BALTIMORE – Three Baltimore firefighters were injured Tuesday afternoon after witnesses saw lightning strike a West Baltimore church steeple, igniting a four-alarm blaze Tuesday afternoon, fire officials said. Fire Chief William J. Goodwin Jr. said the firefighters received minor injuries while battling the blaze at First Mount Olive Freewill Baptist Church. The fire started about 3 p.m. after nearby residents saw lightning strike the steeple, he said. “Once the fire involves the steeple, it’s pretty much a total loss of the building,” Goodwin said in an afternoon news conference. The church’s steeple collapsed early in the fire, forcing firefighters to flee. Goodwin said the building was a total loss.
OK but really. What do you theink SOME people would say if lightning struck American Atheists HQ?
ren
you were more of a citizen in 1 day then his boy ever has been.
build more prisons for the dregs those two in conn.should be shot.i have no problem with you or bernada not being nationalist like me. i know you served in balkans and i respect you service so i hope you understand that we nationalist are determined to not let this country end like yugoslavia.
reason,
I would argue that it was nationalism that tore Yugoslavia apart. Josip Tito was a brutal dictator that kept a loose federation of states together with an iron fist.
Croats, Serbs and Bosnians are all Slavs. Blood relatives, all of them. Yugoslavia translates into ‘land of the southern Slavs’. Croats, however are RCC, Serbs are Eastern Orthodox, and Bosnians are (mostly) Muslims.
It wasn’t until Tito died and Milosovich came to power that things started to go south. The spark that set off the powderkeg was a speech Milosovich gave at Kosovo Polje (Field of Blackbirds) in which he argued that the Serbs were the one true Slavs, and the Croats and Muslims were second class citizens. This lead to a disintegration of their parliment and the secession of first Slovenia, then Croatia and finally Bosnia-Herzegovina. The worst atrocities in Europe since WWII ensued.
America is a lot like the Former Yugoslavian Republic (FYR). We are not a homogenous society. I am afraid that with the rise of nationalism in this country, we could end up fractured the same way the FYR came apart. One group pitted against another. Protestant V Catholic. Black V White. Conservative V Liberal. I don’t know upon which lines we would separate, but I am sure it would be ugly.
reason, I don’t particularly care if Tri bent the rules to come and stay in the U.S. Six years on a non-immigrant visa is a bit long. I object to his then coming down on other immigrants with his holier-than-thou attitude.
If I were in his shoes, I would shut up about it.
As to “disrespect the law”, do you obey all the laws, every single one of them? Laws are not the holy grail. Sometimes to be even a loyal citizen you need to break some.
The northerners who organized the underground railroad to help escaping slaves for example. I consider John Brown to be a loyal citizen too.
Immigration and trade laws are made by big corporate lobbyists who design them for their own benefit. There is nothing particularly moral about them. Aren’t businesses breaking the law in hiring undocumented immigrants? They do so because it is in their economic interests.
I already mentioned NAFTA with gives more “rights” to goods to cross borders than it does to people. But in fact, it may happen that the corporate lobbyists will soon find it in their interest to allow open immigration from Mexico and Canada.
American writer Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary defined “boundary” thus: In politics, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.
Of course with Bush’s Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act, our rights are more imaginary than ever.
Ren, your comments on prisons and drug laws are well taken. At the end of the 70′s, there were about 600,000 or so people in jail, now there are about 2.2 million. California now spends more on prisons than on higher education.
Does anyone think were are safer and better off than 30 years ago?
reason,
I do not support the death penalty because it is not meted out fairly. If it were, I would not have a problem with it, but we both know the poorer you are and the darker your skin color, the more likely you are to be executed. I say execute EVERYONE convicted of 1st degree murder, without exception, and I would consider changing my mind.
As for building more prisons; I say we let out all the people that have no business being there in the first place, and we can shut down half our prisons and still have room to keep the ones that are a danger to society, locked away forever.
Bernarda,
WOW! I’m going to have to chew on that one for a while. I’m not sure what to think. I don’t exactly disagree with you. Just don’t know if I can bring myself to go that far.
Our founding fathers overthrew their government, and we call them patriots. On the same token, Timothy Mcveigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Bldg, for political reasons. (Response to the raid on the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, TX) Just like John Brown, Mcveigh was executed by the federal government. Loyal citizen? Just not ready to go there.
One more thing about prisons. If we decide that drugs should remain illegal, then perhaps we should consider outlawing tobacco and alcohol. Both cause WAY more harm each year than all other illicit drugs combined. 450,000 tobacco deaths every year in the U.S. alone, and almost 50,000 alcohol related deaths, 35,000 of which are on our highways. Don’t even get me started on the amount of domestic violence alcohol causes each year. If we do that, we would have to build 5 times the number of prisons we have now. If you cannot justify that, then how can anyone justify throwing pot smokers in jail? A drug that has never caused a single verifiable death.
Excuse me Ren, but I believe that John Brown was executed by the the State of Virginia, not the Federal Government, and for treason against Virginia, not the Fed Gov. If I am mistaken, correct me.
bernarda,
I don’t know. That is interesting, to say the least. I have never heard that before. You know what they say…ass…you…me…I’ll have to look into it. If you find it before me, please feel free to post the link. Should make for great reading. I’m off to look into it now.
bernarda,
You learn something new every day! Thank you for conditioning my mind, if not my body. No, seriously! I would much rather be corrected and be armed with the truth in the future, than to be allowed to continue believing an untruth and looking stupid in the process.
bernada and ren
i am not happy with our trade policy either and i agree that big business calls the shots which is wrong.
bernada i have to say that as a white southerner i find praise for john brown insulting he wanted to start a race war that would have killed countless innocents of both races.
ren why is it right for other nations to breakup but when the south tried to leave our towns were burned an our women raped.seems like a double standard.yankees forced us to stay so now nobody is going to leave america.too late for buyers remorse yankees.inspite of our diff.views i respect the two of you.
reason,
I’m not sure where you got the idea that I think it is okay for other nations to break up. If I alluded to that, let me clarify now.
I think the break-up of the Balkans was a tragedy that need not have happened. I oppose the break-up of Iraq, even though the current boundries were imposed on them at the end of the Ottoman Empire. Breaking Iraq up will lead to further warring between, most notably, the Kurds and the Turks, as well as forcing the Syrians and the Saudis to back their Sunni Bretheren and the Iranians doing the same for the Shia. Can you say regional war?
I was adamantly against our actions in Kosovo, because it would be the equivalent of some country bombing Washington D.C. until we agreed to allow southern California, Arizona and New Mexico to secede and join Mexico.
I hope that clarifies my stance on the subject.
Oh yeah, and one more thing. My mom and dad grew up in Florence, SC. I didn’t grow up there because my father was in the Navy, but all of my immediate ancestors are from that part of the country. My favorite meal in the world is lima beans over rice and fatback with homemade bisquits and SWEETENED, iced tea. Yankee indeed!
Ren
thanks for clearing that up.and i think you are right about iraq.did your see where turkey has 150,000 troops on the border.i can’t believe nobody close to bush didn’t warn him he was opening up pandoras box.i hear that sadr alone has 60,000 milita.the public hears we got 125-50,000 but they don’t understand not everyone one is infantry.at least we know what bushs plan b is ‘give it to the next president’.i hope like heck we don’t get into shooting war with iran.
reason,
I did in fact see all the troops on the Turkey / Iraq border.
This is a pretty long link, so I don’t know if it will work correctly, but it talks about Saudi Arabia’s increasing involvement in Iraq. Something like 48% of the Suicide Bombers there are from the KSA. In my opinion, they are much more of a detriment to our soldier’s well being, than is Iran.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/world/middleeast/27saudi.html?ei=5065&en=869eb184561c74d8&ex=1186113600&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print
I’m not so sure they didn’t. I think he was just too pig-headed to listen. He was so…scratch that. He IS so certain that he is doing the work of the lord, that he couldn’t possibly go wrong. After all, with God, all things are possible. You don’t suppose the Iraqis have chariots made of iron, do you?
As for a war with Iran? Whatever it is that Atheists do in lieu of praying, we should all be doing right now. A war with Iran would make Iraq look like Grenada.
reason, you talk about possible “innocent victims” if a race war started? What about the 200 years of slavery in the South, and even in the North? All those people were truly innocent victims, and we are supposed to feel sorry for White Southern slavers?
Before African slavery, the South, particularly South Carolina practiced Indian slavery. They even exported Indian slaves to the Caribbean.
I have no sympathy for them. Take Nat Turner much later.
So Nat Turner killed a few dozen white Southerners, how does that compare with the 200 years of slavery? I admit that Turner was an ambiguous figure in that he emulated white xians and thought that he was receiving messages from god commanding his actions.
But even without the visions and religious influence, what choice did he have? The Allies killed a fair number of German civilians during the war too.