My rankings:

12.  Lennox Lewis
11.  Evander Holyfield
10.  Mike Tyson
9.    George Foreman
8.    Jack Johnson
7.    Jack Dempsey
6.    Larry Holmes
5.    Joe Frazier
4.    Gene Tunney
3.    Rocky Marciano 
2.    Muhammad Ali
1.    Joe Louis

Johnson was indeed a major freedom fighter in very literal senses of the term--not too many heavyweight champions are to that degree, but there have been some.  Johnson was also extremely physically imposing and powerful, as well as a very crafty, intelligent fighter.  This is sometimes hard to discern given the quality of old film reels, but is the case. 

Although humans are biologically animals, they are absolutely higher life forms than any other member of the animal kingdom. 

To those who object: When is the last time you saw an animal drive a car or watch TV?

Watching tv is the activity of a higher life form?  I'd of thought at least inventing the tv would need to be invoked.  But anybody's pet can look at the television.

Anyway, what Mikado and Andrew said.

Wow, a debate between those guys would put me in a coma so sustained that I'd never make it to the voting booth. 

In their primes it comes down to Tyson v Ali. The old timers are just too poorly conditioned to compete.

Ali's style is well suited to combating Tyson and he has an amazing chin. Having defeated some extremely hard hitters like Frazier & Foreman, I lean Ali.

Yeah, without giving away my whole hand, I will agree with you about this matchup.  A late 1960's Ali on a night where he fought, say, Cleveland Williams against a Tyson who fought, say, Trevor Berbick for the championship, I'd definitely go with Ali.  Too much speed and ring generalship for the short-armed Tyson, and the chin to withstand close quarters on the few occasions he couldn't tie Iron Mike up.  Ali by late-round knockout or decisive decision.  (By the way, I assume good old-fashioned 15-round fights here.)

Ok, my rankings:

10.   Paul Morphy
9.     Emmanuel Lasker
8.     Tigran Petrosian
7.     Vladimir Kramnik
6.     Viswanathan Anand
5.     Jose Raul Capablanca
4.     Anatoly Karpov
3.     Bobby Fischer
2.     Alexander Alekheine
1.     Garry Kasparov

Same idea as heavyweight boxing champion poll.  Let's see who knows their 64 squares. 

Go.

I'm including who I think are the dozen best candidates.  There are a number of bases you could chose to vote on, like 1.) who would have beat all the others if everyone was in their prime?  2.) who stood up to and beat the toughest opposition during their reign?  3.) who was the best all-around fighter?  Or some combination, of course.

One vote for the best fighter, but you can change your vote.  Bonus points for those who are willing to rank them in their posts.

I'll give my vote and ranking after some people have contributed.

Go.

Don't sell yourself short.  This place would be far less than it is without your presence.   Now go learn a new song and pour a cold one.

Always a good plan, though I might reverse the order of those two items.  Thanks.

Thanks for indulging me, guys.  Sorry for the attention-whoring that went into to compelling someone to put a poll for me up.  My long-winded and probably sometimes arrogant posts, and the several times I've said in anger that I was leaving the forum and then have returned, aren't particularly cool, I know.  But there have been times that I haven't really felt like a valued member of the forum, despite all the time I put into my posts.  Anyway, like I said, thanks for the indulgence.

Well, there is enough indication, given recent press releases, hearing testimony, 5th amendment invocations and so on to lead me to believe that there was some wrongdoing going on--there were officials exceeding their authority and not doing due diligence to their jobs.  So I don't think it's a non-issue, and where impartial investigations find there was wrongdoing, there should be consequences and punishment.  I've said that all along.  I just think it's important in this circumstance not to take the trees for the forest.  The IRS has a mandate of scrutiny in these cases, and, so long as it's carried out within the parameters of the law, it should continue to be affirmed.  Predominantly political groups, left or right, should not be getting tex-exempt status as social welfare organizations.

Tender got it right, of course.  But since this is one of the things I can do well, and since I can't talk with Franzl on the forum now, I'll at least take the honor of translating.

Ich werde nicht in nächster Zeit hier reingucken. Könnte aber schon sein, dass ich in ein paar Monaten zur Wahl bzw. zu den Wahlen ein paar Zeilen schreibe. Beabsichtige aber tatsächlich, mehr oder weniger vom Forum zu verschwinden. Es nimmt einfach zu viel Zeit in Anspruch, und bis auf International Elections ist es auch zum größten Teil Zeitverschwendung.

"I will not be looking in on here in the near future.  But it could be that, in a few months, when the elections loom, I will write a few lines about the elections.  But I really do intend, more or less, to disappear from the Forum.  It just lays a claim to too much time, and, except for International Elections, it's also, for the most part, a waste of time."

He didn't mention having better things to do, but I trust Grumps' authority on that. 

From everything I can tell, he was a good representative of the U.S. overseas and to China, and his governorship of Utah was pretty capable.  So, FF.

Meh.  I didn't support her nomination in '08 because of her Iraq war vote, which I still think was a good reason not to.  But, also, the idea of a former president being a current presidential spouse (man or woman) just smacks too much of an effective third-term to me, and as long as we've made that illegal, I don't know why we should be doing it virtually.  I think she is very capable, but prone to very bad mistakes with both issues and people, and that plus her put-on sometimes makes me unsure about what her motives are.  I don't know if I'd vote for her--maybe I'll make skipping presidential votes more of a habit--but if she doesn't run in '16, I think the GOP will get the White House back.     

Went to Star Trek: Into Darkness the other day.  It was ok, but it made me miss the old gang more than want to see the next installment of the new one.

Anyone who gets a poll this soon is an FF

Indeed.  I've been here--most of the time--for four and a half years and I never got one.  FF-more power to him.  Maybe I ought to start putting up "Don't Conservatives Understand..." threads and see if Torie can ban me before a poll goes up.

Sex Between Teenagers is -30?

Really?

Teenagers were under-sampled.

I don't think it will become a movement.  But, wrt consensual polyandry and polygamy, I support both.  In the abstract, and for myself.  And, in my case, as long as there are no kids.

True, they are on the defensive about it.

No worries, Snowguy.  I really shouldn't talk when I don't know what I'm talking about, so the canvas is an appropriate place for me when I do.

I really should learn more about this issue, in any case, so if you can point me to some good reading on it, I'd appreciate it.

Ok, then.

These are government agencies. They are supposed to be impartial and apply the laws equally. This isn't about who they targeted. It's the targeting. If it doesn't bother you, that's fine, but it does me.

Forgive the long post that follows.  But I'm genuinely baffled--not by you, Duke, but by the way this whole thing has been loosely characterized.

I'm sorry, but I still don't get it.  I probably should, but one of my many problems, and I mean this, really, is that there are some things I'm dense about, so if I'm being dense about this, then my bad.

But, in this case, it does not seem to me about "applying the laws equally" in an abstract sense. It's not about, for example, allowing as many conservative political groups tax-exempt status as liberal political groups.   It's about IRS officials receiving applications for tax exemption from groups claiming to be social welfare organizations, and then having to decide whether the organizations are indeed social welfare organizations.  If they seem to be that, they get tax-exempt status, and if they don't seem to be, they get subjected to extra scrutiny.  That's my understanding of what the law says the IRS is supposed to do in the case of groups applying for 501c status.  So, I'm really stumbling on the question of why an IRS official in 2010 was supposed to easily assume that an organization overtly claiming affiliation with the TEA Party was a social welfare organization that did not predominantly have a political agenda.  Is the IRS official just supposed to rubber-stamp the application in this case, or isn't it reasonable for him or her to ask questions?  (And no, this doesn't mean that I believe lefty groups asking for 501c status that are predominantly political should get it--I don't.)

Now, like I said, it seems like, in the actual circumstances, some of the people working on the cases exceeded their authority, were overly demanding of large amounts of documentary evidence in unreasonably short periods of time, and maybe failed to run it by supervisors, and so on.  Those are certainly infractions, and if they happened, they should be punished.  IRS officials are not supposed to be exceeding their authority, and I agree we should worry, and punish them, when they do.  It seems to me that it's infractions of this type the IRS is admitting to. 

But I feel like that specific problem, precisely by being labelled "targeting," is being confused with the fact that the IRS has a mandate to judge whether an applicant for 501c status really deserves to be classified as such.  Throwing the blanket charge at them that they are "targeting" one set of politically-inclined groups or another clouds the real issue--that they're not supposed to be letting any predominantly political groups have tax-exempt status.  It just strikes me as ironic that the IRS officials in this case, several of whom were Bush II appointees, are being charged with political motivations when it's the TEA-Party groups applying for tax-exempt status that were actually politically motivated.  What scares me a little is that this whole thing will make it easier for political groups--of all stripes--to be classified as social welfare organizations when they're not.  I don't think we should be allowing that. 

I don't believe that a divine being exists.  I don't know that, of course.  But I don't believe it.  But even if God did exist, I would not be a fan.  Even when it comes to very imperfect human beings, I am not a fan of parents who mutilate their children, knowingly and willingly.  God, we are told, is our father, is all-knowing, all-powerful, and everything that happened is God's will.  I, in such presumed circumstances, his "child," was born totally blind and with a heart defect that, were it not for twentieth century surgical procedures, would have killed me by the age of 20.  So, while I don't believe there is a God to blame for any of this, if there is a God, I'd like him to leave me alone--he has done enough, thanks.  And, compared to millions and millions of others, I'm one of the lucky ones.

I do, on the other hand, have very profound feelings both for natural power and natural beauty.  I don't blame nature for the way I am, since obviously the way I turned out was not intended by the cosmos at all.  I am also awed and moved by the great things that can be accomplished by a heathy combination of human compassion and understanding--but I don't count on them.  I don't like the idea of dying at all, but I deal with it by cherishing the time I have here, and trying to treat others accordingly.

I don't know if anything here counts as "spirituality" or "faith," but what I've described is where I am.

Well, I certainly don't know what's going to happen with the climate in the next hundred years--I'm not even remotely qualified to know.  My understanding of the next IPCC report, based on some reading, is that, while there is greater uncertainty about atmospheric temperature changes projected over the next century, there is fairly strong consensus about causes of warming over the last two hundred years as well as stronger confidence that the Arctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting rapidly, which in turn gives rise to worries about rising sea levels, particularly as it may effect certain regions.  I put a recent Politicus post in the Good Post Gallery because of her suggestion that investing in green technologies would not merely be devastatingly costly, but may present opportunities for growth in new industries and because it might help protect certain vulnerable regions from possible (my emphasis) deleterious effects of climate change.  It's always seemed to me that doing what we can to moderate atmospheric temperatures, despite whatever their other disparate causes may be, and not knowing exactly what the future will hold, would just be plain old-fashioned prudent.  JMO--and in this case I'll be the first to admit that it's not even close to being an expert one.

Why were tea party groups trying to get a charity tax exemption anyway?

Exactly.  For Christ's sake, the acronym TEA stands for "Taxed Enough Already."  Odds are that groups claiming affiliation with the TEA Party aren't handing out food to poor children or trying to raise money to help people with catastrophic health care costs or building school houses to educate illiterate adults.  They're political groups that have a predominantly political and not a predominantly social welfare agenda.  Congress long ago gave the IRS the legal mandate to scrutinize groups with a political agenda who applied for 501c status.  Whose next to be singled out for "scandalous" overreach for following their legal mandate?  Just because members of Congress don't do their job right doesn't mean no one else should.