And you need some big floppy ears so MAD magazine can do an honest parody of you shortly after or during the election.

Actually... if anyone here was a Mingle2 patient (client, funny farm resident) last September-November, I DID run for President... right here on Mingle2.

I noticed early on, when there were about ten losers on both sides of the Parties (ten Republican losers and ten Democrat losers) that we had ZERO options for a decent leader for the country... so... I stepped up to bat, acknowledging that I could DEFINITELY do a better job than any of the losers they had fighting it out in the primaries...

Then of course we were given two losers to vote for in November...

...so, I wrote in my own name when I turned in my ballot.

oh man, I remember these... you hold like a fob, and it was connected to two cords. One the end of each cord was a plastic ball. The idea was to make an up and down motion to make them smack together.

Howbeit they usually beat the living hell out of your forearm when first learning how to use them. And as kids got more adventuerous, they could be tossed at someone if you wanted to pretend they were Australian Bolos...

I'm, sure some "mom friendly" human service group outlawed those suckers for good...

My parents still have a set of these in their camper, they were called "Jarts" (the brand they have)

still got my Lite-Brite, too... with all the little bulbs you plug in over a black paint-by-numbers type scheme

Tinker Toys

..don't have these anymore, probably wore them slap out... I remember playing with these at Grandma's house... and I was very little... probably less than 10 years old or littler

The "Mouse Trap" game.

I still got mine from the 1960s, with all the intricate parts you put together as you play.

Another type of Hot Wheels cars I had were called "Sizzlers" they were actually little battery-powered, rechargeable race cars that were the same size as the regular Hot Wheels cars.

I had a race set for the Sizzlers called a "Fat Track". So did two other of my friends in the old neighborhood, and we could link all the track we had together and make one huge, long triple-wide race track.

I still have all of my regular Hot Wheels track. Probably several dozen of the yellow 2-foot pieces, curves, the "power boosters" which were the battery-powered plastic houses that set in-line with the track and launched the die cast cars with internal sponge rubber rotating motors.

I actually still have all of my toys from when I was a boy in the 1960s. My parents never threw anything away. I also have several of the full-sized Tonka trucks, a Tyco AMF electric slot car race track, a Tyco H-O scale train set, and a ton of board games.

The Verti-Bird flying helicoptoer... mine was the one with the long styrofoam Coast Guard ship, an Astronaut, a life raft, and a spcae capsule... each with a wire loop that was used when you picked each object up and flew them back to the deck of the ship.

I still have it, box and all... probably worth the price of several house payments now.. haha.

And... I'd like to thank whichever one of my relatives stole my 48-car collector case of Hot Wheels cars from my old bedroom at my parents house. As a kid, I always took excellent care of my toys, and some of the cars in that case were worth around $1,000 each or more.

It was probably my brother, he has hated my guts all my life, and wrote me an e-mail pertaining to my always playing with Hot Wheels cars about the time they disappeared.

Hey, I still have my Rock-em Sock-em Robots game...!!

"I'm your Huckleberry."

So... are you stating that you have actually read all of Darwins works?

What page number and chapter of what Darwin book published in what year are you saying promotes eugenics?

Or... did you just pick up some pointers from the Doom Daily (again) ???

After the Doom Daily hyperlink post, you really screwed yourself on any further credibility issues.

I would think the basic instinct to survive would be a motivator behind forming a law on the books making murder illegal.

But I think it takes a certain amount of human reasoning to form a society that is complex enough to have laws. Thus, the root being the thought and reasoning, not just the instinct to survive.

I think I might better label it "human reasoning."

My dog can make a choice to come when I call to her. I would say that is more than instinct alone, that this would be a sign of at least some form of reasoning capability. She knows if she comes, she might get petted on the head, or she might receive a doggie treat. Also, she might not choose to come to me if the tone of my voice is lower or she can detect anger. I would have to say that my dog is able to make a choice.

I think what I could say is that "human reasoning" is more advanced than the other organisms on the planet. (At least the scientists seem to tell us so to keep us feeling good about ourselves... haha)

One day we might figure out it is the dolphins or the whales who are actually the more advanced cognitively.

Murder, rape, stealing, and things that are "against the law" are determined to be in that category because of the ethical system of laws we have in this country (and other countries also have similar things in their legal systems.)

Legal systems develop in a culture as a matter of collective agreements. The human ability to reason chooses to set up a protection for the common good in the form of what we call "laws." Laws are reactionary vessels put in place by a society as a reaction to what most individuals would agree are unacceptible human behaviors.

If there were no ethics, then there would be no laws, and none of these things would be considered illegal or bad. But it is the collective agreement of several members within a society, to set up laws that list and/or name the specifics of criminal activities, etc.

Prosperity as we know it in the American culture does not exist across the entire human population. Actually, a majority of the world's population exists in what we Americans would consider poverty.

There are roughly 300 million people in the United States. There are about 6 billion people on the planet. The U.S. population makes up only 4.3% of the entire world's population.

Of that 4.3% who live in the U.S., only the top 5% of the 300 million who live in the U.S. truly enjoy "wealth". That's only 15 million people who are truly wealthy. Now divide that 15 million people by the 6 billion people who live on Earth.

That comes out to 1/4 of one percent of the world's population are truly wealthy. (Of course to get a better figure, you'd have to include the top wealthiest of the European industrialized nations, and the total European population... but you get the picture...)

Looking at the world through a pair of United States colored glasses, only 1/4 of a percent of the world's population experiences the wealth and properity.

This event took the ability of reason. It did not happen by nature. It happened by major corporations taking over the financial markets and edging out all of the lesser inhabitants. It was a plan struck by the reasoning mind of man, not by a natural occurrance.

Cows do not have the ability of cognitive thought. They do not and cannot formally reason. They cannot choose between right and wrong.

Right and wrong are two ethical choices reserved for humans.

A cat can determine to eat her young, but still, it is not a cognitive thought that motivates her. It is instinct, no more. It is not an ethical choice for the cat to eat her kittens, a cat does not have the ability to reason. Right and wrong demand the ability to reason. Reasoning brains are reserved for humans only. Unless of course you want to re-write the science of psychology all together...

Hmmm... if you are saying it is human nature for a male to protect his wife and children, then it might be assumed a man who abandons his wife and children does so because he has been nurtued in that fashion?

Nature vs. nurture.

Then let us assume women who leave their babies in dumpsters do so because they were nurtured to do so?

I don't agree that it is nature that causes the strong to lead. At the time of the American Revolution there were two philosophical schools of thought. One was that only certain people were born to lead... i.e. the Monarchy... and the other school of thought taken on by the fore-fathers was that all men are created equal.

No one is born strong or weak. We are all equally born infants who crave their mother's milk.

Nature has nothing to do with ethics. Ethics are learned and thus are a trait of nurture, not an in-born natural thing. No one is by nature right and the same, no one by nature is wrong. Right and wrong are cognitive functions of the human brain that require psychological development to achieve.

The atmosphere of a new baby, the culture it is born into, these things mold the ethical structure of that particular human mind.

It is by cognition, thought, and the ability to reason that some figure out how to take or get the advantage on others and pose as "leaders." It is not an in-born, natural state. It is a learned behavior, stemming from the individual's level of nuturing.

Right vs. Wrong is a question of a philosophical term called ethics. Another way to say ethics is "moral philosophy."

Every human culture has agreed upon some form of ethics. The study of ethics does not always include anything about a god or a religion.

Ethics is an indication of a cognitive human mind being able to question the attributes of right and wrong.

Typical philosophical questions might be:

What is right?
What is wrong?

Volumes have been and still can be written on just those two questions.


I had one epiphony while in my undergraduate philosophy class. It dawned on me that ethics is the entire reason mankind cannot make continuous leaps and bounds toward technology. Let me give one brutal example... if medicine were to really make leaps and bounds forward, experimental surgeries would be permitted on live subjects. There are still some experiemental measures that are only allowed on a corpse because of the culture's ethical standards or beliefs. And then, folks have to sign the back of their driver's license in order to donate their body to siecntific cadaver research. If there were no ethics, every kind of experiment that came to mind would be allowable, and technology would then forge passed its creeping state, into a higher level of technological advancement. BUT, ethics holds back technology in that certain experiments are not allowed by those who set the station of ethics in the social organism.

At times, it could be said that ethics actually cripples the human mind and details for human advancement.

Entire wars have been waged on the disagreement of particular ethical systems. We seem to be limiting our thought to western philosophy (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) but many wars have been waged in the Far East and ethical systems for these wars did not necessarily develop because of some god or gods. Not every warrior was a Christian, Jew or Muslim. There is much more to the planet than these few philosophical points.

Ethics seemingly congeals the human society into a set of acceptible norms, but it could also be argued that ethics is the very underlying reason the same society is boxed in at all ends and cannot grow beyond the ethical norms.

Problem is... I could make of list of bad Communist-like qualities for every President for the last 30+ years, both Republican and Democrat...

... the truth is... we have NO leadership in Congress or anywhere else on Capitol Hill... they are all corrupt, and the country is sliding fast down into an un-returnable extinction.

BOTH parties are eltist ultra-rich snobs, and no one that reaches that power level has any way to be "in touch" with their constituencies... the squeaky wheel gets the oil these days, and it is the lobbyists with millions to squeak with that get heard well in advance of "We the People"...

Vote for me, I would be a hell of a lot better President then any of them...