BF2S Forums Voting

Ty wrote:

Who's hating on other people's taste in music? Beyonce is treated like a living God by people and it seems to be based on nothing more than her musical talent, (because that's all she does after all.)

uziq wrote:

beyoncé's musical talent is vastly over rated. she's a good performer but her musical nous is zero - even within pop music. everyone thinks she's some pop genius, but every creative decision taken on her albums is done by committee. her songs are written by a stable of the best talent the entire major label industry can summon. she even argued against having horn samples or instrumentation on 'crazy in love', which is still held to be her strongest creative era. she was massively against that sound. now she's celebrated as some taste making visionary. lol. she's just a pretty woman who can dance and sing at the same time (a notable talent but creatively zilch).  and she has absolutely no personality or panache, to boot. she's so plain and unremarkable.

but the point was that America still arbitrarily elevates people to positions of adulation and widespread regard. you create your own royalty and Demi-gods through the specious and vacuous Hollywood thing. no actor or singer deserves the level of attention accorded to American celebrities. it's the same thing as having a prince or whatever. pointless cynosures. the only difference is that we're all embarrassed about the patrician overtones of prince Charles or his kids opining on world affairs. but you love it when angelina jolie adopts an African, or George clooney weighs in on sudan/darfur. lol. actors.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday ignored a White House veto threat and passed legislation to repeal the estate tax that hits inherited assets worth $5.4 million or more.

By a mostly partisan 240-179 vote, the Republican-backed bill will be sent to the Senate, where Democrats are expected to use procedural hurdles to try to block it. Even if it passes the Senate, it would likely fail to achieve a two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.

House passage was timed for the week when most Americans file their tax returns. Conservatives, who refer to the estate tax as the "death tax," have long railed against it, arguing it hurts the families of small business owners and farmers.

"It’s past time to repeal this unacceptable tax. Every American deserves the ability to pass their life’s savings to their kids," said Representative Tom Graves, a conservative Republican from Georgia.

Repealing the tax would boost the federal deficit by about $269 billion over 10 years, according to Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation.

Few Americans pay the 40 percent tax on assets above the $5.4 million exclusion amount. About 5,400 estates, equal to 0.2 percent of taxpayers, will owe such taxes in 2015, according to the JCT.

Continuing a bid to revive a movement that was sidelined by his predecessors, Pope Francis has reinstated a Central American priest who was suspended by the Vatican in the 1980s for his involvement in the political activities of Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista movement.

The Rev. Miguel D’Escoto Brockman, 81, was suspended from his duties by St. John Paul II and recently wrote to Francis asking for that order to be revoked so he could celebrate Mass again before he died.

Liberation theology refers to forms of local or contextual theology that proposes that knowledge of God based on revelation leads necessarily to a Christian theological praxis that opposes unjust social and political structures.[1] It has been described as "an interpretation of Christian faith through the poor's suffering, their struggle and hope, and a critique of society and the Catholic faith and Christianity through the eyes of the poor".[2] Detractors have called it Christianized Marxism.[3]
The best known form of liberation theology is that which developed in Latin America in the 1950s, however various other forms of liberation theology have since developed, including Asian, Black, and Palestinian liberation theologies, among others