Little Paul,

I provided a link to a wikipedia page very simply explaining that correlation is not causation. Your illiteracy is neither my fault nor failing. It would be pointless to ask who claimed causation because it's painfully obvious that you don't know what that is and how it differs from correlation. Simply put, you are unequipped for this conversation and literally don't know what I'm talking about.

I would continue to correct you regarding your missing The Yell's point entirely, but it's obvious at this point that you're just embarrassed, and it would be mockery to continue.

BiefstukFriet,

I don't take the hard line view of religion that many seem to hold, judging by this thread. Many seem to believe all of religion is nothing but ignorance and child-like naivety. While I don't believe that the Bible, for instance, is a historical account of the supernatural, I'd be pained to find any atheist philosophy with a fraction of its richness in wisdom and moral philosophy. Its refutations are entirely of the ignorant and dated social norms of the lands and times of its authorship, not of its messages.

As the only intelligent creatures we're aware of, and social ones at that, I think moral philosophy should be given significantly more attention than it is. That we enslave each other through oppressive governments, even democratically elected (it doesn't just happen in Egypt, folks!), leads me to conclude that moral philosophy must be as important as any other--despite the fact that, as Justinian I would be quick to point out, its basis is not nearly as formal and mathematic as most other disciplines of philosophy.

We give more attention to football games than we do to the philosophy of how we live our lives, and how we live together in society. Some religious texts have a lot of insight and wisdom to offer us on these topics. I try not to let the fact that churches are businesses detract from what the texts have to offer, discounting the corrupt human elements which have built themselves up around them.

Does anyone really think our societies' skewed focuses on trivial entertainment over things of paramount importance to the future of our race is coincidence? We're being lorded over by men with money and power seeking more money and power, as men in power have done for thousands of years throughout recorded history, and surely before as well. The only difference is that transportation is easier than ever and now on a global scale. There's a Christian commandment about thievery. I'll wager it'd do us a lot of good today if anybody still gave a damn about it.

I think the Bible is a valuable book, viewed as a figurative philosophy text about how we ought to conduct ourselves in order to better society over time and enjoy life. It's all about looking inward and improving ourselves, and about being compassionate and generous to those in need. Imagine if its message of love and generosity was embraced by all, who drank alcohol, and burned Marijuana as incense as the Hebews did! I wouldn't think that to be such a bad society at all, let alone ignorant and naive.

But our churches are businesses. And our people are too busy voting for handouts to think and consider moral philosophy. So many abandon faith that we can make the world a better place and humanity a more civilized creature. But I don't think faith in love and compassion are inherently stupid, and I hope that they, at least, don't die soon.

Depends on how you define it, [PW2] PICKLE ARMY. I don't have a problem with its secular usage to describe real monstrous pieces of trash, if that answers your question. Some people think I shouldn't describe any human being as "trash." I think these people are sheltered and unaware of the using, sociopathic human beings in this world.

You can be insane and delusional and not kill millions of people. You can be insane and delusional and not even try to kill one. I don't think mental defect necessarily precludes the possibility of bad intentions or "evil." I'm not sure I agree that Hitler's madness made him any less "evil" by any definition. He didn't give a damn about people and he actively facilitated the deaths of many tens of millions. He wasn't completely psychotic or he'd never have maintained his power for so long. Labeling him as insane does not automatically mean he wasn't aware of what was going on around him and what he was doing.

"You are stating my argument why you cannot mix causation and correlation and why those numbers don't prove causation. "

This statement is incoherent. The numbers are measures of correlation. They neither claim nor imply causation. That this is beyond you is your problem, a result of your inadequacy, and your fault.

"This renders those stats virtually meaningless at best."

Your ignorance means nothing to the numbers.

"I replied to yell who posted a causation. You can read it in different ways, but that is what he meant."

Again, nope. You just embarrassed yourself not only by making a pointless reference to Sharia, but additionally by trying to pretend you had a point. At this point I've offered you and even asked you for explanations repeatedly, and you have failed to offer any whatsoever. You were rambling off-point because you missed the point.

"If you do not disagree, why bother to reply at all? So I presumed you had some point, opinion, or sensible to share if you replied to that post."

I find incoherent rambling offensive and detrimental to discourse on this forum. I did not presume you were rambling; I asked if you had a point and, if so, what you intended it to be numerous times. It was I who presumed you had some point, which is why I asked for clarification of what you intended it to be, because your post lacked any point, statement, insight, or argument whatsoever. I was mistaken.

"Tell me now, why would I bother this correlation or even link it to mine or his post? Its meaningless. You proly won't reply to this question, you didn't do so for the last one."

Not only did I link you pew exit poll numbers (I'm sure that I can find many more of those, now that I've refined my search parameters), but I referenced a study I read some months ago. I don't know why you're crying about this correlation--You refuse to tell us.

Einstein claimed "faith ain't dying soon." I pointed out that the faithless vote for candidates who are getting more votes than ever of late. It's very directly on-topic.

This ain't complicated stuff. You seem very, very confused.

I don't think federal law broadly defines "full time" and "part time." I'm sure different agencies have reasons to have labels and criteria, but I'm not aware of any overarching federal law which discriminates.

Sure. Child molesters are evil. Communism is evil. The satanists who run banks and governments who want to take over the world more completely than they already have are evil.

Of course they'll work together. They all want the same thing: A disarmed populace working at their direction, enriching them. Slavery. Yeah, slavery's pretty evil.

What do all of these things have in common? People wanting to take away others' freedom. Now, I'm not saying you're as bad as a communist, Einstein, but my smoking a joint every few months on my porch seems to upset you an awful lot for something which impacts you in absolutely no way whatsoever. You're not exactly pure yourself.

You have no evidence of 3. Monitary policy is used to rob the working in the USA. It forces people to work harder and longer to make up for being robbed, so it increases economic indicators, but it never helps the working more than it takes away from them.

We know for a fact that all government spending is taxed from that government's people, just as we know that all creation of currency results in inflation. You can equivocate over the timing of what's hit so far, but this doesn't change the fact that we pay for all of this taxing and printing with very real standard of living decreases.

The policies big-government ideologues like you advocate are the reasons people are afraid to spend money and the reason companies/individuals are slow to invest. That problem should be dealt with. More government meddling--pretending to counteract the problem, rather than fix it--only makes the problem worse, not better.

You can't cite examples where corrupt monetary policy set by banks running the globe have helped people, because they never have and have never been intended to. The best revisionists can do is cite the New Deal and stimulus programs and pretend everybody's too ignorant of history to know that they not only didn't work, they slowed down recovery. Now you're claiming that stimulus wasn't big enough, despite the fact that such government wasteful spending is why consumers aren't spending as much and investors aren't investing as much as they would otherwise. Stimulus is wasteful government spending. Stimulus (and other corrupt spending) is why people aren't spending/investing, it's not a cure to them.

Multinational banks want to rob you and take away your rights. Monetary policy, supported by academics and educators they fund via massive government subsidies, is one vehicle by which they accomplish this.

Justinian I,

An appeal to authority is an appeal to authority. It wasn't included as additional evidence, it was the whole of the content of your post.

Central planning has never been 100%, and to pretend that extents of central planning cannot be labeled as what they are unless they reach an impossible 100% is ignorant and silly.

"Yes, economies are demand driven. Goods and services are produced because people will buy them."

Which has nothing to do with government taxing and spending my money. I'll buy just as much food and consumer goods whether government taxes/prints more and spends it or not. In fact, I'll buy more consumer goods if they tax and print less. The notion that there will be more demand if government taxes money away from consumers and inflates their currency is baseless, and that's why you haven't even tried to make any argument for it here. You don't have one, just repeated talking points and rhetoric from those you acknowledge as your academic and intellectual overlords.

"ur country's problem is not that we don't have the productive capacity to produce more goods and services, but that consumers aren't spending because of debt payments (which resulted from poor government policy) and economic uncertainty."

Awwww the poor people spent irresponsibly because of government! The government is the parent and the people are the idiot children who, by your admission here, cannot take care of themselves!

Our country's problem is our government (including union coercive force which is a result of government) makes production here so expensive that competitors are underselling us in virtually every industry. Idiot consumers in debt are in debt because they're idiots. I'm not in debt. Government isn't why I'm not in debt. Are you in debt? If you are, government isn't why.

Consumers aren't spending because our current government policies make work and income harder to find. Consumers aren't spending because our current government spending directly results in massive inflation; they know they're gonna need every dollar they can save because those dollars are worth less every month.

"So reducing taxes on the rich will not help because they have no incentive to produce more when consumer spending is too low."

Consumer spending is low because of government; government is why they have less (taxes) and why what they have is being constantly devalued via inflation. Reducing taxes on the rich means increased investment capital which is essential for economic growth. It also means cheaper investment capital, which is beneficial to economic growth.

That you don't understand that reduced taxes on "the rich" helps free economies as a whole reveals your complete ignorance on the topic. I can understand naive arguments that reduced taxes on upper incomes supposedly don't help that much (a frequent ignorant communist talking point), but to pretend that there's not a certainty that reduced taxes on higher incomes helps economies grow _at all_ is just absurdly ridiculous.

"Instead, the rich invest money in our enemies overseas where there are more profitable opportunities."

That sounds like a whole lot of our fault. Why don't we stop being so uncompetitive, so as to receive those investments and benefit from them? Your argument here just points out that we need to fix our country. It's not an argument that reducing taxes on the rich isn't good for our economy, it's an argument that we're ruining all the reasons that it is.

"Yes, consumer spending will increase if prices drop. However, reducing taxes on the rich will have little effect because they currently have a minor impact on the cost of production."

Granted, we have many other problems. But other problems are no reason not to fix one.

Your common knowledge is ignorant garbage pushed on you by tyrannical overlords who want you to accept the need for the Fed and central planning, because that means more power to them and an ignorant populace who doesn't question when it's being robbed. What you advocate has been done with trillions of dollars over the past 5 years. How's that working for you? You have your experts, I have allllllll that evidence 100% in my favor.

Government is telling you they need your rights and your money; it's for your own good. And you believe them.

Every Man For Himself!

He won't talk about any actual Libertarian positions, just this fictional nonsense which he can muster a response to.

He won't talk about the Fed and its robbery of America.

He won't talk about our corrupt tax code.

He won't talk about the fact that we're engaging in military operations in parts of the globe where we have literally no interests.

Yes, let me spend the next hour digging through academic journal databases to find statistics for someone who can't discriminate between correlation and causation--someone who has discounted mathematics as hokum in this very thread. That sounds like a sensible way to spend a chunk of my Saturday evening.

Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya were about oil?

Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya were about the military industrial complex (including oil), tyranny, and the NWO. Afghanistan and Iraq enriched elite at home and kept the Amerikan sheeple distracted while their rights were infringed. Libya enriched elite abroad and showed good faith that Obama legitimately is a good NWO pawn.

What were our vital interest in these countries? We had none. I think "oil" is a cop-out overly simplistic explanation. Sure, some people are making money on oil as a result of military actions in Iraq and Libya, but there's a lot more at play than oil. If it was all about oil, we'd be drilling for our own, not restricting domestic drilling as much as can be gotten away with.

Libya wasn't exporting much oil to the USA anyway. I don't know where you got that account of events, Pixies, but Libya wasn't exporting much more than 100k barrels/day to the USA under Gaddafi. It was exporting many times this to various European nations.

http://www.eia.gov/cabs/libya/pdf.pdf

While the USA did begin importing oil after lifting sanctions in 2004, the USA wasn't a major customer. The argument that the USA attacked Libya to protect the 3% of Libya's oil exports that the USA was getting is a little thin.