfight.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And you're a simple-minded tool that can only make a point by insulting others. Are you so emotionally invested in this that you can't debate this topic without losing control? Or do you just get your e-jollies by trying to be a bully?

It is this kind of crap that results in moderation and the splitting of this forum. Knock this crap off or STFU.

I need to modify my understanding of your positions apparently. I would not have taken you for one to support the wholesale denial of rights based upon racial identity on the basis of nothing more than hindsight or "what if" conclussions.

I wonder what the outcome would have been in 1980 when the FBI tried to seize the census records if the courts were more sympathetic to that line of thinking (well, outside the court that obviously granted the warrants for the FBI to present).

I wasn't saying it was a good thing. It was a horrible and racist thing. Some good did come of it, the capture of a few spies, which in the minds of those instigating it, validated their actions.

This fell much more accurately in the aspect of 'spread a wide enough net and you'll catch some fish' rather than an 'all Japanese are not to be trusted' scenario.

Another both good and bad thing that came out of Order 9066 was the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a mostly Japanese Regiment, both highly decorated and highly posthumously decorated, that fought in Europe and are still recognized as being among the best combat groups the Army has ever fielded.

America in the 40s was still a fairly racist society. The army wasn't even letting black soldiers fight at the beginning of the war. The civil rights movement didn't come around until the 60s. Order 9066 wasn't right, but it was a product of the times and the situation. Failing to recognize that and looking at it only through the eyes of today is as foolish as the Order itself was.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Amusingly enough, if the Census Bureau sends you a long form, it is illegal to refuse compliance.

Of course, no one has ever been prosecuted for this, and no one ever will, because the last thing the Census Bureau wants is provide a venue for someone to make a Constitutional challenge to the long form. They'll not risk having the Supreme Court shoot down the entire thing just to get a handful of people to comply with it.

The constitutionality of the (mandatory) long form has been questioned since its inception, but there's never been a chance to actually challenge it. The Census Bureau would like to keep it that way. As long as they never prosecute anyone for it, it's "no harm, no foul" as far the USSC is concerned. Even if the law is unconstitutional in their opinion, they aren't going to hear the case as long as they can deny a hearing on lack of grounds.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

No doubt, incidents such as this need to be evaluated in the context of the time. However, I'm not seeing where the "times and situations" have drastically changed except in the minds of those people who like think we have socially "progressed", or are you taking the position there is no common sentiment in the perceptions of the Japanese in the 1940s and the Hispanics and Muslims of today? If I were one of those groups, based upon the history of abuse with Census data and as recently as 30 years ago attempts by the FBI to seize that data, I would be a bit concerned as well. It isn't like there are rumors about The Department of Homeland Security requesting and receiving information about Arab demographics in 2003.

But then, I'm not the one telling people with concerns about the collection of information to "grow the hell up".

Micheal,
In all honesty, if you can explain how the information beyond number living at the residence can't be used for gerrymandering, I will seriously reevaluate my position on census information.

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The Dude abides.

Can't help you there Screeling, proving a negative is fairly impossible, especially when there are no boundaries to 'what if'.

The political redistricting folks don't tend to use current census information, they tend to scope out the neighborhoods first hand, and look at political registration records more than ethnic census records. The political registration records are available for public access, the census records are not. Getting caught accessing the census records would end a political career. It also wouldn't tell you much more about what you want to know for setting up district boundaries unless you are a racist son of a *****.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones