wing2000 said:

Do they though? How much is your wife's company paying to supplement the cost of her coverage? How much would the Federal government pay in a similar Medicare plan? I don't think you know.

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My wife is not old enough for Medicare - so you can remove that from the equation.

The company, if having to pay what the government is paying would be out of business.

RDKirk said:

The medical billing industry, for instance, is a multi-billion dollar industry...and they're just pushing paper mostly _sideways._ The amount of deliberate inefficiency in medical billing is astounding and demoralizing...and we patients are ultimately the ones who pay for it.

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....and all the time we as employees spend tracking medical bills, medical coding, co-pays, deductables, etc. Much of which is on company time....

Michie said:

You can set your own definition of what constitutes slander within the rules of a message board.

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Strawman. . .

I agreed in post #128.

RDKirk said:

The problem is not just with that company and its "couple hundred people," but all the linked insurance infrastructure with all their employees and stockholders.

The medical billing industry, for instance, is a multi-billion dollar industry...and they're just pushing paper mostly _sideways._ The amount of deliberate inefficiency in medical billing is astounding and demoralizing...and we patients are ultimately the ones who pay for it.

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Both Company and Government deal with the same - why is the insurance from the Government so much more?

Always in His Presence said:

A company with a couple hundred people in their employ can offer better plans at lower costs than the government with millions?

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Do they though? How much is your wife's company paying to supplement the cost of her coverage? How much would the Federal government pay in a similar Medicare plan? I don't think you know.

"They shut the government down, they left town and now they're nowhere to be found,"

Lyrics by Hakeem Jeffries

Bob Crowley said:

While I'm at it, I'd suggest you try to do some fitness training in the little spare time you have left. I'm diabetic and while I'm not too bad, I remember a chap I used to pick up as a community transport driver. He was in a wheelchair.

One day he said to me "I'm in this wheel chair because I used to do what you do." I asked him what he was talking about. He said he used to drive a cab, twelve hour days, no exercise, junk food, insufficient sleep and all the rest. He got Diabetes and eventually lost part of both legs. A year or two later he had gone.

I picked up a few diabetic passengers in wheelchairs like him, and I often found that after another couple of years they'd died due to diabetic complications.

So try to look after your health, even though you haven't got much time for yourself.

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While I REFUSE to do the food delivery service in certain areas. (Galveston anywhere near The Strand) as those are money losers. $2.00 deliveries with $5.00 parking fees, no thank you! I have ramped UP my phyisical activity since I started doing this, as well as being VERY careful about my diet. Yes mostly because my Dr. is pushing. There are procedures I need that require my weight come down. I have lost 36lbs since August 24th, and am building the muscles in my upper body back. Particularly lower back, shoulders and pecs... Diet wise concentrating on Fish, Chicken and veggies, zero sodas, and next to no bread / simple carbs...

My late wifes family is all diabetic, and even though I SHOULD have tripped into diabetes by now with my weight, God has definately protected me from that. There are OTHER weight related issues I am dealing with, just not the ones everyone would assume. My cardio is good, skeletal is a different story all together...

Hazelelponi said:

Here we go. Sorry for the delay in getting this posted for you. This is nonpartisan, he's a Yale law professor explaining both sides of the legal argument and explaining the case Trump has and why it's probably perfectly legal for Trump to blow up boats.

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Okay, I will review the 40 minute video when I have time....(I don't today).

Hentenza said:

Your penchant for removing context from my post to satisfy your “sense of humor” and erroneous doctrine is quite disingenuous.

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Disingenuous? Never been accused of that before. I'll have to ponder that one. And I don't generally have to chop your stuff up much to see some, probably unintentional, humor in it. Your stuff does tend to come off as pompous and preachy. And it doesn't help that you tend to try a little too hard to sound scholarly, generally not to good effect.

As for my "erroneous doctrine", you have yet to demonstrate that I have one. You've given your opinions, which I find generally ill-founded, and generally a little to obviously a recitation of whatever your doctrinal group teaches. I've sure that you hang on their every word, but most of us don't, at all. And FWIW, when you begin babbling about, "... but in Greek it says..." then you've just "left the envelope of controlled flight", and no good's gonna come of it.

Hentenza said:

Your conclusions are controversial

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So? Whose aren't? You reckon everyone will mindlessly parrot your denom's beliefs? Dream on. I don't think your conclusions are controversial, I just think they're wrong, even if everyone but me thinks otherise. The "voice of the people" is not the voice of God.

Hentenza said:

and outside of orthodoxy.

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nope, I say "amen" to every line in the ancient Creeds of the Church. Does your lot do the same? Or are there bits where y'all say , "No, we don't believe that".

Hentenza said:

No need to reply to your post since it is devoid of an argument.

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None that can penetrate your sectarian programming, anyway.

Hentenza said:

Also, sect is synonymous with cult

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Fair play, I won't use it again. Hereinafter I'll use "persuasion" instead.

Hentenza said:

and a pejorative to mainstream Christianity which is against the forum rules.

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I'm not at all sure the beliefs those of your persuasion are representative of "mainstream Christianity" in any are other than the, to me, pernicious, idea that God has decreed that the vast majority of the human beings He has ever created must be tortured forever.

bèlla said:

@Chesterton

As promised, here’s a recent piece on how to spot Ai in videos.

~bella

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You actually fell for that?! That entire video is AI!! Weren't you tipped off when the white guy told you his last name was Carrasco? [just kidding ]

I watched about half of it. The problem with some of that is there are a whole lot of different type of cameras, with different qualities, and different quality users, different lighting situations and compositions, etc. It's not uncommon for real-life things to look odd. Do you remember when it was being spread around that Michelle Obama was a man because on a TV appearance, for a moment it looked like her dress had a bulge in it down there? And that kid with half an arm in the EBT video - maybe he was born with half an arm, or lost it due to an injury. I don't know.

I have a barely relevant side note. The text on the thumbnail says "They Look Too Good". Joe Rosenthal took the famous photo of the American flag being raised on Iwo Jima during WWII. After a few days the, photo was in almost every American newspaper, and many people were angry. It was too good to be true. They just knew it was staged, fake, and thought it was done as propaganda for morale. Military brass even investigated and interrogated Joe. But it was a complete accident. Joe's response was to the effect that "I wish I had composed it. If I had composed that shot, I would absolutely not hesitate to take credit for it. But I didn't. It just happened."

It'll be amazing if he lives out this term.

bèlla said:

No I don’t and the Lord provides gifts of leadership and administration for a reason. Doing a work for the Him doesn‘t preclude business practices that make the organization sound and financially healthy. And if you don’t know how to do that you’re meant to have someone on the team who can. It‘s hard to run an organization relying on donations and the unexpected is a certainty.

When you understand human nature you know a person will drop a $1,000 for a phone but wouldn’t write a check for the same. That’s not a slight against the church but there’s a correlation with the value we attach to goods and services. People will afford what they want if they believe they’re getting something in return.

When you take the devil’s tools off the table it allows you to stretch yourself and think outside of the box. But when you’re relying on tax breaks, loans and donations you won’t do the same. Nor are the downloads as plentiful because you have a safety net. I don’t want to be beholden and the bible warns us about the lender and borrower. I don’t make the rules and the one who did can change them and I won’t have his foot on my neck.

If you let the Lord build the house He’ll tell you how to fund it righteously. You don’t have to look to the world or rely on an anonymous donor. There’s a dignity that comes forth when you can say like Abraham “that I would not take anything that is yours, from a thread to a sandal strap, so you could not say, ‘I [the King of Sodom] have made Abram rich.”

Not a business loan, mortgage or car note. If He wants me to do it He has to provide.

~bella

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Once again, you're trying to divert the discussion. We're talking about the Church mission being done under Church auspices rather than by lone wolves doing their own things without accountability.

Always in His Presence said:

it begs the question why are private corporations so much better at managing the cost of healthcare than the government?

A company with a couple hundred people in their employ can offer better plans at lower costs than the government with millions?

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The problem is not just with that company and its "couple hundred people," but all the linked insurance infrastructure with all their employees and stockholders.

The medical billing industry, for instance, is a multi-billion dollar industry...and they're just pushing paper mostly _sideways._ The amount of deliberate inefficiency in medical billing is astounding and demoralizing...and we patients are ultimately the ones who pay for it.

Postvieww said:

Wishing for the death of a sitting president , calling murdered Charlie Kirk a piece of garbage, qualifies as unhinged in my book . Sorry you feel it is normal behavior. The red head girl was absolutely unhinged screaming like a wild animal. Unhinged is accurate.

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Normal actions to come across at a protest. I was expecting to see clips of violence and rioting but instead it was some angry opinions.

Imagine - $53.00 of every $100.00 going to the government.

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Imagine having $25 million in salary (i.e. not capital gains) in a single year to make that even a possibility.

bèlla said:

How to Spot AI Videos in 2025

Spotting AI videos is harder than ever, but still possible. Here are the best tips to look for in 2025. This video should not be considered a catch-all, as there will always be new tricks or updates to the models.

Topics covered: AI videos, spotting AI videos, AI-generated video detection, deepfake identification, AI artifacts, diffusion model video, soft video look, fake influencers, AI content detection, Google Veo, Runway ML, Google Veo 3, AI video, AI video tutorial, identifying fake videos, synthetic videos, AI video tools, AI video literacy, AI-generated people, video authenticity, misinformation.

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At this point, we should stop thinking we can spot AI videos and concentrate on ways to verify the information, whether from AI videos or not.

camille70 said:

That's my opinion, but actually I was mistaken, it did not get passed, the senate removed it.

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You were right, really. It did get passed in the House.

camille70 said:

It may make you more sympathetic but that is not the case for many others. Its documented that white Americans are less likely to support aid when there are images of Black people used. This is often employed as a tool to get white Americans to vote against their own interests. I recommend the following video in full, but start at the 13 min mark if you dont want to watch the entire thing. The segment is only a couple of minutes.

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I didn't really intend this thread to be about race, but okay. Anyway, I watched several minutes of the fist video from the 13 min. mark, and I have some problems with it, such as "correlation does not equal causation", and other things. I would watch all the videos, but the problem is, I may not focus on the parts you want me to focus on. I may focus on things you think are less important, or ignore things you think are important. Would want to tell me the points he makes that you might want to talk about?

Dan1988 said:

Now you're trying to get into the mind of God, good luck with that. Anyone who dares to venture there will suffer or even die, long before they get near to finding their answer.
So, I dare not temp God. As that will certainly arouse His wrath. Lucifer also challenged Gods authority, and look at him now.

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I don’t need to speculate about the answer to that question because scripture actually tells us that God does not desire for man to sin.

“Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭6‬:‭5‬-‭6‬ ‭NASB1995‬‬

Surely God would not grieve in His heart over something that He Himself dictated to happen. So is man thwarting God’s plan or does God’s plan include man acting on his own free will?

Dikaioumenoi said:

This is true in narrative, but not gnomic constructions. John isn't sequencing events; he's expressing a theological principle. Participles take their temporal reference from the main verb in narrative or temporal sequences, but in didactic discourse the contrast in aspect is the controlling factor. Requiring a future participle to express sequence is therefore a categorical mistake; Greek participles in gnomic statements convey relationship and aspect, not chronology.

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How do your principles of grammar rearrange the sequence of events to place believing after salvation in the following passages:

1. In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise (Eph 1:13),
2. 13 For “whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.” 14 How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? 15 And how shall they preach unless they are sent? (Ro 10:13–15), and
3. For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. (1 Co 1:21)

I alternate between which I use, currently I am about to finish off the almond milk I have, it's good and there is benefit from almonds, but not fortified as I want, I am now planning to get fortified soy milk next, later on I will cycle back to rice milk which also is fortified almost as much.

ViaCrucis said:

Were you hoping to find a bunch of leftists wanting to defend Hamas? Sorry to disappoint.

We actually believe in human dignity. Unlike Hamas, Israel, or MAGA.

-CryptoLutheran

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Don't know which thread you've been reading, but in this one, there are plenty of people who's general tone of post is "Well, shouldn't have colaborated. Hamas did what they had to.".

I believe that you personally feel different, but don't pretend that people on the left that defend those killings by hamas don't exist in meaningful numbers.

It's okay. You don't have to make their opinion your own just because you share a lot of other opinions.

ThatRobGuy said:

There's only a couple of pathways

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Sure, legally...but this is Trump.

Chesterton said:

Unless you have a source for that claim, no, that's not why they passed it.

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That's my opinion, but actually I was mistaken, it did not get passed, the senate removed it.