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Doctor Steuss

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  1. It's disheartening how many people confuse a lack of ethics and morals for an excess of intellect. Although, I guess there is a kind of "genius" in doing things that no person with ethics and morals would ever dare to do. Like stealing from charities, or being involved in an insurance scheme to profit off of the death of sick Jewish kids, or engaging in rampant wage and materials theft. I hope I never find myself compelled to defend fealty to an adjudicated predator with a documented history of walking in on kids getting dressed that's been praised by the leadership of the American Nazi Party, and KKK. Viewing the first-past-the-post induced duopoly as a team sport with unwavering party loyalty is so hard for me to wrap my head (and heart) around.
  2. I just sang it in my noggin around 60 BPM, and I died a little bit inside.
  3. That's so cool. If you are able to (and wouldn't mind), would you be willing to share a picture of it?
  4. I dunno, this might actually get me in a pew. Hopefully they don't end up tempo-ing down into a funeral dirge in the hymnal.
  5. If nothing else, there are some aspects of this thread that may help people who have difficulty understanding, or relating to, people who are transgendered. It’s kind of like how some people internally identify as Christian, but outwardly, there’s nothing that would allow someone to make the determination that they follow Christ. Instead, people have to rely on the person's adoption of social religion-affirming cues. You have to rely on the social cues of their religion-affirming care to determine that their inner identity is Christian because outwardly, everything points in the opposite direction. I believe that trans-religion people deserve our love and support.
  6. My son almost always has a Hebrew Chai necklace on, and Hamsa bracelet. For a while, I wore a Vegvisir bracelet whenever I was feeling "lost." It's awesome what a little bit of jewelry can do to help remind and/or comfort us. Raised LDS, I always had a bit of religious/cultural envy for robust iconography.
  7. Last time, it raised the cost of U.S. intermediate goods 10-30%, a reduction in real income in the U.S. of $1.4 billion every month in deadweight losses, cost consumers an additional $3.2 billion in added taxes, caused a net loss of American jobs in the manufacturing sector, resulted in foregone American stock market capitalization of at least $5 trillion dollars (i.e. people's 401k accounts), reduced our exports, decreased the average real household income of Americans, created a trade vacuum that was filled by other countries which the US has never regained, and necessitated billions of socialist bailouts of our agricultural industry. Waiting for results is not a bad idea, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't allow ourselves to make predictions based on what has already happened once before.
  8. Is it really all that much more absurd than ICE agents routinely harassing Native Americans? That absurdity is already happening on a daily basis. While Christianity is definitely privileged, I don't know that the Spanish language branches of the LDS Church are 100% immune from being drawn outside of the circle of protections that Christian Nationalism currently grants.
  9. Thank you for this key bit of information. I was wondering how DOGE was able to get $6.75 million apportioned to them for "unanticipated needs," on top of the $750,000 they had already had apportioned. Handful of guys working for a few weeks... $7.5 million sounds super efficient and not wasteful or corrupt at all. So glad they stopped funding that was providing medical care to over 600,000 pregnant women with AIDS, to prevent them from giving HIV to their babies. About a million dollars for each of them for a few weeks' work sounds very reasonable.
  10. This is a pretty cool magic trick, since in 2023, the Taliban banned condoms and birth control. Pealing back the obvious shock-factor snarling of this by the so-called "Chairman," I want to congratulate him on his "discovery" that the US provides family planning tools in war-torn and other destabilized areas. Particularly where sexual assault is prevalent, and women are treated as lesser-than. That's something that no one knew... except for, y'know everyone with minimal media literacy. "America gave millions so terrorists can have sex" sounds a lot better than "America helped women who were victims of sexual assault in war-torn areas, and in places where spousal rape is legal, to have the tools to decide for themselves if they want to have a child." Funds for these things aren't just for condoms. Are you ready for your fainting couch? They're also for pharmaceutical abortion pills. Hopefully the next thing we can all feign outrage over is all of the money we were wasting preventing babies from getting AIDS. The 90-day freeze, based on a report from amfAR, will result in approximately 137,987 babies being born with HIV that otherwise wouldn't have. So very pro-life. Curiously, none of the waste identified is funds that the richest man in the world uses for his pet project to go into space. Money for outer space? Neeto. Money to stop babies from getting AIDS? Stop being so wasteful!!!!
  11. Paying over $300,000 per flight for the theatrics of using a C-17, and treating Colombian deportees so abhorrently that their country of origin risks a trade war: Meh. Paying $47,000 to a Colombian university that they use for the production of an opera. Aiiieeeeeeeeeeee!!!!
  12. I believe the CARES Act disbursed directly to Universities and schools, who were then in charge of how the funds were used from there. So unless a school accepted the funds, individual students couldn't utilize them in any way. It sounds like the BYUs essentially self-funded their own emergency aid for students during the pandemic. Good point about FAFSA. Hadn't thought of that.
  13. As a side note (and some may find this interesting -- I did), the Church seems to refuse federal funds, even when they've been pre-allocated. Deseret News Article on BYU's Decision PDF DIRECT DOWNLOAD WARNING - Department of Education Allocations
  14. I apologize for not answering all of the questions, but here are my opinions/thoughts on the first 5. If the Church needed the funding, yes. For example, if the Bishop’s storehouses were to open themselves as foodbanks for communities as a whole, or were to partner with something like ThreeSquare, I think it would be entirely reasonable to request government grants to help offset those costs. Direct food programs (especially those that are staffed primarily with volunteers) are always going to be drastically more efficient (and often more healthy) than food voucher type programs. Food voucher type programs definitely have advantages, especially ones that utilize a debit type card that helps remove a lot of the stigma associated with food insecurity. Absolutely. Many churches have ready-built communities that are uniquely built to serve and meet needs. They also generally have a solid base of repeat volunteers (rather than a round-robin of volunteers that require constant training and oversight). I’ve worked with quite a few different churches here in Vegas. One is a ministry that helps with refugees. Church members essentially “adopt” refugee families to help them integrate and succeed. They receive some government grants to help offset the costs associated with things like housing. The rest comes from church member’s donations. The other is a church that helps foster kids, and primarily focuses on reuniting families. Kind of the same thing as refugees. Church members “adopt” parents, help them get jobs, substance abuse counseling, housing, therapy, etc., as well as foster the children with a Church family to help facilitate more regular contact and visits with bio-parents. Others I have had the honor of working with provide food to the unhoused, help with various shelters, support victims of abuse, provide tutoring services to impoverished children, and a myriad of other incredible things. These churches (at least the ones I have worked with) are able to do this much more effectively, and efficiently than any government agency would be able to, in my opinion. They absolutely should be able to request grants and funding to help them offset their costs. Honestly, I don’t know. I guess however much is needed to ensure it isn’t solely an evangelizing tactic, and that there aren’t religious strings attached to the help/aid. Also to make sure the funds are actually going to what they claim they are going for in the grant applications. In some cases, yes. In others, no. If they are meeting a legitimate need that the government is unable to provide more effectively, yes.
  15. Individually. Interesting. Maybe it was just a "previous bishop did this, so that must be the way it's done." Besides being asked as individuals sexually explicit questions regularly in individual meetings with the bishop, we also had group youth meetings to talk specifically about masturbation. When I broke the law of chastity as a teenager, the bishop had me tell him in exact detail everything my girlfriend and I did. He kept asking for more and more details, and after it all, insisted that there were more details I needed to tell him, or else I could never be forgiven. We had several meetings during the "repentance process" where I would have to tell him in exact detail again everything we had done. My girlfriend experienced the same thing with her bishop (different ward, same stake). I didn't think anything of it at the time because every single bishop we had as youth did it, as well as at least one stake president. This was Las Vegas in the 1990s. It wasn't until I was an adult (and fairly recently) I began to understand just how inappropriate this was, and how it made all of us susceptible to being abused by someone in authority. ETA: To be clear, I don't think this was a form of grooming from the Bishop's I had. I have no reason to think they were doing this for their own sexual gratification. I think it was a "this is just the way I experienced it, so this must be the way it's done" type thing. I have no ill feelings towards them.
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