AwgustaDawg

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The OP raised an interesting idea, intentionally or not. Is there such a thing as human rights apart from a cultural agreement. Meaning, did God establish human rights that he will judge us based on (among other things)? I'm not sure I have a confident answer. I very much believe God established morality, but I don't think "human rights" is a special moral category. Maybe it is. Definitely gives me something to think about.

Like, can I imagine a society that is godly where you don't have the right to speak in public at all? Everyone has to be silent in public spaces. It's a weird scenario, but it tests the limits of what I think about human rights and how they relate to God and general morality.

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Morality has naught to do with God or religion. It is possible for a person to have the highest level of moral consciousness and never heard of a God. It is pretty normal in fact.


As far as I know an individual can be the meanest, non-caring cruel bastard that ever shat between a pair of brogans and seek redemption, mean it, and in almost all theological theories be redeemed by any number of Gods. If that is so then whatever Gods there may be they are completely unconcerned about the day to day doings of man and only about man asking for redemption. Therefore morality and human rights or any right for that matter source is not a god but the person or group with the power to strip another or a another group of whatever rights they may have been granted or allowed by the more powerful group. Test this theory in the United States. Go into a crowded theater that is not on fire, start hollering it is on fire and the government may possibly chastise you for expressing your right to free speech....which you have inherently through no permission from anyone, it is the consequences of you exercising it that will prove problematic. I have the right to shoot and kill someone because I do not like their looks...if the person can't stop me and no one else does I granted myself the right to strip that person of their right to their self. I will most likely find that the government strips me or whatever rights they have allowed me. God will most likely be indifferent in the matter unless I ask for forgiveness and mean it and then they will forgive my sin.

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Many a righteous follower of God has seen her rights stripped away,


Not the ones endowed by God.

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from government


It sounds like this is who you believe grants you your rights.

Certainly their is no issue with them taking them away in your view.

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Whether I have issues with it or not is about as germane as my having issue with grass being mostly green. It is indeed green so my opinion on the matter is of very low value....and government either grants rights or takes them away, and there is not a lot an individual can do either way other than bitch about and hope for the best. This is simply a fact of life my friend, regardless of God's role man can strip away the rights of one another on a whim and God has never done a damned thing to stand in the way that we are aware of....and certainly ain't done a damned thing most of the time. I know you like to imagine yourself as some sort of righteous, self reliant rugged individual but any right you enjoy is subject to the whim of the government. You may be rewarded in heaven, the jury is out, but here on earth you are a subject whose very existence is only possible because the government hasn't decided you no longer should....

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Wow. And this is a Christian take?

I certainly care. I obviously am in no position to do anything about it, and holding up a sign in the street is just a self-centered attention grab.

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You are doing something about it....you care. That means you may be less likely to support the abuser financially. It means you may vote for a politician in this country who is in a position to do something about it. I get it that we feel helpless and there's nothing we can do but our being aware and concerned is something and multiply that times millions it becomes a big something.

Hell he will be probably be the head of ICE next week....

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It’s the opposite. The US produces about the same number of residency trained physicians as we did in 2000, even though our population has increased. We are in a severe supply demand inversion, and have a severe physician shortage that cuts across all specialties. The only thing keeping prices and costs from reacting accordingly is the artificial cap on reimbursement placed by CMS and, secondarily, private insurance. Doctors have to participate in neither. As soon as enough physicians stop participating in these programs and simply charge a fee for their services, costs will skyrocket. I think it happens in the next 5 years.

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There is a fix for that....kick the AMA and the states in the arse and allow nurses and PAs to do things that do not require an MD. Like an appointment every 90 days for a patient on blood pressure meds that have worked for 20 years at the same dosage. Also simply charging a fee for their services will result in patients paying at the point of sell instead of the fraudulent billing to goes on now where they charge for all manner of shite they did not do and in the rare even they get caught they say "oopsy" and everything is forgiven. Given that the industry is over ran with incompetency it would be a fresh start to get rid of them all and start all over again with medicine men.

My 86 year old father goes to about 3 appointments a week. Different doctors, different practices. They prescribe all manner of shite, do all manner of tests, and nothing is ever going to change the fact that the man is 86 years old and overweight and diabetic. But they are constantly conjuring up hope that they have a cure for being 86 years old. He has NEVER complained of knee pain....there is no medical indication that he has any condition which would cause knee pain. He has been scheduled for knee replacement surgery 4 times in the last 9 years. By 4 different doctors and a host of specialists in those practices. Again, none has ever said it would help his knee pain because he has NEVER complained of knee pain and has never been diagnosed with any condition which would cause his knees to be painful. This is just one of many such surgeries and treatments and scams they have tried to rope this poor bastard into. He had cryotherapy for prostate cancer and it destroyed hisablity to maintain bladder control. He was sent to a pain management clinic for bladder spams....for 3 years the poor bastard went and had injections in his spine. For 3 years we asked when he might expect some relief from his bladder spasms. For 3 years a HOST of medical professionals suggested it might be any day. Finally we took him to this clinic and there was a new doctor, fresh from Pakistan, there and I asked him when he might expect some relief from bladder spasms. He said he had no idea, he was being treated for sciatica there and had been for 3 years....a condition he never complained of, was not every diagnosed with, has not been diagnosed with. Finally the ordering physician admitted they had had gotten their wires crossed and he was originally sent to the clinic for pain management via medication....opioids...to which the clinic said they had never been in the business of prescribing and ALL they did was lumbar steroid injections. This clinic was on the verge of ordering a visit to an orthpedic surgeon for sciatica and were very put out when he refused that because his back was fine. This is just a few of the issues the morons have done. It is not isolated, every doctor he has been to from Georgia to Washington State and New Mexico were just as incompetent....it is the entirety of the industry....they spend about 5 minutes with patients, listen to nothing the patient or the family says and can not keep the patients straight in their head. How they do not kill more people is a fricking miracle and one that proves about half if not more of what they do is needless.

Almost ALL GS employees, what many call federal employees (there are several different schedules of employees depending on agency), are employed in some type of oversight roll which exists to provide some control over government contractors and other government agencies. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% of federal positions exist as some form of oversight. Things like looking at the O rings used in military aircraft to ensure they meet specifications and reviewing invoices and payroll records to ensure tax payers ain't being robbed. These are the positions that are losing people....people who earn a living basically keeping contractors and government agencies from robbing taxpayers. They have been woefully understaffed and underpaid for years and now they are vilified and treated like parasites. This is not by accident. If your goal is to steal from the taxpayer the easiest way to avoid detection is to eliminate the poor bastard making $80k a year, who has the job because he served in the military and was qualified, so he can't identify you for the miscreant you are. This is a defunding of the police on a GRAND SCALE and it is intentional. Government contractors love a big old bloated federal contract even when it has oversight provisions....they love that same contract without any such provision infinitely more.

I worked on a federal project 5 years ago which had been ongoing 18 years then at somewhere around $2 billion per year. Over that 18 year span 4 different federal contractors, consisting of a patnership of 3-6 of the biggest names in federal design / build firms...HUGE, massive and well known companies....and ever last one of them had been sued multiple times by that project for false billing....to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars a year. The government overseers identified this fraud immediately, it took the justice department many years each time to bring the cases and settle them because these massive contractors are as connected politically as any entity could possibly be. At the end of the day the GS11 -15 federal employers did their job...identified the fraud....the problem arose when the contractor whined. The elected officials listened. The people losing their jobs are the GS11 - 15, not the elected officials and not the contractor execs. Without the people who are losing their jobs the fraud would have gone undetected for years. Thats why they villify those people....they keep them from stealing as much as they want....

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So long as this country uses a fee for service payment system which is currently the most expensive system in the world (In 2023, the U.S. spent $13,432 per person, over $3,700 more than the next highest nation (Switzerland) the U.S. STILL has lower life expectancy and higher rates of chronic diseases compared to peer countries.

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This is $3700 more per person for health care. That $3700 does not include the significantly lower insurance premiums on all lines of insurance in other nations because the medical portion, and the most expensive by far, is already covered. In the US we have health insurance AND every other line of insurance, business and personal, has a significant amount of costs associated with medical costs. It also does not include collections efforts that cost billions every year in the US and do not exist anywhere else on the planet. It also does not include the lack of litigation in those nations which seek medical expenses, a massive part of the tort industry in the US. But we wrongly believe that people in Germany wait months for care (they do not, I know from first hand experience that its FAR easier in Germany, with basic health care, to see ANY physician, including dentists and optometrists, than it is in the US) and suffer from irrational fears about "slippery slopes" and it allows the insurance, legal and medical industris to reach into our wallet and remove whatever they see fit. But we ain't on a "slippery slope" other than the one associated with bankruptcy and early death due to inadequate access to healthcare.

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only if Kentucky allows my marriage license (the SAVE Act doesn't state they can at this point) as a proof of a name change.

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This is also not a matter of oversite. The bills sponsors are actively seeking to disenfranchise as many women as possible due to long term trends in voting tendencies among women, especially college educated professional women who are turning away from the party of the bills sponsors in waves.

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ETA: After a quick google search only Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington show the citizenship on the Real ID at this point.

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This is not part of those ID cards being real ID compliant...they are "Enhanced Drivers Licenses" which allow the holder to enter a foreign country by land....in the case of the states which use them it is mainly for entry in Canada but I am pretty certain it will also work into Mexico. This part of the Sava Act is actually one of the main reasons it may not work out the way the sponsors think it will. All of these are pretty solid blue states and Michigan is pretty damned purple. No one in those states will have to do anything to vote. This is not the case in EVERY red state with real ID compliant ID currently.

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No it isn't

A valid state-issued ID is acceptable. We have already moved to real ID, which covers all other concerns from your post, because of what it takes to obtain a real ID. Everything else you posted is hyperbole to scare people into not supporting the bill so that illegals can vote.

If you have a valid birth certificate, which everyone should have, you can get a real ID.

Stop spreading lies.

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This is directly from the bill:

“(1) A form of identification issued consistent with the requirements of the REAL ID Act of 2005[u] that indicates[/u] the applicant is a citizen of the United States.

This document does not currently exist in the United States. Real ID compliant ID cards do not indicate the applicant is a citizen of the United States.

Hell, they didn't even try to obscure this requirement in legalese because they knew full well the majority of people who would support the bill would never understand what this provision means because they are dumb enough to think this bill is a necessity LOL....

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This just isn't true. There are many options to confirm you are a citizen. Stop believing the lies and hyperbole and do your own research

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This is true my friend. Yes, there is language in the bill that would make alternate forms of ID acceptable. Those forms of ID do not exist for the most part currently...notice in your wiki link the phrase "indicates US citizenship". Currently those do not exist anywhere. The individual states issuing those will have to decide if they will include that information. Those hoping to use such ID will HAVE to have a passport or an acceptable photo ID and a birth certificate to obtain them if the state they live in decides to offer them. They will have to also go through the effort. The ONLY currently acceptable form of stand alone ID that would meet the criteria in the bill that is available to ALL citizens is a passport.

I think the bill is a good idea. The damage that has been done to election credibility in the greatest nation on earth by people who suffer from irrational fear and a serious lack of basic math competence is extensive. When some unforeseen event, like some 35 million people losing their collective minds and ability to add, damages an institution as important as elections are in a republic it is often necessary to over correct to stop the bleeding. It is unfortunate we have gotten there but a small minority of truly stupid people have allowed their stupidity to gravely damage this nation and corrections must be made. the data suggests that it is not a slam dunk that the bill works the way those 35 million idiots think it will, anymore than a roving band of masked thugs roaming about the nation violating the civil rights of people left and right has been unifying as they thought it would. The data suggests that it will make the educated and those who earn more money more likely to possess the needed documents and those people tend to vote against those 35 million people....that trend is about 10 years old and growing with each passing day. I am fully on board with a law that makes idiots both comfortable and less important in elections.