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This is the sad state of affairs today, where someone will post such drivel and actually believe it helps their case. The way Raenex has framed these statements, closes the door to any reasonable discord.

The left aren't the ones making travel bans for muslims.

Islam is the most intolerant ...

Your defense of the intolerant muslim ban is to say that, yes, you are intolerant?

... The left wants to import them in massive numbers, and will call you an "Islamophobe" and "xenophobe" if you don't.

The left this; The left that. You're just making shit up. I don't see anything on the "left" that is attempting selective immigration by religion or origin, but you are blatantly supporting the opposite of that.

They aren't the ones ostracizing LGBT people.

The left wants 99.9% of society to re-engineer itself to recognize the delusions of the 0.1% of transgender people.

You provide no argument to oppose the claim or defend LGBT people, but just point out that you are absolutely and certainly ostracizing at least the trans portion of those. Isn't this simply confirming your intolerance?

They aren't the ones advocating for police brutality.

Black Lies Matter was a phony narrative...

Where was BLM mentioned? Are you rounding them all up under the generic "the left" again?

... that did not stand up to scrutiny.

The article you use as evidence states that there was bias found in police use of force. You've now turned the general statement on police brutality into a racial one, and shown yourself to be racist. WTF argument are you trying to make?

They aren't the ones trying to disenfranchise minorities from voting.

The left wants to disenfranchise American citizens by flooding the country with illegals and making it harder to reserve rights for American citizens.

If they're illegals, they can't vote. How does that relate to voter disenfranchisement, which you have not commented on? Can we assume you're ok with voter disenfranchisement?
This is also another case of "the left wants" that is entirely made up.

They aren't the ones pushing against womens rights to control their reproductive systems.

Just ignore the human life that's terminated by these "womens rights".

Yes, abortion is a divisive issue, but you're using it to wedge us apart here.
If one believes a fetus has rights of its own, then "the left" does generally err on the side of the mother. However, once again, you have avoided the issue at hand, and have presented some more bullshit to distract from your actual views, which are apparently intolerant.

I don't know how we'll ever heal this country, but so many issues/positions/votes/etc are split incredibly near to 50/50 that it should scare the shit out of all citizens... it takes very little to flip the populace a few percentage points each way and create more divisiveness. We should all be interested in changing that core problem, perhaps starting with replacing first past the post?

The left aren't the ones making travel bans for muslims.

Islam is the most intolerant, violent, and supremacist religion on Earth. Sane people want to limit immigration, which is not a right, from this violent and supremacist culture. The left wants to import them in massive numbers, and will call you an "Islamophobe" and "xenophobe" if you don't.

They aren't the ones ostracizing LGBT people.

The left wants 99.9% of society to re-engineer itself to recognize the delusions of the 0.1% of transgender people. Some guy "identifies" as a woman, and he wants to hang out with biological women with his male genitalia hanging out.

They aren't the ones advocating for police brutality.

Black Lies Matter was a phony narrative that did not stand up to scrutiny. The end result has been dead cops and more dead blacks due to less policing in crime-ridden neighborhoods.

They aren't the ones trying to disenfranchise minorities from voting.

The left wants to disenfranchise American citizens by flooding the country with illegals and making it harder to reserve rights for American citizens. That's why they put up a big stink when the US Census was going to ask about citizenship status, because they're afraid illegals won't be counted for congressional representation and the electoral college.

By the way, even the majority of minorities support voter id laws.

They aren't the ones pushing against womens rights to control their reproductive systems.

Just ignore the human life that's terminated by these "womens rights".

You think the left is intolerant?

Yes, I think harassing people in public, hounding them out of their jobs, and shutting down their free speech events is massively intolerant.

When over 90% of black people and the majority of other minorities vote for the left it's because they think (correctly) that the right is actively working against them.

No, it's because they are on the Democrat welfare plantation.

Tell you what, go ahead and tell a conservative christian that you are gay and that jesus is a lie and see what happens to you.

For fuck's sake, "piss christ" was an actual thing, and nothing happened. Do you know what would happen if you actually performed this experiment? They would probably politely tell you to stop bothering them.

Now go post a sign that says, "It's okay to be white", and see what happens.

Organs can not be harvested unless dead. Otherwise the surgery team would be murderers. They are not. A patient have to be declared dead before anything related to organ donation will begin. Properly dead: brain dead.

The family of donors doesn't get to pay for the donation. That is conspiracy theory crazy.

Well, take it up with these people: http://www.lifenews.com/2013/0... http://ahrp.org/us-organ-harve...

You are correct about the patient having to be declared brain dead. The question is does the heart stopping beating equal brain death. This is not terribly surprising, that doctors are in a hurry to remove body parts. given that a lot of people want a lot of body parts, and ther fresher the better, so tear 'em up.

But that this is some sort of conspiracy theory for kooks? Perhaps not.

That title definitely makes this book sound like it takes a balanced and objective viewpoint of the situation, with both sides of the argument covered.

There seems to be a cultural shift in recent decades where you can't make a clear argument any more.

This starts with journalism, where "balanced reporting" initially meant that news organizations couldn't show only one side of a controversial issue (abortion, roughly 50% of Americans on one side or the other), and has progressed to where "balanced" journalism includes giving equal air time to climate change deniers (less than 3% of scientists), ESP and paranormal believers, and other completely fringe views.

To be completely fair, about 40% of Americans believe in Creationism, so it's probably OK that this gets equal billing. The point isn't about the beliefs per-se, it's about journalists unwilling to choose a side. Equal billing tends to prop up failing modes of thought.

I've read numerous books and papers that posit a claim and then cite evidence to support that claim... I *thought* that's how science debate worked. For example, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind does precisely this: establish a point, then bolster it with reams and reams (well, one ream - 512 pages) of evidence.

Why does someone with a position to argue need to lay out both sides of an argument?

That's not how human perception works. We rely on experts to sort through the information we don't have time or expertise to deal with.

What's wrong with making a clear point in a book tagline?

Not keeping up on even past events, i see:

http://www.lifenews.com/2011/0...

"However, pro-life advocates and conservatives reacted strongly to the mandate and said the only way young girls would get the disease is if they engaged in sexual activity — prompting a call for more promotion of abstinence education, which Perry favors, instead. After the outcry, Perry allowed a bill to become law that the Texas legislature approved to backtrack on the decision, making it so young girls are no longer required to get the vaccine."

Your pause in bashing "stupid fucking partisan idiots," which you mistake as bashing republicans (personally, i can see how those can easily be mistaken for each other), would have been good in ONE solitary instance prior to 4 years ago.... but because the "stupid fucking partisan idiot" caved in to a bunch of other "whiny stupid fucking idiots," your pause is no longer valid. Try to keep up on events.

My religion? What, exactly, is my religion? (do you even know?) Do Straw-man Arguments win in your crowd? Or is it religion bashing that works?

People without religion (atheists) have killed more people, (than my religion) just because they are religious (Soviet Union, China), so can I toss all Atheists into the same bucket? And from the sounds of it, you're more likely to side with them (atheism killing people of religion) than with me, who happens to believe ALL life is valuable, and that I don't have to kill anyone in the name of my religion.

Death Panels have already taken place, under Federal rules/regulations. Luckily for the little girl, Sebelius didn't get her wish and the girl survived the death panel (of one).

http://www.lifenews.com/2013/0...

I would suggest, next time, before you mouth off, to actually know what the hell you're talking about, because you're really looking stupid right now.

The vast majority of abortions are not about maternal mortality. In fact, it's very, very rare that aborting a baby is medically indicated to save the life of the mother. So you're OK with banning abortion except to save the life of the mother? That sounds good to me, let's do it. We'll go ahead and schedule a two person march on Washington tomorrow.

• It was a term used by Sarah Palin

  one "news source"

  another

  and another

I think the whole "Death Panel" thing was just a Republican thing to scare people about Obamacare, as opposed to the sensible policy of only providing good health care to those who can afford it.

Also, just for the record, there are no Death Panels in the UK. No, it's called the Ministry of Death! ;)

http://www.lifenews.com/2012/07/03/melinda-gates-admits-stop-peoples-lives-from-existing/
Cited here:
http://www.dailypaul.com/243131/eugenicist-melinda-gates-stop-the-poor-from-reproducing

Or:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/melinda_gates_talks_eugenics.html
"Eugenics is the infamous idea that governments should decide which kinds of citizens ought to be considered desirable (the 1912 consensus was that these tended to be white, athletic, intelligent, and wealthy) and which kinds of citizens ought to be considered undesirable (these tended to be black, Jewish, disabled, or poor) and employ the power of the state to encourage increases of desirable citizens (positive eugenics) and encourage decreases of undesirable citizens (negative eugenics). The founder of eugenics, Sir Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, formulated the idea that the protection afforded by civil society had prevented the kind of natural selection occurring in Darwin's Origin of Species from happening in humans, thus perpetuating the existence of weak and feeble-minded people who would have been unable to survive in the state of nature.
Eugenicists differed on whether eugenics should be practiced in a soft manner, with taxpayer-underwritten incentives, or in a hard manner, using coercive and often deadly force. The movement claimed many adherents. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and her British counterpart Marie Stopes were both involved in their national eugenic societies. Margaret Sanger viewed her activism as a way to "assist the race towards the elimination of the unfit." Marie Stopes lobbied for "the sterilization of those totally unfit for parenthood [to be] made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory.""Eugenics is the infamous idea that governments should decide which kinds of citizens ought to be considered desirable (the 1912 consensus was that these tended to be white, athletic, intelligent, and wealthy) and which kinds of citizens ought to be considered undesirable (these tended to be black, Jewish, disabled, or poor) and employ the power of the state to encourage increases of desirable citizens (positive eugenics) and encourage decreases of undesirable citizens (negative eugenics). The founder of eugenics, Sir Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, formulated the idea that the protection afforded by civil society had prevented the kind of natural selection occurring in Darwin's Origin of Species from happening in humans, thus perpetuating the existence of weak and feeble-minded people who would have been unable to survive in the state of nature.
Eugenicists differed on whether eugenics should be practiced in a soft manner, with taxpayer-underwritten incentives, or in a hard manner, using coercive and often deadly force. The movement claimed many adherents. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and her British counterpart Marie Stopes were both involved in their national eugenic societies. Margaret Sanger viewed her activism as a way to "assist the race towards the elimination of the unfit." Marie Stopes lobbied for "the sterilization of those totally unfit for parenthood [to be] made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory.""

I am just shocked at how most slashdotters have fallen hook, line, and sinker for the overpopulation myth.
http://overpopulationisamyth.com/

As Julian Simon suggests, more people means more imagination, which can mean more wealth for everyone:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

And in any case, the world is suffering more from a demographic pea

It is almost unbelievable that everyone doesn't realize that government run healthcare is a panacea, isn't it?

State ‘Death Panels’ Attributable to Single-Payer
Carolina Man Battling Breast Cancer May Have to Pay After Denied Treatment
Letter noting assisted suicide raises questions
Oregon Tells Patients State Will Pay for Assisted Suicide, Not Health Care

Does everybody in the UK understand that?

Elderly dying due to 'despicable age discrimination in NHS'

Some people will believe anything despite the evidence, eh?

No, not privy to any quirk. But from watching him he's a "true believer", in the tent revival sense of the phrase. He really believes God puts a soul in a fertilized egg, for instance. He thinks Satan - the actual literary character Satan - is in charge of colleges, universities, and Protestants. He said that the JFK speech about the separation of church and state "almost made him throw up." He believes in intelligent design and doesn't believe in evolution, and tried to make it into law.

It's all well and good to be a Christian, but this guy is NUTS. Like padded room and Thorazine nuts. If anyone was going to push the jolly candy like button, it would be him or someone like him. He can't discern reality well enough to be trusted.

That's my opinion - take it for what it's worth.

Senator Paul was on his way to a March for Life event, and was departing from Nashville, KN. He was neither detained (although he was prevented from entering a secured area), nor placed under arrest. So I really don't think that there's any violation of section 6 here.

Sorry, but I've conservatives do not own the patent on bigotry. I've met more bigoted Democrats in my time than Republicans. Although, it's primarily because Democrats can get away with it.

Really? Citation needed.

See how that works? I suppose the difference is that I am referring to actual cases of obviously right-wing terrorism. Hell, I could pad this sentence out with more words all day, but I think my point is made.

Of course, I am sure these acts are all perpetrated by democrats who happen to share the same phobias and hatred that republicans have adopted as their political platform. I'm sure of it. Right? Because if even a few were conservatives acting out their hate rhetoric, that would be a lot worse than getting coffee spilled on you by some crazy guy, I think you can agree.

So I should be punished for the actions of people over a century ago? Should we jail German children for the Holocaust? Oh, and I should also mention that Lincoln was a Republican. George Wallace was a Democrat. Given that, why are you NOT a Republican. Why is that Democrats believe themselves victimized for the slightest resistance after centuries of victimization of all those around them?

Please notice, I said nothing about Republicans or Democrats. I said, very clearly, the right. The parties changed places in the early half of the century because of the growing conservatism in the Republican party. But then, of course, you know this; you are just willfully ignorant to make a point.

I'm still waiting for an answer to my question.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the millions of people that think that mankind can spew millions of toxic substances into the environment and possibly think that the earth has the mechanisms to deal with it on a time frame conducive to human life.

See, I think a reasonable baseline for people who don't know a lot about this subject is 'golly, it doesn't seem to make sense that we can just dump stuff into the ground or the air or the water with no consequences.' I'm with you so far.

Where I start to get alienated is the massive jump a lot of environmentalists make when they conclude that we shouldn't dump anything at all anyplace, and not only that, but that anyone who produces anything that requires energy or whose livelihood depends on it is like Cobra Commander cackling on a doomsday device. I don't think that 'most people' are unconcerned about the environment; I think 'most people' get turned off when they see protesters chaining themselves to a power plant because they don't approve of anything except solar and wind power. People who think it's OK for gas to double or triple in price because 'maybe then we'll understand how important this issue is.'

On the other side you have people like one couple in my town who drive around in a hummer in the suburbs for no reason I can see. I do think that's wasteful. I'm not sure that Beckham having his fourth child is an outrageous use of carbon as some people seem to think it is.

And carbon itself seems to be the big question. Again, it's easy to get folks on board when you're talking about dumping toxins into the water or the ground or the air. The argument in favor of cutting carbon emissions seems to be 'carbon retains some amount of heat, and the world seems to have more heat than it did, and we've been emitting a lot of carbon ... so, carbon must be it!' It's a very reasonable hypothesis and that seems to be what a lot of the science is focused on: is this true (seems to me like it could well be), but more importantly, to what extent is this true?

I'd sign off on closing down every coal plant in this country if we could deregulate Nuclear enough so that it doesn't take 10 years to see an ROI on it. But I don't see a lot of environmentalists coming with me on that.

The NYT is correct. I read the conservative attacks on Obama's health care plan in the WSJ, including Betsy McCaughey. I also read about the health plan in the New England Journal of Medicine.

For McCaughey, or anyone else, to claim that these were or would be anything like "death panels" to decide when to let someone die for cost-control purpose, is a lie. The conservatives lied. You can go to places like Factcheck.org to confirm that.

I guess when you close your eyes to everything that doesn't fit your own reality, your reality is only what you make it instead of anything real. I'm not going to go through the trouble of actually linking to these articles, but if you are interested in anything more then conformation bias, I suggest you copy and past these links out and read them. You should also note the dates of the articles and maybe send a copy to fact check dot org too. as you have already mentioned that you have read some of these, I have to ask why you are arguing that the death panels definition must be limited to a narrowly defined concept delivered by the democrats who are also in opposition to the republicans? I mean it's the conservatives making the charge, their attack, it's them who define what death panels are, not your biased opposition sites.

http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052970203863204574344900152168372.html
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=107403
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7948878/US-breast-cancer-drug-decision-marks-start-of-death-panels.html
http://www.lifenews.com/bio3084.html
http://www.slate.com/id/2224790

and before you start clamoring those are biased sites, I suggest you stop looking only at sites that you agree with and pay attention to the links as the one is from another country altogether with absolutely no vested interest in the US health care system. A few others are what most would consider a left leaning site which admits that the death panels were more then end of life counseling stating that they would ration health care which Obama already has said it's done already, why not do it in the open.

You don't think Al Franken's libel lawyers would have let him print a book like "Lies: and the Lying Liars who Tell them" if he couldn't actually prove that Republicans lied, do you? Actually, all Franken did was assign a bunch of summer interns to fact-check statements by right-wing crackpots like Limbaugh.

This is hilarious. Are you actually arguing that Al Franken's lawyers are so smart that they wouldn't let him publish a book with falsehoods in it but so stupid that they can't go after the people he claims is spouting falsehoods? I mean seriously, do you think it's anything like that at all? Did you even think that out before making your statement or is that something you saw on one of your conformational bias sites and liked it enough to repost?

Here is a hint, Franken's lawyers said to him- if anything, it's political speech, the most protected speech by the first amendment. And no, the so called fact checkers didn't check the facts or he ignored them completely just as you are in order to impress your views right now.

All I asked for when I made that post was that there was some honesty in this discussion. You have proved to me that it is impossible to expect that from you or perhaps your side. The death panels charge was more then end of life counseling and you seem to know it. You can find more about it simply by searching for obamacare death panels. And of course, there is no shortage of people connected to Obama who reinforce this concept by public policy positions publicly held in the present or somewhat recent past.

Abortion Reduces Crime Moderate this "Offtopic" along with all the other abortion posts, but it has to be brought up in light of the posts referring to the discredited Freakanomics abortion theory. http://www.lifenews.com/nat2550.html by Paul Nowak LifeNews.com Staff Writer August 30, 2006 Chicago, IL (LifeNews.com) -- A new paper by two prominent economists will challenge a claim in the best-selling book Freakanomics that legalized abortion has reduced crime. John R. Lott Jr. and John Whitley, affiliated with the University of Chicago, have written a paper challenging the pro-abortion claims made by Freakanomics author Steven D. Levitt. Lott and Whitley expect their paper to be published in October in the journal Economic Inquiry, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. In his book, Levitt argues that the ready availability of abortion since its legalization in 1973 resulted in fewer unwanted children and therefore less crime in later generations. He cited arrest records to claim that abortion would account for a 1% reduction in crime each year over the next two decades. Lott and Whitley are challenging Levitt's assumptions, pointing out that Levitt did not consider all the factors affecting the crime rate, including the increase of children born out of wedlock since the Roe v. Wade decision. According to their research, ready access to abortion has made women more likely to engage in premarital sex, and as a result more children are being born to single women. They point out that 5 percent of white children were born out of wedlock from 1965 to 1969, compared to 16 percent in the 1980's. Black children born out of wedlock increased from 35 percent to 62 percent in the same period. These children of unwed mothers, statistically more at risk of becoming criminals, are responsible for the increase of murders by 700 cases in 1998 alone, according to Lott and Whitley. Such a dramatic increase carried a financial price tag of $3.3 billion in "victimization costs," according to their paper. Lott and Whitley are not the first to challenge Levitt's popular book. In November 2005, Christopher Foote, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and research assistant Christopher Goetz, told the Wall St. Journal the data Levitt used was faulty. Foote said there was a "missing formula" in Levitt's original research that allowed him to ignore certain factors that may have contributed to the lowering of crime rates during the 1980s and 1990s. Foote also argues that Levitt counted the total number of arrests made when he should have used per-capita figures. After Foote adjusted for both factors, the abortion effect simply disappeared, the Journal reported. "There are no statistical grounds for believing that the hypothetical youths who were aborted as fetuses would have been more likely to commit crimes had they reached maturity than the actual youths who developed from fetuses and carried to term," the Foote and Goetz say in their report.

Paul said he was pro-life and would make reversing the decision a top priority.

He also said that more people should be exposed to what abortion does to an unborn child and women who have them.

He has also voted against public funding of adult stem cell research and is against taxpayer-funded embryonic stem cell research.

Paul said he was pro-life & would make reversing the decision a top priority.

He also said that more people should be exposed to what abortion does to an unborn child and women who have them.

He has also voted against public funding of adult stem cell research and is against taxpayer-funded embryonic stem cell research.

Paul said he was pro-life and would make reversing the decision a top priority.

He also said that more people should be exposed to what abortion does to an unborn child and women who have them.

He has also voted against public funding of adult stem cell research and is against taxpayer-funded embryonic stem cell research.

They have and and will continue to abstain until they are married ...

Even if your children abstain studies have shown that some children who receive only abstinence education and/or take the pledge to abstain in fact don't. Here's an article on one such study, Abstinence-only data released . This one is about a documentary made on comprehensive sex ed vs abstainance only, Documentary features sex ed debate . Google news has four links from different media sources on the document on the first page of results. Then there's this, Pediatricians Group Approves Policy Opposing Abstinence Education . Some children go so far as to pull a Bill Clinton saying they didn't know what they did was sex. Many instead of having intercourse, ie vaginal penetration with a penis, they have oral sex or anal penetration, which isn't "sex" to them.

"[...] Bush's "abstinence" programs that have managed the first rise in American abortions after a decade of decline."

Actually, that's not true.
Abortions Did Not Increase Under President Bush; Researcher's Study Flawed

Unless, of course, you try to hold up a Anti-abortion sign. If you do that, a Kerry staffer will rip the sign from your arms and tear it to pieces.