I'll quote the letter from a friend's Call of Cthulhu RPG game that caused our buddy to go insane in game, and become momentarily unhinged out of game:

Dear doctor,

They've been here the whole time.

More importantly: Does he even care?

I heard about this new factual historian that just hit the streets. He goes by the name of Harry Turtledove. I think we should campaign to have his books used as reference material in our secondary schools.

I'm personally of the mind that the majority share of taxes from a product or service should be put back into that service. New York recently closed a number of state parks due to lack of funding. I, personally, would not mind paying an entrance fee into some of these parks PROVIDED that the funding goes directly back into the maintenance and upkeep of the state park system instead of a budget plan to build Joe Bruno another stadium, or something.

No, the state (THIS state) keeps raising taxes because they have no idea how to manage money.

I live in New York State. We have an enormous mark-up on cigarettes. Our cheapest pack of cigs costs $8.00, after taxes. They've also passed a law that prevents the importation of cigarettes to a personal residence through the mail. While I do not smoke, I sort of feel that this is absolutely ridiculous. Because the money isn't going anywhere worthwhile. It gets lost in the bureaucratic shuffle and gets allocated to other services that end up wasting the money. So what they do is they up the prices again to try to make up for it.

Eventually they're going to be so expensive people are unable to smoke. And then what? Great law-makers in Albany have already attempted an "I-tax", a tax on cable television and internet connections, in addition to the aforementioned salt ban (the assemblyman who sponsored this had admitted that he "knew absolutely nothing about the importance of salt in baking" but wanted to make it illegal for food-service to cook with salt), and the soda tax.

So while on one hand I do not smoke, I take a stand against the exponential increase of tobacco products. Because eventually it will transfer to some other product or luxury that you or I use. I hear a lot of people saying that "smokers deserve it", or they listen to the insurance companies in saying that its the smokers fault their premiums are going up.

I think I'd have more interest in debating a rock wall. A greater chance for the wall to have some kind of sensible understanding.

Yawn.

Try a different argument. The whole "firearms are cowardly weapons" one is so outdated.

I want to make some kind of comment about how the sandbox in the town I grew up was used by the stray cats as a giant communal litter box. "They can share the sandbox with us, it doesn't matter because we're all digging up the same shit"? I don't know.

'and a resident calling the “occult” practice “demeaning, destructive, demoralizing and detestable.”'

This man's opinion brought to you by the letter "D".