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Boondock Saint posted:Let's not forget the best part of all of this. After he made the vaccine, he made sure it was distributed to anyone who wanted it. He didn't patent it. He didn't profit from it. Jonas Salk is a hero and when patent law finally gets decently reformed it should be named after him. Also we should build a big fuckoff monument to him and teach our kids about him daily.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 00:29 |
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# ? Jun 14, 2024 15:15 |
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Orange Devil posted:Jonas Salk is a hero and when patent law finally gets decently reformed it should be named after him. Also we should build a big fuckoff monument to him and teach our kids about him daily. I'd support higher taxes if the revenue went to funding a giant Jonas Salk statue where he's flipping the double bird at patent trolls.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 03:26 |
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My facebook arguments don't get nearly as entertaining as some people, but I'll post this in case anyone might be looking for more canned responses (and of course, if people can poke holes in my own responses/recommend better ones). I'm fairly certain I'm going to see more of these sorts of posts. I cannot understand how someone could use Edison or Ford as examples of people who built their businesses outside of help. And then Bradbury? Bradbury was vocal about his support of things like public libraries. The Wrights, Bell, a number of other inventors are notable just because they did it first; the knowledge, materials, infrastructure were all there and if they had not invented those things there were always people right on their heels that would have. Elisha Gray would have a lot to say about the idea that "Only Bell could've invented the Telephone." I swear I've spent too much time today poking wholes in this sort of sentiment. It's been funny to watch people bend over backwards trying to justify their "Obama was wrong" sort of thought from this and I've been trying my hardest to respond with examples instead of just flipping the gently caress out on them.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 06:33 |
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CellBlock posted:Yes, but it's really more of a legal technicality that keeps them running. Each team is an independent business, and so they normally wouldn't be allowed to collude and do things like have a draft and trade players around, but because a sports league doesn't really work without such things, they're allowed to do it. Actually the way American leagues obtain and trade players is pretty much unique to America, most other sports in most other countries get along just fine without a draft and trade system. Of course the big strength of the American system is preventing a few clubs monopolising the leagues by guaranteeing a fairer distribution of the best players. Even without the unionised players it's easily the most "socialist"* system in the world. * not actually socialist in any way shape or form
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 07:50 |
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TheOneOutside posted:I'm fairly certain I'm going to see more of these sorts of posts. I cannot understand how someone could use Edison or Ford as examples of people who built their businesses outside of help. And then Bradbury? Bradbury was vocal about his support of things like public libraries. The Wrights, Bell, a number of other inventors are notable just because they did it first; the knowledge, materials, infrastructure were all there and if they had not invented those things there were always people right on their heels that would have. Elisha Gray would have a lot to say about the idea that "Only Bell could've invented the Telephone." I swear I've spent too much time today poking wholes in this sort of sentiment. It's been funny to watch people bend over backwards trying to justify their "Obama was wrong" sort of thought from this and I've been trying my hardest to respond with examples instead of just flipping the gently caress out on them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 10:11 |
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TheOneOutside posted:My facebook arguments don't get nearly as entertaining as some people, but I'll post this in case anyone might be looking for more canned responses (and of course, if people can poke holes in my own responses/recommend better ones). Hey, your dads an idiot and should probably never vote again.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 10:14 |
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Goatman Sacks posted:Hey, your dads an idiot and should probably never vote again. I don't really like this attitude. At least his dad is making an attempt at debating, even if it is a bit dishonest in content. He seems to have a cursory understanding of politics, even if it's flawed and he's missing his son's point, and that makes him a lot more qualified to vote than your average North American. Sadly.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 12:11 |
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For a detailed first person account of how someone didn't do it alone (someone who could probably make a better claim to independence than 99 out of a hundred entrepreneurs, but who is intelligent and humble enough not to), read Steve Wozniak's autobiography, "iWoz."
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 14:53 |
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You should stop trying to convince them of the argument, and just show them that Obama is not making the argument they think he is. Namely with these two quotes from the speech: "Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen." This is the line Romney, FOX, and company are taking out of context. In particular, leaving out that sentence at the start. Its obvious from the context of the rest of the speech that what he's saying is, "If you've got a business -- you didn't build that --> roads and bridges" not "If you've got a business -- you didn't build that --> business." And in case that's not clear enough, a few sentences later... "The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together." He's absolutely not saying businesses don't succeed because they work hard, in fact he says the exact opposite in the speech. And he is precisely making a "no man is an island" point. Regardless of what 'J' thinks. His broader point is you have people saying "I'm successful, you should not take away some of what I've earned all by myself through taxes". Which completely misses the point that if they, and others before them, hadn't paid taxes to build roads, fight fires, invent the internet, educate their employees; their business could not have been possible. That is why they need to pay taxes, so their business can continue to succeed, and other businesses not even imagined yet can succeed in the future.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 14:58 |
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TheOneOutside posted:My facebook arguments don't get nearly as entertaining as some people, but I'll post this in case anyone might be looking for more canned responses (and of course, if people can poke holes in my own responses/recommend better ones). J is seriously using Iron Man and Batman as supporting examples. Have you pointed out to him just how wrong it is to use fictional billionaires in this debate? Hell, both of them inherited all of their money so they literally did not build their own companies anyway!
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 15:10 |
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Sarion posted:You should stop trying to convince them of the argument, and just show them that Obama is not making the argument they think he is. Namely with these two quotes from the speech: "Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build [roads and bridges]. Somebody else made that happen." And, implied as an extension of that, you should help pay for that and all the other things your business uses - water and power utilities, educated and literate customers, a population generally unafraid of poisoning from drugs or food, etc. The amazing thing is that when everyone chips in for these things it costs a lot, lot less due to economies of scale. You would think efficiency would be great in their opinion, but welp.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 15:17 |
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I'm up to three separate people saying that if someone in that theater shooting had a gun, the tragedy could have between averted. Two saying that stories like that are the reason they carry. I think I'm going to keep count.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 15:32 |
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Honestly, that logic's even dumber here than in the Giffords shooting, since this was a dark, smoke-filled movie theater.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 15:35 |
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Emron posted:I'm up to three separate people saying that if someone in that theater shooting had a gun, the tragedy could have between averted. Two saying that stories like that are the reason they carry. I think I'm going to keep count. When keeping track of these, remember that Colorado is a shall-issue CCW state, and has generally pretty permissive gun laws.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 15:40 |
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ugh, someone on facebook is 'liking' those stupid "I BUILT THIS OBAMA!" bullshit photos. http://imgur.com/dtqOK
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 15:48 |
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I did create this business Steve Webb. As opposed to my pleasure Steve Webb, that I had help on and fully admit to.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 16:13 |
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Sarion posted:You should stop trying to convince them of the argument, and just show them that Obama is not making the argument they think he is. Namely with these two quotes from the speech: Yeah, I had this argument yesterday on my mom's Facebook. She posted a picture of Steve Jobs holding an iPad with Obama in the background saying you didn't build that.... not realizing that in fact Steve Jobs did not build that. Facebook posted:
Summary: I don't like Obama, so I'll choose a way to interpret his speech in a way that makes his speech writers appear stupid. Also business owners did everything on their own without any outside help and have a really easy time having their feelings hurt. RhoanAegis fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Jul 20, 2012 |
# ? Jul 20, 2012 16:34 |
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RhoanAegis posted:Summary: I don't like Obama, so I'll choose a way to interpret his speech in a way that makes his speech writers appear stupid. Also business owners did everything on their own without any outside help and have a really easy time having their feelings hurt. Here is my new facebook status: quote:What "that" refers to depends on what your definition of "is" is.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 16:40 |
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It's painfully obvious what the president meant, and anyone who sees the footage of the speech in which the comment was made who still doesn't understand it in it's full context is either willfully ignorant to keep their own political narrative intact or just plain old stupid. I know that's been said already, but to add, do people honestly think that someone, let alone an intelligent person such as Obama, could actually believe that some mom and pop business that mom and pop started was built by someone else and had it handed to them? I mean, you can disagree with Obama on his policies or some of his actions, but the man isn't stupid and sure as poo poo wouldn't go around essentially saying what amounts to "Hey, if you have a business you started you can't take any credit for it because someone else made it in fairy tale land and then handed it to you herp derp!". It's like the "57 states" gaffe. The right wing pins it on him as some sort of evidence that he's clueless, but it doesn't take much effort to realize that a guy who grew up in the U.S., went to Harvard, served in the Senate and ran for president doesn't know that there are 50 states and not 57. It surmounts to a slip-up or poorly ordered wording - nothing less and nothing more. TL;DR Nobody with half a brain or more would even try to make the right-wing's perceived context of the comment, let alone Obama tek79 fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Jul 20, 2012 |
# ? Jul 20, 2012 16:48 |
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quote:Resisting Barbarians
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 16:54 |
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Out of your income tax, roughly 50% goes to funding the military. Out of your payroll taxes, nearly all of it goes to help the elderly. Why do small businesses hate are troops and grandmas so much?
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 17:20 |
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Gee, just because the threat of terrorism gets overinflated, only applied as a label to certain people (if the news is any indication there are white shooters and bombers, but somehow no white terrorists), and used as an excuse to violate our rights and make defense spending even more sky-high, people are skeptical about anti-terrorism efforts?
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 17:46 |
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RhoanAegis posted:Summary: I don't like Obama, so I'll choose a way to interpret his speech in a way that makes his speech writers appear stupid. Also business owners did everything on their own without any outside help and have a really easy time having their feelings hurt.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 17:54 |
Leon Einstein posted:I'm pretty impressed at the people that put in 20 hour days to build their business. That sounds totally realistic. Ehh, restaurateurs, but still, dumb talking point and dumb vitriolic reaction.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 18:04 |
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This is slightly out of left field, but I read this thread pretty consistently and it seems like a lot of you (myself included) have sparred with friends/family/etc over the issue of compulsory voter ID laws. The Brennan Center for Justice (a non-partisan voting rights research & advocacy group) just released a really good new report on the pro-ported "free" ID's that many states are offering as a "compromise" with the justice department. Report Executive Summary posted:Ten states now have unprecedented restrictive voter ID laws. Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin all require citizens to produce specific types of government-issued photo identification before they can cast a vote that will count. Legal precedent requires these states to provide free photo ID to eligible voters who do not have one. Between this new report and the previous report about all the voting law changes in 2012 you should be able to show your friend/family/etc that voting ID laws are designed to do nothing more than disenfranchise low income, minority, student, and inner-city voters who tend to vote Democrat. Xarthor fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jul 20, 2012 |
# ? Jul 20, 2012 19:24 |
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quote:For example, the office in Sauk City, Wisconsin is open only on the fifth Wednesday of any month.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 21:10 |
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myron cope posted:Holy poo poo. How can they even suggest that with a straight face, let alone put it into practice? It's open for 4 days a year? Yes. In the full report, they show the calendar for four months (Jan, Feb, Mar, April) and show that January, March, and April didn't even HAVE a fifth Wednesday of the month, so the only day in four months that the office was open was February 29th.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 21:49 |
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Xarthor posted:Yes. This is mind-boggling. Who is the person who has a job that they only perform at those days?
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 22:01 |
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Goatman Sacks posted:Hey, your dads an idiot and should probably never vote again. He's not bad usually, but the reason he stops posting in that was because he decided to call me because I type quite a bit faster and try arguing over the phone; it eventually ended with "Oh, I didn't read the article at the top." And he ended up conceding pretty much everything after that point. Really, the reason why he appears thick through the post is that he didn't even bother to read the link I was commenting on (Which is his own drat fault).
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 23:05 |
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Dr Christmas posted:This is mind-boggling. Who is the person who has a job that they only perform at those days? I live in one of the regions it refers to (rural Mississippi). Every other Tuesday, one person from the Medicaid office two hours away, and two people from the DMV an hour away come to the Veteran's Administration office about 10 miles from where I live. People from Social Security used to come then, as well, but they just built a new office (in the same location, an hour and a half away), so they can't afford the gas money to come out here anymore. My wife and I, when we got married, had to wait 3 months for us to both have a day off on a weekday to drive the hour and a half to go get her name changed. Edit: What I'm getting at is that it's not someone who's just super lazy, it's likely someone who already worked at their own ID center, and then has to work an extra day, with a couple hours commute, and who knows if they're being compensated for gas/mileage.
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# ? Jul 20, 2012 23:08 |
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That's just so weird. The rich people who need their ID renewed have an easier time fighting thought that Katkaesque nightmare than a working stiff, but they still have to fight through a Kafkaesque nightmare. Even Republican legislators and governors have to deal with it.
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# ? Jul 21, 2012 00:32 |
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Dr Christmas posted:That's just so weird. The rich people who need their ID renewed have an easier time fighting thought that Katkaesque nightmare than a working stiff, but they still have to fight through a Kafkaesque nightmare. Even Republican legislators and governors have to deal with it. Nah. They can afford the time off to drive to the one that is always open, even if it is hours away (which it probably isn't). This is what you get when you elect people who want to cut "government waste" instead of guaranteeing service for all citizens equally.
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# ? Jul 21, 2012 00:42 |
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Sarion posted:Nah. They can afford the time off to drive to the one that is always open, even if it is hours away (which it probably isn't). This is what you get when you elect people who want to cut "government waste" instead of guaranteeing service for all citizens equally. For reference, most of the people who live in this area year-round (it's a college town) are really poor families who can probably trace their descendants back to slaves/farmers, and really really rich people. And they don't give a poo poo that the Medicaid office in town is only open for 12 hours a month. If they need some paperwork, they'll just drive an hour or two and get it done. My co-workers/friends here usually ask "Hey, I'm heading to [population center]. Anyone have anything they need done or picked up?"
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# ? Jul 21, 2012 00:46 |
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Here's what a friend on facebook linked to today in response to the movie theater shootings, does this belong here?quote:Bullshit is something we all ought to be able to smell, no?
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# ? Jul 21, 2012 01:28 |
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WTF is up with the Hegel stuff lately? I've heard people complaining about it coming up in strange ways on philosophy blogs.
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# ? Jul 21, 2012 01:44 |
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Leon Einstein posted:I'm pretty impressed at the people that put in 20 hour days to build their business. That sounds totally realistic. It's a "brilliant" debate trick though. As soon as they put out a totally outlandish claim like that, you can either call them a liar and lose sympathy from onlookers for being a jerk, or you accept their claims and make their argument look much stronger than it is.
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# ? Jul 21, 2012 01:48 |
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Yes, Barack Obama ordered the guy in Colorado to shoot up the place, ordered the attack that hit Giffords, ordered the lone gunman in Europe and orchestrated the VA Tech shooter. Just to take away your guns. I guess that was the point of that Facebook post?
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# ? Jul 21, 2012 02:15 |
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lancemantis posted:WTF is up with the Hegel stuff lately? I've heard people complaining about it coming up in strange ways on philosophy blogs. It doesn't sound like any Hegel I've ever read, but then again my philosophical training avoided Hegel almost completely.
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# ? Jul 21, 2012 02:28 |
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quote:Before 1990 and the concomitant acceleration of the gun control movement, incidents of mass shootings were almost unheard of. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers#Americas In the US I'm counting 4 in/before 1990 and 4 after 1990.
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# ? Jul 21, 2012 02:33 |
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# ? Jun 14, 2024 15:15 |
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peak debt posted:It's a "brilliant" debate trick though. As soon as they put out a totally outlandish claim like that, you can either call them a liar and lose sympathy from onlookers for being a jerk, or you accept their claims and make their argument look much stronger than it is. Maybe, but there are still blatantly obvious retorts to people claiming that their businesses never benefits from the government, no matter what their businesses are. "Loving Life Partner" mentioned they were restauranteurs, which means they benefit from the FDA and Department of Agriculture ensuring that the ingredients they receive are safe, from the EPA keeping their water supply clean and unpolluted, from the local and state governments regulating building codes and empowering building inspectors to make sure their buildings are safe and without financially draining problems, etc. These are basic things that every restaurant takes advantage of but which most take for granted. Can you imagine how loving fast a restaurant would fold if they ended up serving chicken tainted with salmonella or beef contaminated with e. coli? People just accept that their food is clean and safe without actually thinking about all the work and funding goes into regulating food safety. prom candy posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers#Americas That's just those listed under the "Americas" heading. There's also: Leung Ying (1928) - 11 killed William Vincent (1946) - 11 killed Charles Whitman (1966) - 15 killed Mark Essex(1973) - 9 killed James Ruppert (1975) - 11 killed George Banks (1982) - 13 killed Patrick Sherrill (1986) - 14 killed Ronald Gene Simmons (1987) - 16 killed Joseph Thomas Wesbecker (1989) - 8 killed
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# ? Jul 21, 2012 03:03 |