Oh **** you Kansas`

[Ben Kenobi]

Can someone else try to explain to Benny the separate levels of federal and state governments? I give up.

Seeing as you're supporting overriding state laws?

[Berzerker]

how can the feds confer benefits without federal recognition of gay marriage?

the state dont matter on this

[MrFun]

Seeing as you're supporting overriding state laws?

Federal government provides federal benefits to gay married couples.

How does that force Kansas, a state, to legally recognize gay married couples?

[Ben Kenobi]

how can the feds confer benefits without federal recognition of gay marriage?

Good question. Apparently, Obama can just do whatever he likes. I think I warned you about this, Berz, when we were discussing DOMA. I was the lonely voice in the wilderness arguing that dropping it was a bad deal. But of course, all my predictions have come true. Including Mr. Fun arguing for ramming gay marriage down the throats of states that disagree.

You see, Berz - they were never your friend. States rights when it suits them, abolishment of states rights when it suits them.

[Ben Kenobi]

Federal government provides federal benefits to gay married couples.

Unlawfully. Kansas is right to stand up to unlawful measures imposed upon it.

How does that force Kansas, a state, to legally recognize gay married couples?

In providing benefits for those who do not qualify. The federal government is asserting a status which does not exist.

Why does the federal government have to provide these benefits in Kansas?

[Ban Kenobi]

Federal government provides federal benefits to gay married couples.

How does that force Kansas, a state, to legally recognize gay married couples?

It doesn't since their union was recognized in a free state like Massachusetts or Iowa.

[Ben Kenobi]

It doesn't since their union was recognized in a free state like Massachusetts or Iowa.

So what's that got to do with Kansas?

[Elok]

Poor analogy attempt. Pop stars and politicians - general media - are not part of any meaningful community in my life. I've been on Poly for over a dozen years, and know that all I have to do is be selective about entering into certain conversations.

It's just not that difficult.

The presence or absence of community is irrelevant to the point I was going for. BK spews an endless stream of lies, many of them derogatory. There is a vast body of evidence showing that he cannot be dissuaded from doing so. If he makes any contribution worth reading, I have not encountered it. Is there any reason to allow his rubbish to exist in your sight when you can easily make it vanish? Especially when, with only a few more people ignoring him, we could cut him off and make him effectively lose all influence?

[Lancer]

Take away his ability to speak freely on this forum? You mean shut him up against his will? Then all can agree with each other and peace will return. What could go wrong?

[molly bloom]

Are we talking modern English here? Then yeah. If we're talking Old English, then I'd suspect Danish has more loanwords with Old English than Old Norse provides to modern English.

The Danes supplied the English with rather a lot of vocabulary- some quite fundamental.

The word 'are' for instance. Perhaps you're lacking the skill (Danes) to scrape (Danes) by in discussions about the history of the English language.

Still, if you should find yourself in Whitby (-by as part of a place name from the Danes) Althorp (-thorp from the Danes) or Braithwaite or Lowestoft (-thwaite and -toft from the Danes) then scrub (from the Danes) the contemplation of the sky (from the Danes) and drag (from the Danes) yourself back to the books.

You could be on the brink (from the Danes) of a whole new learning experience.

[molly bloom]

.

Sure, a few hundred years ago, English was just another European tribal dialect... spoken by old Europe barbarians and their inbred kinfolk. And in the UK, it remains such... for the most part.

English was not a dialect. There are dialects of English and even different varieties of English in the British Isles- the Scottish 'Lallans' or Lowlands English being one of them

The wealth of immigrants from around the world is also altering English in London and other cities, with influences from the Indian sub-continent and Jamaican Patwa, for instance.

As for being inbred- isn't your ancestry from somewhere like Serbia ? Lots of mountains, cut off in wintertime, no access to the sea... hint, hint.

[molly bloom]

I'd like to cordially invite the Kansas State Legislature to eat a bag of dicks.

What's bizarre is that Kansas used to be a home to radical (for the U.S. anyway) politics. There's an excellent book, 'What's The Matter With Kansas' which goes into detail about the modern politic scene but also about the Populist Movement.

In What’s the Matter With Kansas?, Frank ventures into explicitly political journalism for the first time. The title comes from Kansas newspaper editor William Allen White’s once-famous1896 attack on Populism. But while White asked the title question because of his aversion to left-wing politics, Frank uses it to critique contemporary Kansas civic life from the other direction. Subtitled “How conservatives won the heart of America,” Frank’s book is a case study in the relationship between history and the present day. His goal is to explain the transformation of his home state of Kansas from the center of left-wing Populism in the 1890s to a state controlled by conservative, pro-business, right-wing evangelical Christians in the 1990s. Frank’s explanation centers on what he terms “the systematic erasure of the economic,” or put another way, the denial of “the economic basis of social class.” He argues that the great conservative backlash of the last 35 years, especially in Kansas, has been based upon cultural rather than economic issues. How else can you explain why the poorest county in the United States, MacPherson County, Nebraska, backed George W. Bush by a majority of over eighty percent in the 2000 election? -

http://hnn.us/article/6212

[molly bloom]

Only 42% of americans identify with the democratic party. .

Wow, statistics. How many Americans also believe in alien abductions ?

[molly bloom]

Do you know how the Russians successfully weakened America?

Poor quality borscht ?

[molly bloom]

Marxists are feminists

In reality, the old Warsaw Pact countries simply doubled women's work without truly liberating them- in Rumania abortions were illegal too. I find the notion of Khruschev and Brezhnev as feminists hugely entertaining.