Descartes said...

To think thoughts is impossible without anyone or anything to think those thoughts.

I think thoughts. For sure, and I know it because I am thinking them.

Therefore I am.

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This is the only empirical truth that is also a priori, yet experiential.

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Not only scientific facts can't disprove this, but pure logic can`t, either.

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Therefore each individual knows for sure he or she exists, for sure. But the existence of other things is not proven, can`t be proven, beyond any degree of doubt.

The safest to say is that I exist, and I believe/don`t believe that other things outside of myself exists.

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Please note that 'I think therefore I am' does not make a statement of the body, or of the thinking person's any attributes. It only makes a statement of the part of the person which does the thinking.

Science can't do it, religion can't do it, New Age can't do it, you can't do it.

It's one of dem vexing whatchemajiggies of the cosmic order.

It's better to accept it as you see it, or else you will go whacko if you try to connect it to the physical world or even to the metaphysical world.

I like your response.

Put him out to pasture!!

Him whom? Romney, or Reid?

You are funny and absolutely right on: A result of American Public Education, which achieved with you its main goal: it raised you to write, while keeping you unable to see for yourself the clearness or obfusion of your own expressions. And it achieved in your doing these two things without diminishing the impact of either.

Well done.

I don't think the issue is entirely in the income taxes paid.

The issue is this:

Mr. Romney saved on taxes in ways that were legal, but not ethical.

Whether they were ethical or not, is an undecidable question.

One way of deciding is that he wants Americans to eradicate the deficit, and end the wreckless spending by the house and the government.

He neglects to do CHIP IN WITH HIS OWN FUNDS, HOWERVER. He decidedly paid much less tax than other tax payers in his position.

He is saying, "I want you all to give more, take less, but I give less and take more." If this was not his aim, then he would not have resorted to save huge amounts of taxes to be paid by him.

THIS is not unethical, but it is. It is up to each person to decide, whether he or she wants to hear a voter tell him or her to give more, take less, while the leader has a proven track record of taking more and giving less.

This is what is behind the reports, the taxes paid or not paid. Not the actual amount, but the spirit behind the act, behind the tax payment behaviour of mr. Romney.

"We are all equal before the law, except some of us are more equal than others." This is what he is saying, and this is the exact idea that unveiled the covert hypocracy of communists, and other dictatorial systems.

One more step, and the US is a dictatorship, that's what the tax behaviour of Mr. Romney tells me. Not whether he paid much less taxes than he should have, if he pulled his own weight, or else he did not pay taxes at all.

Copies of tax returns are not indicative at all.

What the people need to see are copies of the assessment based on his returns and other sources, and which the tax department sends out as a sort of receipt, with a stamp of approval, or with adjustments in the amounts payable, or with issuances of notices of audits, or with supboneas, or arrest orders.

These are indicative.

I am not saying which Mr. Romani got, because, frankly, I don't know.

What I say instead is that if someone sincerely wants to disclose his income and taxes paid, he needs to publicise his record (or notice) of assessment by the tax department.

More on recent history of Canadian politics:

1. The Liberals ruled for a long time. Eventually they started to thieve, of the national funds; not directly, but the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian version of the Scotland Yard, or of the FBI, or of KGB or of GESTAPO) kept on being reported as investigating some or another cabinet minister of the Liberal government, and the newspapers were getting more and more full of thes articles.

At one point
2. The quasi-Communist party, the NDP got into power; not on the national level, but in a provincial level. That province had been always the strongest, the financially most sound, the industrial backbone of the nation. When the NDP (commies) were finally cleaned out of the house of parliament, after five long years of sitting there, raising taxes of the rich and squandering money to the poor (but not thieving, this is true) the province was on the brink of bankruptcy, it was among the poorest with the highest debts in the nation.

3. So the aforementioned, in my previous post, Conservative party regrouped. It renamed itself the Progressive Conservative party, it got itself a young and dedicated, yet strong and ethical leader. It got the power back from the Liberals, for the only reason that voters were getting fed up with their tax monies being stolen.

4. The media, the leftist media especially, like the government-funded but independently run national tv and radio broadcasting service, tried to eat away at the reputation of the Progressive Conservatives, who actually rechristened itself, in process of borning again, back to Conservative Party. The leftist media even uttered lies, many of them, to undermine the reputation of the Conservatives.

5. So much so that the Government closed its doors to all meetings which were not by law needed to be tabled in public and in front of the media.

6. This gave more power to the media to berate the Conservatives. The media always kept foretelling some national economic or political disaster because the country was being led by the Conservatives "Closed door meetings" was their first item on the berating agenda, and on the conspiracy theories.

7. The ill prophecies were also based on the fact that Canadian government must run on absolute power, by constitution, and the Conservatives at first did not always have majority of seats. So they united in power with the separatist party.

8. The media kept on screaming blue murder, and that holocaust (not Jewish) will arrive if and when the Conservatives gain full majority.

9. Due to the closed-door policy, and to the hard working, non-thieving crew of the new Conservative leader, the country slowly prospered.

10. People woke up to this. They voted them in in the next election in full power.

11. Then a miracle happened: the previously promised demise, doom, defeat and economic despair of the country, as so well and eloquently prophetized by the leftist liberal media, did not happen.

12. The country is now run better run than ever. We have a higher standard of living than any other country. The liberals feared that the rich will get a freeer hand to exploit the poor. Did not happen. The richer are getting richer, true, but the poor are getting richer, too. All very quietly, without fanfares or beating one's own chest in pride by the Conservative party.

13. Because of China and the mismanagement of US economy during G.W. Bush (the insurance crisis, the mortgage crisis, the war crisis, the two tower crisis, the international anger against the US crisis, the trade deficit crisis, the environmental crisis, that were started and brought to full conclusion under G.W. Bush), Canada is suffering financially, too. But while in other countries there is starvation, bitterness, loss of homes, personal wealth, by poor and rich alike, in Canada, the wealth of all increases, the money is improving in value, the national debt is being paid off nicely, the poor are larger in number coz there are not enough jobs, but the poor get more and more money in handouts, so they can sustain a life standard of sorts and they don't have to resort to robbing banks, selling drugs, or sending their daughters into prostitution, in order to have a sensible and tolerable life.

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One of the reasons Canada can do this is because we have a leader who is smart, full of integrity, moral, and runs a tight ship, inasmuch as does not let anyone in his government to steal or cheat.

The other big reason has to do with sheer luck. The luck is that we have oil. We have oodles and oodles of it in Alberta. This very good leader, of the Conservative party, has started his career in Alberta, which is an entire province, and therefore it was possible for him to spread the Albertan oil wealth over the nation, which the previous Liberal government kept trying to do for five decades, and always failed. This new good guy had no problem with it, and had no problem doing it and achieving this feat, even without giving kickback money, special favours, tax exemptions, etc. etc. He is not only a politician, a good politician, but a good diplomat as well, it seems.

Canada used to be a bi-partizan nation in politics, too. Power went back-and-forth as a majority of seats were won, pendulum-like, between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party. Yes, they were named even that, for simplicity's sake.

There was an election called, and the Conservative leader, who headed the majority ruling party before the election, Kim Campbell, said in a campaign speech, "the issues are too complex for the average voter."

The voters responded on election day. The Conservative party got five seats of the nearly three hundred. Kim herself lost her seat. (In the parliament. She was not decapitated in the lower back.) The Liberals won by a huge margin, the NDP, a communist-sorta party got a huge chunk, and for the first time some tiny little parties got enough votes so they got their fees to get on the candidates' list on the ticket reinbursed. (There is a law for that.)

To say that the facts do not have to do anything with politics may be the truest of statements, but you can't anger the voters with such obvious and banal, yet insulting truths.

I very much agree with jacktrades. He is even succinct, beyond beying just wise.

This is too true.

You are of the Nancy Reagan generation. "Just say 'no'." True blue. Literally.

I loved about four or five women in my entire life. I never had sex with any one of them, because fate or their view of me kept us apart.

I had sex with lots of women. I did not love any one of them.

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To wit: I never said "I love you" to anyone. Ever. Unless I meant it. It is not an expression I throw about lightly. In fact, every time I said it (which is not many) I was fearing of God's smite, because I feared that maybe I am lying. Is my love for this woman deep and sincere enough to warrant the sentence to be uttered?

The guilt was eating into me each time I said it.

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To wit: your choice to only have sex with a woman you love, is your personal choice.

Your choice to say "I love you" to a woman only if you love her is a social choice. It has implications beyond you, so you are wise in deciding to use this phrase only when it applies.

Your choice to have no sex with women unless you love them is again a personal choice, and it's a risky one. Very risky, because out of 100 people only about 2 get married to somebody they love. The other 98 get married because their clocks are ticking (mainly women) and because they don't want to spell their seed on the ground (mainly men). Many marry for money, or for unifying political ties (not international or natioal politics, but little family-feud politics). Many marry for looks, for sex, for money, for the promise of a good life, for ease and convenience for not having to think about it, for family pressures, for fitting in would be impossible without it, for having children without it would be difficult and stigmatized (this should be first in my list, really), for career moves, for religious calling, (go forth and mulitiply is a command, almost), etc. etc.

Two out of a hundred marry because they love each other, and for no other reason.

Even the forty of the hundred who marry maybe for love, are unsure of the love. They know they think they are in love, but when they look deep down inside their own souls, they are in doubt already.

So it's okay to hold out for love before you love, but be careful, coz the math is very much against you.

If you still insist, then I wish you the best of luck, and may please God help you in your quest.

This is patently incomprehensible.

You must try to use proper English, inasmuch as spell words out in their totality according to how they are spelled, and please use proper grammar as established by the consensus of all people who speak and communicate in English.

That'd be a good first start to get your ideas across.

What you have there is a puzzle. First we have to work out what each abbreviation means; then we have to establish how the words fit in the sentences you write for their functionality as per syntax; then we have to look for the meaning.

You are removing your message from comprehension by others over several layers of incredibly useless and purposeless obfuscations.

This is not conducive to even wanting to look at your posts.

Man up and spell like a man.

That's where my username comes from. Everything is in a state of flux, wux, and every opinion is a slippery eel. Slippery like wax, wux.

Share-a-hug, we are scared of you, because you boast you are strong, yet you come across as whiny on the forums. You state you do something, like bowling, and get defensive when someone believes you. You state you value honesty the most, and yet I never know what to beleive (like you like bowling or not, you are whiny or not, you are strong or not, you are playful as a kitten or not). I see a lot of things in you and their opposites, and these are things that are usually mutually exclusive.

I am scared because you keep asking "why", "why", "why", like why did this man stand you up, why did that man never call, why did this man put you down for your bowling, why did that man not understand that you bowl twice a year, not as a bowling-addict...

I would be scared of you. Yes, because you are like a mirage: you show something of yourself, I'd reach for that something, and my hands would go through the mirage as if through air, and the mirage would already turn itself into an image of something quite different.

You scare men because you can't see that you only scare some men. You scare one or two men, and you ask us why do you scare men. You are stood up by one or two men, and you ask us why men stand women up. One or two men don't call you, and you ask us why men don't call after a while, when they already shown interest.

This is a pattern in which your hurt is multiplied in magnitude in your perception, and we try to help, sometimes, when you ask. But you at the same time know men who don't stand you up, who keep calling, who are not scared. So... honestly, you see the negative in men. You accept the good of men as if it were the most natural thing in the world, but the unflattering behaviour by men makes you wonder.

It's not you, that two out of ten don't call, or two out of a hundred don't show. These happen to everyone. The reason for which you notice them so keenly and can't get over how that can happen, is what scares men.

You scare men because these are signs, showing the men there is zero tolerance for error for people in your life.

This is just my view. I am not agaisnt you, or against your kind. I am just explaining why I am scared of women who are like you.

It's really disheartening for a man to hear a woman say, "I don't get caught up onthe small stuff" when you are standing stark naked right in front of her.

But that's just me.

I hear you. When you see that, esp. when the man is devoted to her and apparently very much in love, people scratch their heads, and go to look up Schroedinger's cat in a box experiment on google to make sense of it.

I have seen three instances of such couples. A man, tall, very strongly built, but slim, big bones, signewie muscles, all hair on his head, and a deep baritone, deep tan, lived in a huge old farmhouse in the outskirts of town, handed down to him generations of his family. He was a stock broker or a real estate developer, or something.

He was so good looking, such a good cook, such a nice man, that you'd think he was gay.

But he wasn't. He dated a woman, who was squat, short, round, and a very, very nice person. She had spent her life in a career with the civil service, she was a very high ranking officer there. Better than assistant to a minister, or something. She made policy, which is a mysterious thing to do at a job, but she commanded an army of statisticians, policy analysts, political scientists, and the like.

They got married. Then they skipped town.

We all met at a Bridge club.

You did not know what to say when you saw them. He was head over heals into her, and she took it gracefully and like a lady.

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So all you good looking, tall, erudite, high-echelon, high-borne, power-player, gubernatorial, classy, smart, intelligent, very rich women, take note please of the above, and then take a good, hard, long look at me again.

Thank you, Bravalady.

I got the entire idea of "proof" the other day, in a flash of insight.

Some industries have trade unions, and they always bicker over money -- the company against the unions.

Many times the company says, "We just don't have the money or the income or the potential future income to give you more pay."

These are usually said in sad economic times, so they are believable. To me, at least, the guy who watches the news and interviews on TV.

But is it really true. I don't know. Why do the unions never believe that line, and they completely dismiss it? Because they don't know if it's true, but they know they could know whether the company is really squeezed financially, if the company ever let them see the books.

But the companies never allow the unions to see the books.

So the statement "we don't have the money" is empty, meaningless. It may sway people emotionally, only emotionally.

If the negotiation is to consider the financial matters, then the books must be shown, that's the long and short of it.

So there are many books private people can open and show and look at, not just financial stuff.

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In fact, interpersonal life and living in society hinges a lot on trust. Trust must be given in any transaction, no matter what. But the risk of trusting the other can be minimized, and hardly ever does anyone take the trouble to check all the facts that CAN be checked. Banks do, when you apply for a loan, and everyone hates banks.

Maybe that's why it's not a popularly accepted practice in private matters. This would show eloquently, "I don't trust you, but I have to." We can't say that, we are a hypocritical species. So we run risks, because of our own weakness of trying to run on our own hypocritical values. (Not you, Sharia-A-Hug, specifically; I am talking about the entire human race, not you specifically here.)

Therefore people get stood up or dropped and never talked to again with no advance notice.

Now... that's a question that would stop even Socrates, I would think.

But to be fair and to show I've given the proper and respectful consideration to your question, the result I came up with is there are 21 douchebags here. Plus or minus 583.

She should date the Invisible Man, that's her only hope for the kids to have their body mass index in the normal range.

For all anyone knows, she already might be.

Same here. I am fat, ugly, short, old and poor, and yet I like willowy, tall women, with billowing blonde hair or falling platinum blondes. I like to meet them on their way down as they fall, they are easier to bag them that way than when they are shooting up. I mean like a star!! A shooting star!!

Wait... that does not clarify anything, if I have any idea what goes on in Hollywood parties.

So forget the simile.

All I am trying to say is that I am fat, ugly and goonish, and finally I understand Bravalady, why she has historically been turning me down (we are in our fifties, which is like a "history" lesson to a lot of the young these days) and it is not at all with bitterness, but with resigned understanging and giving a final sigh of much-awaited cutting of tension that I now come to accept the inevitable that I would have handled the same way as she is doing, if I were her and she were me, and vice versa.

I mean to say that it's not angering me that she finally let me know, here, albeit in a covert way, why she can't accept my advances. (These are not royalty advances like a publisher pays to its contracted writer.) It is rather answering a question that has been bothering me, and now that I know the answer, I can relax.

Truth is knowledge, which can hurt, but it always liberates. Whether it berates or not, it always does it with a li.

Well, there you have it, OP. What's goose for one lover, is gander for the other. One woman's treasure is another woman's trash, and same for men; plus vice versa.

OKay, Jeanniebeans, can you please tell me if do I look like anybody, other than a grossly overweight tennis ball, wearing a dark shirt and a dark mind?