Slashdot Mirror
US Election's Only VP Debate Tonight: Weigh In With Your Reactions
Tonight's debate between the two largest American political parties' candidates for vice president of the United States takes place at Danville, Kentucky's Centre College, starting at 9 p.m. Joe Biden and Paul Ryan will face each other on stage, and are expected to talk about issues "including the economy, foreign policy and the role of the Vice President," according to C-SPAN, which will feature a live streaming view of the event. (Criteria from the Commission on Presidential Debates
means you won't hear tonight from other presidential candidates' running mates (like Cheri Honkala, Jim Clymer, and
James Gray, of the Green, Constitution, and Libertarian party tickets, respectively). If you'll be watching the debate tonight, please add your commentary below. It would be helpful if you start your comment's title with a time-stamp (to the minute), too, for context. (Like this: "9:08: $Candidate just intentionally mis-repeated the Q on taxes.") And Yes, we're posting this here in a vain attempt to keep the political discussion out of other story threads tonight.
Update: 10/12 01:18 GMT by U L : If you don't have flash, you can use rtmpdump and mplayer to watch (incantation duplicated below, in case the site is slashdotted).
Via Don Armstrong an incantation to watch the debate without flash:
rtmpdump -v -r rtmpt://cp82346.live.edgefcs.net:1935/live?ovpfv=2.1.4 \
--tcUrl rtmp://cp82346.live.edgefcs.net:1935/live?ovpfv=2.1.4 \
--app live?ovpfv=2.1.4 --flashVer LNX.11,2,202,238 \
--playpath CSPAN1@14845 \
--swfVfy http://www.c-span.org/cspanVideoHD.swf \
--pageUrl http://www.c-span.org/ | \
mplayer -xy 3 -;
They will surely be debating the finer points on Windows or Linux being better for government computing.
Carbonite Backup Solutions is extremely relevant to technology
I'll be playing Logical Fallacy Bingo against my friends. I personally expect it to be a fast bingo game.
Is this one where he talks about when his wife & daughter died: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GwZ6UfXm410
His humanity is the opposite of Robomittens. /stupid onions.
$Candidate intentionally lied to the public
You might want to check this out. Don't blame me if you have a hangover in the morning.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
And for Freezing Hans Solo too?
I prefer backblaze myself.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Windows in the Government? Naw, it'll never happen. It's too newfangled. I hear Ultrix 32 is the latest shiznit over at the IRS.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Does anyone pick the president by the VP they choose? Do they think, "I like the other guy more for president, but I'm voting for this guy because he will be a better VP"?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Just ask Lyndon Johnson? Harry Truman? Andrew Johnson? Chester Arthur? Gerald Ford? Teddy Roosevelt?
There's been 14 VPs who became president but not all became president when the incumbent died in office. That's why I believe the country was holding its breath that Dan Quayle didn't get the job and that GB Sr. Had excellent health care.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Commission on Presidential Debates
a.k.a. the Republican and Democratic parties. They will never allow a third party to debate; if they happen to meet the criteria, they'll simply increase the threshold(s).
This is one of the major issues preventing any real change from happening in the US federal government, simply because new ideas are being suppressed by the incumbents.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
The stranglehold that the so-called two party system has on the public is unbelievable but somehow these dogs have figured out a way to fool the man on the streets that they have a real role in their future.
Your future, as a citizen, in politics is one of getting fucked by the man and hoping the next administration will at least give you a reach around.
Dan Quayle and Dick Cheney were the best assassination attempt prevention ever.
I'm thinking McCain was going the same route, but shot too far.
No matter who wins this debate, or the election, Americans have lost.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
If you stood them side by side, I'd have to guess Biden is the MS guy and Ryan is the Mac guy
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Question straight to the heart
Number Two.
That's what they are. Both of them.
For those who are wondering which time zone, it's starting at 9pm EDT (UTC-4).
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Are you smarter than an Ayatollah?
Looks a bit like the Jack Nicholson Joker...
well under the ryan plan tech will look at your health care history.
And soon under that plan DNA testing will be used to pre load on to the pre-existing condition list.
I think "Bob" is winning the debate.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
Can I mod this article "-1 Flamebait"?
I admit I didn't watch the debate with an open mind GANNAM STYLE. I have a view of Ryan as a negative for Romney because he's been caught lying too many times WOP WOP WOP.
I've already dismissed Ryan after his 'truthiness' in this OH WOP speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Kw9uJtBrAw&feature=related
OH WOP GANGNAM STYLE. Then there was the messup with the reporter where he admits tax cuts are the magic fix and his handler has to cut the interview short:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDdw20LFFlc
WOP WOP WOP, but mostly it's that I can't imagine him single PSY's song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60MQ3AG1c8o
Does choosing a candidate based on whether they can mime to a song, make me a bad person?
You won't read anything about Biden not being engaged tomorrow. So far he's making Ryan look like an amateur and he's not letting Ryan get away with lying.
Biden is crushing it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It is always humorous to watch the political fanbois go at it from the sidelines. Seeing people become so impassioned about which set of crooks are going stuff the shirts this time around is a devil's belly laugh. As has been said so many times, when the boot of government is on your throat, it makes no difference if it is a left boot or a right boot.
Both sides may be "crooks", depending on the criteria, but I don't think you can say that it makes no difference who is elected. ie. The Affordable Care Act is an event on the scale of the imposition of an federal income based tax, or the start of the Social Security system. Regardless of your feeling of the act itself, its is highly significant, and its a certainty that it wouldn't have passed if McCain had been elected. So its petulant and intellectually dishonest to say that its "makes no difference"
Biden discussed nuclear bomb making.
Where the answers are made up and the points don't matter!
In the colonial Commonwealth of Massachusetts, my vote does not count. I'm not far from Plymouth Rock, the place where pissed-off subjects of King George landed after betting their lives that there was a better way to civilize.
I have voted for Republican candidates in the past but I'm done with them. GWB/Cheney/Rumsfeld fucked us hard. That bastard Romney came here to my state, where he doesn't fucking belong, and fucked us over. Now he's attempting to take over the Oval Office on the grounds that what he did to Massachusetts should not be done to the USA. He should be swimming with the fish in Boston Harbor.
If there was a candidate who ran on the platform of tearing off Romney's head and shitting down his neck, he'd get my vote.
I'm Alien Being and I approve this message.
John Jackson is way better than his clone Jack Johnson!
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
where is federal reserve/monitory policy question?
What does it mean in body language terms to repeatedly tick the table whit the index finger, Biden is over doing it. Like reaffirming what he is saying. May be there is something else with that gesture, this is /. so I'm assuming someone will know (and that someone will answer to FTFG).
Ryan looks really calm about everything, he for sure know about non-verbal communication.
I feel like Obama was put in the drivers seat just when the car we're in has come under attack by drug cartel because some idiot drove us into a warzone, so now when he's trying to get us out of there, the previous driver is in the passenger seat complaining about following the speed limit and all traffic laws and grabbing at the steering wheel and brakes. and the passengers in the car are saying..why aren't we going anywhere?! we're so mad we're going vote the original driver back in..
I think the defining issue is ending the Bush tax cuts for the rich. If you watch Fox, they've tried all sorts of talking points to try to kill this issue and they keep trying new angles:
Remember, 'taxing job creators'? As if taxing rich peoples personal income will cause their companies to fire lots of people.
Remember 'dividing American?' i.e. claiming that singling out rich people for more taxes is dividing American!
Remember '53% vs 47%', the flip of dividing America, where they claim the majority are against the minority who don't pay direct fed taxes... that one died when it was pointed out a lot of the top 1% don't pay any taxes at all.
Remember 'the haves and the soon to haves?' i.e. you'll be rich soon, and then you'll get to pay less than 13%!
What about 'Robin Hood on Steroids'? The latest one, the 'income redistribution is bad', as if taking their tax cuts away from them is some sort of highway robbery!
You can see just from watching Fox, what the Republicans feel their defining issue is. It's tax cuts for the rich.
Doubtless that someone always pays. The act changes who is going to be directly paying. That's significant.
And there's other examples, some of them quite easy. Gore likely wouldn't have put troops into Iraq, again supressing your feelings of the event itself. What would Carter have done with the air traffic controllers, and would it have precipitated or acted against the rise of anti-union feeling in the country since? Would Nixon have initiated the Great Society and all its culteral consequences?
But like the last time, the missing subject?
Civil liberties... Oh well, gotta keep that prison population up to pay the rent...
Didn't pay attention in civics class, did you?
V.P. gets tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
It reminds me of the Live Polling bit on the Onion.
he also out-spoke Biden. The fact is, that Ryan worked hard to not say anything. He spoke about balancing the budget, but would come up with nothing. He spoke about troop pull down, but continued to ignore the fact that Afghanistans were replacing our NATO troops, etc. etc., etc.
OTOH, Biden really just kept saying the same thing over and over.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I used to think that, until the Iraq War. That disaster made me much more partisan. I really think hundreds of thousands of people died because Gore (barely!) lost that election.
Even more concerning is the callers at the end.
Not being an American, it was rather a shock to hear a member of the military calling up after the debate that America should invade Iran and they they urge people to vote for a certain candidate so nobody touched the military. The justification? "We have to get them before they get us".
Great work America - fix your shit up by going to war. That worked so well last time.
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
Except for #1, the debate participant rules (http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=candidate-selection-process) do look biased in favor of the ruling parties:
2) Mathematical chance of securing a majority of the Electoral College votes. This doesn't take into account the possibility of say a three-corner fight where nobody gets the desired number of votes.
3) 15% popular support. Why is this set so high when a majority or significant plurality of Americans don't vote?
what's funny about assassination?
Just wondering...
you need 2/3 the senate to pass a bill. that's how much it takes to break a filibuster
50/50 vote is just looking good for the peons back home and/or voting in line with what the party boss tells you
You don't think the difference between the two sets of candidates will reflect on the tech marketplace? I do.
As for my reaction, As I saw it, Biden had Ryan for lunch. Actually, that's what happened in the first debate too, if you go by the actual substance, because Romney lied his *ass* off to come out on top in perception. Obama was too polite; he knows that, has said so, and I expect Romney to have his butt handed to him in perception as *well* as facts the next time around.
If the republicans really want that seat, they need someone better than Romney. The man is an ass. Ryan is simply sans clue.
Too bad they couldn't see their way to run Paul. Aside from the religious dumbfuckery (which they all share so they can get elected), Paul would have been the most interesting candidate. Might have been able to vote for him. But no way can I vote for Romney. Man doesn't even know how to treat his dog.
While we're dreaming Instant Runoff voting
I watched most of it, and the entire time I kept thinking that Joe Biden should stop beating up on that poor kid sitting next to him.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
Are you serious? You can't think of a single issue on which Obama and Romney differ?
How about taxes? Romney's official plan is a 20% across the board cut, at a cost of $500B/yr, which will be paid for by *handwaves furiously*. Obama's plan is ditch the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and bring capital gains taxes about halfway back towards where they were under Clinton.
How about healthcare? Romney's on the record saying things were alright pre-Obamacare, and he wants to go back to that. Obama, obviously, wants to keep Obamacare on the books.
How about military spending? Obama is trying to cut it by $100B/yr, while Romney's proposal is to raise it by $200B/yr.
How about Medicare? Obama wants to keep it mostly as is, making small adjustments to keep it solvent. Romney wants to make it a voucher system that would force senior citizens to turn to for-profit corporations for their healthcare.
How about abortion? Obama wants women to be in charge of their own bodies, Romney is on record supporting a life-begins-at-conception amendment and has pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v Wade. Considering that a few of the current liberal justices are getting up there in years, he would almost certainly be able to have abortion outlawed nationwide.
That's just off the top of my head. Sure, if you only care about IP law and drone strikes, the two candidates are identical. But there are lots of very important issues on which the two candidates couldn't be more different.
Gitmo is still open because you voted in Republicans into the House:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/8/congress-deals-death-blow-gitmo-closure/?page=all
The fix is to stop voting in these GOP morons.
The stuff they couldn't block, like killing Osama Bin Laden, he did. When they held the Presidency, they didn't even try to get him. He was too useful as a bogeyman.
He muddled through Health Care Reform in exchange for no rich people taxes, I'll give you that.
To me the biggest triumph was the Republican 'lets kill Americans bill' (akak National Defense Authorization Act). He was supposed to reject it, and GOP/Fox would label him as being a terrorist sympathizer. Instead he rejects it 'because it isn't tough enough', and then gets them to put in safeguards against Americans, and rules it shouldn't be used by his administration.
So the Republicans didn't get their talking point, and now if you vote Republican, you're voting for a party that WILL USE this law they pushed through against Americans. He turned their bill into a poison pill against them.
Skillful politics, but he would never have had to do that if you hadn't have voted in the Republicans into the House.
It's a first step to single-payer. It's about time the USA makes a step towards re-joining the First World.
> Weigh In With Your Reactions
Haha! 134 idiots responded.
135, shit.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Can anyone identify an issue - not an opinion or a general feeling or a policy goal, but an actual issue - for which Obama and Romney are on opposite sides? Something for which Obama would veto and Romney would pass, or vice versa?
Sure. Abortion and specific tax proposals are two of the most prominent issues featured during tonight's debate, though there were several others.
Each issue is a labyrinth of mis-quotes, mis-information, and nuance. Did Obama double the deficit? Or is it the debt? Or did he double it, but it's Bush's fault? ... etc, etc
I think you need to check your news sources, dude. The information is out there, but you're not going to get it from NBC, ABC, CNN or any of the other yahoos. Personally I like the newshour and if I've REALLY got questions the answers are always available if you're willing to do original research, like looking up an actual CBO report and skimming it (I've done this once or twice).
With that being said, there's only so much one can be informed and still maintain a job and family. That's ok. These people are our representatives and we elect them to act as such. Our job is to make sure they don't royally screw it up and they are not abusing their power and screwing the people at large. It's your opinion how well we citizens are doing on this.
Regardless of the R or D after the name, how about we just vote the incumbent out?
Well... that's one way to do it and I've considered it. Another way is to vote 3rd party. But my personal method is to vote gridlock. Gridlock is awesome. It pits the special interest groups against another and generally results in a stalemate where no crap gets through the system. As the 90s showed us there can be some loud sabre rattling, but the world doesn't fall apart and stuff does get done. The stuff that actually NEEDS to get done does get done and the crap stays in the committees where it belongs. Because of my views on certain issues and my perception of the respective party platforms I choose a Republican legislature and a Democratic President. I think if we had gridlock, we'd all be better for it.
TL;DR - Vote Gridlock because politicians are stupid.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
I think this close to the election, presidential politics is relevant on slashdot. Which administration do you think would be better for the tech sector?
Now, we should remember that Al Gore "invented the Internet", and that Bush thought it was a "series of tubes". A big plus for Obama: he can describe Bubble Sort!!!
Seriously, tech was better off before Washington DC got all hot and heavy in their face when they started to make money. And, by the way, Ryan is a total waste of carbon.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
But not a word about lasers!.. Much less sharks...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I caught ~20 minutes of it while driving home from work tonight. It did seem like Biden was more aggressive than the usual M.O. for this administration and Ryan was surprisingly calm. Considering how far outside the mainstream Ryan's ideas fall, I figured he would be more passionate about it. It seemed like the moderator didn't do much to stop them from addressing each other directly, yet it didn't seem to phase Ryan much.
That said, what I heard was towards the end. Attitudes of the candidates may well have changed along the way.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Correct. There's a difference. If Romney wins, there will almost certainly be a war with Iran. If Obama wins, there may not be. That is literally a life or death difference to many, many people who would live or die according to that choice.
-Gareth
Yeah. Both Obama and Romney are moderates. I don't think it's right, though, to say there is no difference. There are differences. Most of the difference would come from legislation which neither candidate would pursue out of personal agenda but would happily sign or veto based on the preferences of his party or base.
the other team has a pretty high score too. I don't think people at wedding ceremonies blown up by the US drones see any substantial difference.
done, and done!
you nailed it.
too bad that a good half of this country can't see this well.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Jabs and accute politicking aside, the two men offer very different ideologies and views on life. Whereas Joe Biden says "privatization" like it is a bad thing, to Paul Ryan "government's control" is the worst curse.
Having grown up in the USSR with first-hand experience of government's control of economy, I would've preferred Ryan even if he did not look so persuasive and hands-on and even if Biden has not shone his uber-smile in such unsettling manner all the time.
Last, but not least, I still remember Biden's sequence of idiocies (no, not gaffes) from 4 years ago...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
We'll never know how many would have died at the hands I'd Saddam's son either (he was known for being a complete sociopath with homocidal tendencies, torturing multiple people to death because they displeased him).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Wow, you really know your consitution and how the vice president can be dismissed. Or are you just pretending to be stupid?
That was the commercial break.
Most of those things you mention are in the hands of congress, not the president. Drone strikes, however, are.
Lets say that we vote out ALL incumbents. Who would replace them? The exact same kind of person. The reason is that these ppl are all bought. Not by us voters, but by companies, unions, foreign nations, rich ppl, illegals, etc. As such, simply voting out every one of these assholes will do us ZERO good.
We NEED to stop the corruption. That is why I am part of RootStrikers.org. USA needs to prevent money from flowing to politicians/family/friends, AND to prevent outside money from flowing in as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think that is what the GP is talking about.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Seeing people become so impassioned about which set of crooks are going stuff the shirts this time around is a devil's belly laugh.
I'm pretty sick of this whole "they're crooks" thing. That generally cover for the cognitive bubble. Most politicians really believe in things.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Doubtless that someone always pays. The act changes who is going to be directly paying. That's significant.
It is not just who pays, but also changing incentive structures which will limit rent seeking behaviour from insurance companies. There is a reason why the USA pays more than twice as much per person on healthcare than anybody else in the world.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Once you're in you're in. Politics is the art of the possible.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
But the USA would be defeated in a bloodbath by China, therefore, the USA will never invade China. Every US president since Nixon, I think, has kissed the feet of the Chinese government. Most favoured nation, indeed.
Jon Stewart vs. Bill O'Reilly.
The only political debate worth watching in this election.
End of story.
I used to think that, until the Iraq War. That disaster made me much more partisan. I really think hundreds of thousands of people died because Gore (barely!) lost that election.
Enough Democrats (including Hillary and Kerry) voted for the Iraq war that GWB could get away with it.
Yeah, it makes a difference. The Democrats will be better than the Republicans. But the Dems have moved so far to the right that the difference is getting smaller every year. If you look at the issues, Obama is farther to the right on domestic policy than Nixon.
-- Instead of a single-payer health care system, or even a public option, Obama gave us a health care plan designed by the Heritage Foundation, for the benefit of the insurance companies that contributed even more to Obama's campaign than to McCain's.
-- Obama took GWB's No Child Left Behind, and added to it with Race to the Top, which forces states and cities to break their union contracts and destroy public education with charter schools if they want to keep getting their federal education money. It's destroying the unions.
-- Instead of prosecuting the people responsible for the worst financial crisis since the depression, including outright fraud, he appointed the very people responsible for the crisis to handle the crisis.
-- When O'Keefe made a fraudulent video about ACORN, instead of defending ACORN, the Democrats abandoned ACORN and let the Republicans destroy the most valuable voter-registration organization the Democrats had. Brilliant! Now who's going to register your voters?
-- When you ask Democrats why we should vote for Obama, they're finally reduced in desperation to saying, "Supreme Court." Yeah, we'll get Supreme Court justices who are merely "centerists" (conservatives) rather than getting far-right partisan justices who will brazenly ignore the Constitution as they did in Bush vs. Gore. Of course the Democrats would never consider a filibuster in a Supreme Court nomination.
"Vote for us, because the alternative is horrible" is not a very inspiring reason to vote.
------
I wanted an FDR and all I got was this lousy Obama.
Obviously your reaction isn't indicative of a typical American reaction, since all the post-debate polls showed Romney won hands down.
No surprise with Romney's tactics: Americans like to be lied to so they can keep their precious illusions intact. That is a huge part of the reason your country is in such a mess now. A bit of humility and actually getting to grips with reality could place the US firmly back in the 1st world. (Forget about "world leadership". That is and has always been one of these illusions. The ability to destroy something does not imply you lead anything.)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's an awfully boring fact that the number of people who die depends not so much on how great or terrible their ruler is, but on whether the mains power run, water flows, hospitals operate, etc. Even in a war like the one in Iraq, the number of people killed directly by bombs, bullets etc. is only ~110,000, compared to the ~1,000,000 who died from lack of air-conditioning, insufficient sanitation, etc. caused by the war, measured against the base death rate under Saddam's rule. (See list of casualty estimates; note the difference between "deaths" and "violent deaths".) Saddam's son could have tortured a hundred people to death every day, and it still wouldn't have mattered as much as whether he did a better or worse job of maintaining Iraq's infrastructure than the invading Coalition army did.
The best estimates of the number of people GWB killed in the Iraq war are between 150,000 (New England Journal of Medicine) and 600,000 (The Lancet).
Even Uday wouldn't have killed that many people. Indeed, we probably tortured more Iraqi prisoners to death than Uday did.
At least Saddam knew how to run a country. Everybody got a basic food basket. The electricity ran. Iraq had the best health care system in the Moslem middle east. Iraq had one of the best education systems -- they had a higher ratio of women college professors than the US. They sent graduate students to study medicine and engineering in London. Saddam was a secularist who suppressed the Islamist extremists. What did GWB replace it with? A third-world country in which armed gangs kill more people than Saddam did. In which Sunnis and Shiites kill each other like the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
Romney's promised to repeal Obamacare, but I don't think he actually wants to. It IS his health care plan, after all. Unless he has a super majority in the senate, he won't be able to, so he'll be able to keep it and blame the Democrats for not being able to get rid of it. That's textbook having your cake and eating it too right there.
All in all, if Romney is elected he'll be a mostly ineffectual president, being blocked by the Democrats on most of the things he promised during his campaign. If Obama wins, he'll be a mostly ineffectual president, being blocked by the Republicans on most of the things he promised during his campaign. Unless the numbers in the house and senate make a major shift, it doesn't really matter who ends up being president. Not that much, anyway.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Is this the opening of a Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail sequel?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
But then, the Iraqi might have stepped up and participated in their own Arab Spring. We will never know that, and worse, neither will they.
Can anyone identify an issue - not an opinion or a general feeling or a policy goal, but an actual issue - for which Obama and Romney are on opposite sides?
Firstly: pretty much any social conservative issue. Repeal DADT? GOP will do that. Stop women getting health insurance coverage for contraception through their employers? Yep the GOP want that too. Ban abortion -- if they could. They certainly will appoint the supreme court in such a way that Roe v Wade will eventually end.
Also, the Dems will almost certainly not promulgate the war on science that the GOP is involved in. You really want someone in charge of the EPA who is a paranoid anti-science conspiracy theorist (Inhofe). What about the guy on the house science committee who thinks that evolution and cosmology are lies from the pit of hell to make people think that they do not need Jesus as their saviour?
Also, the GOP will veto tax increases on the 1%. As for the dems, they caved once on this already. But this time, they may draw blood on the issue. So there's the whole trickle-down versus keynesian economics thing. I would argue that giving the rich more money will not spur the economy because there is already a glut of investment money. We have a deficit in demand.
So there are three *huge* and *stark* differences between the parties: gender equality, the place of science in society, and nigh on opposite views on economics. If the dems controlled the house and senate, Romney would veto this stuff, and vice versa.
It took me a long time to realise this, and it is both shocking and depressing. But politicians really do believe most of what they say. They even believe in their outright lies.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The fact that Obama is not perfect,doesn't mean he's the same. I fear Romney would be much more likely to get us in a war in Syria or Iran; he might decide we need to stay in Afghanistan, might repeal Obamacare, and might change the tax code to make it less fair; also, he might push/allow for more government intervention in private life, and allow more corruption and incompetence. So, not the same.
The GOP have descended into an alternate reality -- and taken many with them. This will be lethal to them over time, as demographic changes clearly favour the dems.
The GP really did nail the issues, and the GOP will really need to remake themselves, and soon.
The only reason why Romney has a snowballs chance in hell is because the economy hasn't recovered so fast. It is utterly amazing the Obama is in the race at all given the economic figures. And the reason is that even the GOP faithful are starting to have doubts about their world of spin.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I think you need to check your news sources, dude. The information is out there, but you're not going to get it from NBC, ABC, CNN or any of the other yahoos
lol! Did Obama double the deficit? Or the debt? It is not a matter of opinion, unless you descend into the alternate reality of conservative media. And of /course/ traditional media has to be biased. How else could conservatives coddle their feel-good universe?
Two words: epistemic closure.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Am I the only one who though Biden lost hard? He was obviously angry and emotional, but his arguments were almost completely defensive, arguing why Ryan was lying or wrong, but very little criticism of the Romney/Ryan platform. And much of what he said seemed incoherent. Ryan on the other hand kept his cool, made compelling and reasonable-sounding (though possibly completely wrong) arguments. Biden was a cornered animal fighting for his life. Ryan was the fearless hunter who knew he would win in any case.
And I'm almost always a reliable Democratic voter.
That said, I don't believe the Romney/Ryan position. Cutting taxes may help the economy, but will disproportionately benefit the rich. Big stock portfolio? It grows with the economy. As the money trickles down, the rich keep their share before the rest of us ever see it. I also don't believe there's enough loopholes to pay for it, so it will increase the deficit in order to hand cash directly to high income earners. I do like the idea of economic growth to inflate our way out of the Social Security/Medicare/Medicade problem, but will congress really not increase payments under those programs as the economy grows? And the slash and burn attitude Romney had towards federal discretionary spending will /hurt/ the economy, possibly more than the tax cuts will help.
In the end, I think Obama is right. We're in a pickle and we'll have to endure both tax cuts and spending cuts to get out off it. If we focus those on the rich, the poor and middle class will continue to spend and at the very least they won't slow growth too much.
I still think Biden lost hard though. The only question is whether he did worse or just almost as bad as Obama. I had to do a lot of thinking to decide why I wasn't considering voting republican. I wish I'd voted for Hillary 4.5 years ago now though.
Can anyone explain how the Romney tax plan works. We've all heard it doesn't add up, so I'll just summarize that below. What I'm looking for are explanations of how it makes sense. I heard Ryan not explain it. He talks about "broadening a base" via eliminating deductions. What does that mean?
Summary of the tax plan (taken from Romney website):
1) No AMT, no estate tax
2) No tax on Dividends, INterest or Cap gains.
3) cut maximum tax bracket by 20% from bush maximum: that is to say 15% on ordinary income.
4) Eliminate "most" deductions but keep home mortgage deduction.
Other bullet points (taken from Romney web page).
1) wont lower revenues
2) upper income earners wont pay a smaller "share". (unclear)
3) won't raise taxes on taxes on middle class. (presumably in aggregate).
Clear areas lacking explanation:
Consider that top teir earners pay most of the tax in the US right now and that they earn most of their income from Cap gains not Ordinary income like wages. If you remove the tax on cap gains, then they pay only a few percent on their combined income. This will drastically reduce not just their "share" but strongly imapct total revenue.
Note that lowering deductions barely affects this analysis. Even if you set the ordinary income tax rate at 110% on the wealthy, the fact that nearly all their income is cap gains means they still pay almost no tax. Furthermore since there is no estate tax, this situation does not correct itself at death.
SO how can this meet the claims about revenue neutral, not lowering the share of the upper income earners, or not push more taxes on the middleclass.
I'm looking for explanations not anti romney propganda. And what does "broadening the base" mean if there's no cap gains tax?
thanks!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Wow, awesome! When can I expect these checks to come in? Also, to which of my emails did I receive a letter from Karl Rove? I don't really like the guy but I didn't think I was on his radar!
Take off the tinfoil helmet and look at my posting history. You know, the >10 year long one. Where I'm a pretty far left liberal. From Canada. You paranoid fool.
Or maybe they replaced me with an EVIL REPUBLICAN CLONE! Boogy boogy boogy!
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Iraq Regime change policy was adopted under Clinton in 1998. Look up Iraq Liberation Act.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Strange as it seems, not everyone on /. is a sociopathic Libertarian.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Romney's promised to repeal Obamacare, but I don't think he actually wants to.
Romney has an even better plan!
He promised to repeal the Health Care Act, but keep just the good parts that everyone likes (preexisting conditions/covering children/etc).
Consistent with his general budget plan of cutting taxes for everyone 20%, increasing military spending and remaining revenue neutral or even positive.
Magic.
Good Question!
I'd also like to know how this might affect the tech sector.
1) I note the following a few companies that are doing well (Apple I'm looking a you) have massive foreign earnings accumulating. Is this income or cap gains? If cap gains then is there is the possibility they would repatriate this to the US allowing higher dividends to share holders. They might also use their discretion to book more profit in the US if the max tax bracket was 15%? On the other hand, their a multi-national company so they would only do that if stockholders demanded it--they have no obligation to the US. They might even use it as leverage to get more favorable rates from other countries.
2) many start ups thrive on options. But with options come cap gains taxes. Look at Zuckerberg having to sell stock to pay for the options taxable value. Would this change how startups are financed?
The two main parties are so close to being the same thing, and religiously avoid talking about things that really matter, like loss of our freedoms, like the hideous expense of trying to run an empire in a post imperialistic world, like how it's the big corporate gambling and beer lobbyists who pay for the Presidential debates through their joint "non-profit" corporation, and thereby get credit for giving equal amounts to both parties, so you are guaranteed a corrupted party no matter which one you vote for, like how in the old days before capitalist cronyism took over from honest capitalism, when the League of Women Voters used to insist on moderators that would ask real questions instead of the softballs that the two parties get to specify in their written contract with their lobbyist sponsors, before the debate dates are even set. How about that. They work together, mainly to make sure that no third party even gets heard of. The sponsors don't really care which of their puppets gets in or stays in power.
Vote Libertarian, Vote Green, Vote Flying Yogis, anything but mainstream. Don't even look at their mind rot, and someday we will be free again.
Only look at the platforms of the sincere alternatives. Don't waste you honest mind on corrupt politics.
Wait, you're complaining about Romney's dog? What about Obama literally eating a dog???
What about it? It wasn't his dog, he had no more attachment to it than one might to a hamburger, porkchop, or whatever other meat product is served in a restaurant.
And yet there are people who keep all sorts of animals as pets. Including pigs and cows.
Yes, a lot of Americans freak out over the idea of eating dogmeat, but it's part of Indonesian cuisine, and given that Obama was a young child, I don't think we can ascribe to him any responsibility for any cruelty that might have happened to the dog which was eaten by him, if indeed there was any of substance. Which has never been alleged anyway.
The same cannot be said of Mitt Romney. That was his dog. He was an adult. He transported it on the roof of his car. What kind of person needs to be told not to do that? It's quite different from eating the meat you're served as a child, to which you have no attachment at all.
Of course, if you're a vegetarian and oppose the eating of meat at all, you're free to do so, however I doubt Mitt Romney is a better choice in that regard. I haven't noticed him favoring Vegetarian ideals, and since he's claimed some association with a certain Pizza company, well, he's actually profited over their work selling meat to the public.
You may wish to look elsewhere if that's the case with you.
But don't expect me to not be able to tell the difference between eating meat and how you treat your pet.
what's funny about assassination?
Just wondering...
The joke was: McCain's VP nomination (Sarah Palin) was a worse choice for VP than Quayle or Cheney.
Obviously an arguable point, but humorous none-the-less.
Well that's just Reagan vs Carter all over again. Iran knew Carter wouldn't bomb them if they didn't release the hostages. Reagan pretty much promised to. Iran released the hostages the moment Reagan was elected.
Umm. Didn't they release the hostages because the US, under Reagan, agreed to sell them weapons through proxies?
Where'd you say you're from? May have to add you to the list.
Well that's just Reagan vs Carter all over again. Iran knew Carter wouldn't bomb them if they didn't release the hostages. Reagan pretty much promised to. Iran released the hostages the moment Reagan was elected.
From most of the accounts of the Iran hostage crisis that I have read, it always seemed fairly clear that Carter did all of the negotiations to free the hostages, and Iran only waited until Reagan took office before releasing them to spite Carter for his support of the Shah. Unrelated events also put pressure on Iran to end the standoff, such as the USSR invading their neighbor Afghanistan and being invaded themselves by Iraq. That last part was probably the biggest driver for an end to the crisis, as Iran was fielding primarily American military hardware and hoped that by releasing the hostages they could secure parts and supplies to keep their military going.
Paul is a flaming idiot. He's taken bits and pieces of economic theory and moulded them to comport with his own agenda. Economic theory has the benefit of peer review and scientific method. Paul eschews all of that. His routine is to take the first two or three concepts from some economic theory and veer sharply in the direction of whatever point he wants to make (logical connectives be damned). When he's most honest, he's just 150 years out of date; when he's most dishonest he's just completely out of touch with reality.
He's actually worse than Romney in that respect. Romney's just flat out lying and no one knows his agenda. Presumably, Romney might be amendable to rational thought if he were to ever be in power. Ron Paul, on the other hand, is genuinely far out in right field. He's so far gone the stadium lights can't even locate him. Only Paul knows where he is at any given moment, and you can bet that's where he intends to stay.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
The military in this country is basically indoctrinated to be conservative and I know this as I grew up an army brat; born and raised to adulthood. This nationalistic chest thumping is quite popular on the other side of the fence. And if you don't chest thump just as hard as they do, that makes you a homosexual, peace loving, coward with no comprehension of the evils our country is threatened by. You only need to listen to a few of the radio extremists to understand what I mean.
Now, the old conservative party was more isolationist because wars cost money.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
You can see it write large on Ryan's wife's face:
http://cdn.theatlanticwire.com/img/upload/2012/10/11/AP655688226697.jpg
"And I'm almost always a reliable Democratic voter."
Nah, you work for Advantage Consultants, or another of those turf groups. Of your 20 comments, the longs ones are all Rove talking points, the short ones, one line fillers.
http://web.archive.org/web/20110622211824/http://advantageconsultants.org/
http://slashdot.org/~pseudorand
"I just donated to Obama to enter to win dinner with him. Why? So I can give him a piece of my mind."
" took the Colorado TCAP (no child left behind equiv tests) and said they were pretty difficult"
"1) The 99%/1% stat describes inequality in the distribution of wealth, not income. The government they're petitioning has some leeway in addressing income inequality through tax policy, but the only way to address distribution of wealth inequality quickly would be to violate the protection of private property."
etc etc.
The trouble with turfers is they have no substance beyond their single issue. So comments in other fields are always empty short filler.
Think you are white washing Saddams crimes.
The New York Times placed the lifetime deaths attributable to Saddams at 1 million, both civilians and military killed.
Of course, nearly all of the deaths were carried out by his orders. It is impossible to say how many he killed with his own hands.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
That this analysis is modded insightful is just sad. Are you seriously touting the virtues of Saddam's Iraq over GWB and US Foreign Policy. We might have a lot of internal disagreement within the US (and the wider Western world) about whether GWB was a good president and whether taking action in Iraq was appropriate at that point in history, but trying to make a case that GWB was more harmful than Saddam is quite the extremist stretch of the imagination. Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein's_Iraq
11*43+456^2
In Canada, you essentially vote for a party. Due to strong party discipline and the indirect way the Prime Minister is selected, it doesn't matter much who you actually send to Parliament, but rather which party he/she represents. In the US, the candidates actually matter a little.
Also, two parties are not sufficient for a healthy democracy. Suppose a politician of your preferred party does something corrupt while in office. When election time comes, do you vote for him/her anyway? Or will you vote for the opponent, whose values are the opposite of yours, just to toss the bum out? Politicians know that in a two-party system, they can get away with a lot of crap and still get re-elected.
Now, we should remember that Al Gore "invented the Internet", and that Bush thought it was a "series of tubes".
...except of course that Gore never claimed he invented the Internet
That was the commercial break.
You LIE!
There were no commercials!
Yes. Contragate. The hostages were released the day Reagan took office, which means the Reagan team was negotiating with America's worst enemy behind the back of proper diplomatic channels during a campaign, and whipped up the drugs for arms for Iranians deal.
And shortly after Reagan created the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Watch these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5CKO400_7M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGo1DqmfHjY
Need Mercedes parts ?
The big one for me is this:
Romney/Ryan: Their faiths say that abortion is wrong and they want to change the rules so even if you aren't a member of their respective religions, you have to live by those rules.
Obama/Biden: Their faiths say that abortion is wrong, but they do NOT want to change the rules; if you are not an adherent of their faiths they won't try to force you to live by those rules.
What sickened me - I mean, absolutely sickened me - was when Ryan actually dared to try and say that his religious freedom was somehow threatened by the fact that abortion is legal in the US. How is my being able to have an abortion in any way, shape or form restricting his right to worship however he wants?
Yeah. By not forcing me to live by his religion's rules I'm somehow reducing his freedom of religious expression. He actually believes that. He actually said that. And people actually agree with him.
I won't say that the democrats are all about personal liberty either, but holy shit, at least 90% of their platform isn't basically the Christian version of Sharia.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I prefer this version
Lack of air conditioning?
So it does make one wonder just how many will die should a guy like Romney who thinks global warming is a joke takes charge of the EPA and efforts to save the habitability of only planet most of us live on.
That seems surprisingly low to me. Over the entire lifetime of Saddam Hussein's reign (25 years or so), 1 million died. During the course of the US invasion (8 years), up to 650,000 died (Lancet).
That's a hell of a comparison. 2/3 of the people killed in 1/3 of the time, in a war where the invader was genuinely trying to win hearts and minds. Tricky to take the moral high-ground with those figures.
http://browneyedgirl65.com/2011/07/10/fdr-predicts-modern-republicans/
Here is FDR in 1936 laughing at Romney in 2012:
Let me warn you and let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion that says “of course we believe these things. We believe in social security. We believe in work for the unemployed. We believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die [laughter, applause] we believe in all these things. BUT, we do not like the way the present administration is DOING them! Just turn them over to us. We will do ALL of them. We will do MORE of them. We will do them better! And most important of all, the doing of them will not. cost. anybody ANYthing!” [much laughter, much applause].
I used to think that, until the Iraq War. That disaster made me much more partisan. I really think hundreds of thousands of people died because Gore (barely!) lost that election.
I'm afraid you're wrong. Saddam was a butcher that killed his people in peace and war - the Iraqi government is still finding mass graves of Iraqis killed by his regime. The rulers of Iraq's future, his sons, were more violent than he was - he had to restrain them. Think of that - mass murderer Saddam Hussain acting as a restraining influence, and what that would mean for the future of Iraq. The number of people that died from terrorist and insurgent violence under coalition occupation until the reconstitution of the Iraqi government and return of sovereignty to it was no worse than Saddam's long term average. As it is, the mass killing by the government of Iraq is done because Saddam was removed from power, although terrorism is still killing a few thousand people a year in Iraq. If Gore had been elected, and hadn't removed Saddam from power, as was US policy developed under President Clinton, Saddam would still be killing today. Would you feel better if he was still in power and still killing?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Much more likely? Romney has already promised many campaign contributors he WILL go to war. He has appointed all the previous Bush neocons to his "defence" policy transition team.
you don't have to be a sociopathic libertarian to know that in the era of aging populations there will never be enough money for hc. The First World simply sweeps the problem under the rug with deficits.
I live in a country with universal hc (admittedly 2nd world), yet the waiting queues, shortages and quotas make many people that value their time not bother with it, especially when their life is on the line.
Americans like to be lied to so they can keep their precious illusions intact. That is a huge part of the reason your country is in such a mess now.
Spanish unemployment ~ 25%, Greece borders on revolt, the PIGS face economic collapse. The Eurozone is in danger of dissolving. Native European birthrates are so low that Europe is heading toward demographic catastrophe. Large percentages of the large numbers of immigrants brought into Europe do not accept European values and represent a long term danger of civil war. And yet, you cast stones. . .
A bit of humility and actually getting to grips with reality could place the US firmly back in the 1st world.
I think most Americans would rather move forward than back.
(Forget about "world leadership"
That would be taking the eyes off from the road. That doesn't end well usually.
The ability to destroy something does not imply you lead anything.
The ability of the US Navy to destroy the Iranian naval forces planning to block the Straits of Hormuz means that if the need arises, the US Navy will lead the naval task forces keeping the oil flowing to Europe despite the threats of Iranian generals to freeze Europeans in winter.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
you don't have to be a sociopathic libertarian to know that in the era of aging populations there will never be enough money for hc. The First World simply sweeps the problem under the rug with deficits.
The US's problems with healthcare spending were (and still are) entirely out of proportion with respect to everyone else's. When you're spending approximately double what anyone else is (as a proportion of GDP) and not getting particularly great outcomes for it, something's got to give. (I've also seen comments on slashdot which said that healthcare was being used to create effective indentured servitude; that's Just Plain Wrong if it is true.) Moving towards a universal healthcare system at least starts to align everyone's interests again, and encourage the use of healthcare solutions that reduce costs rather than increasing them.
The rising costs associated with an aging population are best addressed by requiring people to work longer; if the boomers were to retire at 70, there'd be much less of a problem as they'd be net paying in for much larger proportion of their lives. (OTOH, I can understand why this would be unpopular...)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Those numbers or so incredibly dishonest that it is disappointing to see that there are still useful idiots using them.
The number of deaths blamed on Bush always include all the Muslims killed by other Muslims during the civil war that occurred in Iraq, and the people who died in iraq from hunger or disease. The propagandists who pushed those numbers tried to justify them by pretending the place was a utopia before the war and that everything that has gone wrong in that country post-invasion was Bush's fault.
By that reasoning, It's all England's fault. After-all, the US was built from English colonies... if they'd never colonized North America then the US would never have existed and then it never would have invaded Iraq...
The adults in Iraq are... adult human beings. They are not some inferior less-evolved species. They have total responsibility for their own actions. If an Iraqi Shia decides to blow himself up in a market to kill a bunch of Sunnis it is his fault and nobody else's. It's not Bush's fault. It's not the fault of the UN. it's not the fault of the Queen, or the illuminati, or the bilberbergs, or space aliens from planet nine. If an Iraqi child died because the adults in Iraq refused to act like adult human beings and take care of their children, then it is their fault... not Bush's, not Blair's, not Freddy Mercury's, nor the Cookie Monster's. If an elderly person in Iraq starves, then it is the fault of the adults in Iraq... it's not Bush's fault, nor the Pope's fault, not Putin's fault, not Darth Vader's fault, not the fault of Sylvester or Tweetie-Bird...
Adults take responsibility for their actions. I believe we should assume the adults of iraq are adults. If you feel that the people of Iraq are some other non-human less-evolved species, then by all means, speak up, illuminate us, and explain why they are not to be considered responsible for their own actions.
So your strawman is from Spain - pity the guy you were actually replying to is probably from somewhere else.
He's a fitness freak. Maybe endorphins? 'roids?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Well that's just Reagan vs Carter all over again. Iran knew Carter wouldn't bomb them if they didn't release the hostages. Reagan pretty much promised to. Iran released the hostages the moment Reagan was elected.
Umm. Didn't they release the hostages because the US, under Reagan, agreed to sell them weapons through proxies?
No, they released them right around the inauguration, long before the arms debacle.
Wow.. talk about an ad hominem, let's not only target the guy, let's target his whole continent...
Ok, so I'll take the bait....
America has the same issue with demographics. After having a record number of births in 2007, birth rate has subsided to 1.9, lower than France and lower than the 2.1 needed to sustain the population. You can come to you own conclusion on what happened in 2007. Hispanic birth rates are historically higher and the big influx of immigrants from Central and South America mean that it is only a matter of time that white Americans will be a minority in the US. The only difference in the issue with integration is that Islamic radicalization is more prevalent in Europe, but then there is more home grown terrorism unrelated to geo-political disputes in the US, so this issue is not as clear cut as it seems.
Regarding the economic issues, what is really surprising is the resilience of the Euro in spite of all the issues with Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal.
Let's talk about Greece first. Greece has had big fiscal deficits (ie. public borrowing) since the early 90's that was hidden fro view in order for them to join the Euro. They shouldn't have joined the Eurozone at all the in beginning and it really was a failure of political leadership at the EU level that led to this situation. Having joined the Euro, the Greek government and normal Greek people can borrow money at much lower interest rates and this led to a worsening of the situation.
However, the issue with Spain (and Ireland) is a lot different. Spain fell into the current hole due to a property and credit bubble (private borrowing), which when it burst led to a sharp contraction of the economy and in turn - tax receipts. The Spanish government is paying record interest rates on its increased borrowing now because of a lack of regulation during the boom years. Saving the US from a similar fate is the amount of money pumped into the system through QE, and the fact that the USD is the main reserve and trading currency internationally. This also allowed the US to continue to borrow at low interest rates to stimulate growth. Otherwise it will end up in a death spiral like Greece.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Biden was wrong about the point of threat and Iranian nuclear breakout. With high velocity artillery and high quality, highly enriched U235 (HEU), it means a half industrialized nation can be nuclear arm state, right now. Even in 1942, HEU gun based nukes were considered comparatively trivial, and did not even need testing like plutonium implosion based bombs.
Murasaki Skies wrote:
>Human rights don't mean shit when you're dead.
``Live Free or Die!'' --- New Hampshire state motto.
There wouldn't be a U.S. if the founding fathers hadn't believed that a new nation w/ new principles was worth pledging their ``Lives, ... Fortunes, and ... Sacred Honor''.
Of course, it's easier to do something other than look on as evil is done if one is not disarmed as much of the world is.
``Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.''
--- John Stuart Mills
Here's the sort of thing which happens when a nation is disarmed:
http://twinbuttebunch.org/index.php?fuseaction=misc.sendguns
And here's what happens when one brave man takes a stand (despite being limited to low capacity bolt action rifles):
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2010/11/mexican-marines-reconstruct-death-of.html
“If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything.”
Malcolm X.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Three other reasons the VP matters:
1. VP's can end up being the heir apparant after somebody's second term is up e.g. Richard Nixon and Al Gore. (Also off your "died in office" list: Harry Truman)
2. Vice presidents can and do get involved in the administration of the country, at the direction of the president, and almost always have the presidents' ear if they want it. e.g. Al Gore had a lot to do with Clinton's computing technology initiatives, and Dick Cheney had a lot to do with George W Bush's foreign policy.
3. For non-incumbents, the VP pick is the first major decision that the candidate makes. Seeing who they pick goes a long way towards seeing how they'd actually govern, rather than how they say they'd govern.
I am officially gone from
Romney/Ryan: Their faiths say that abortion is wrong and they want to change the rules so even if you aren't a member of their respective religions, you have to live by those rules.
Untrue: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/10/us-usa-campaign-romney-abortion-idUSBRE89901X20121010
Uh, the fact that Europe isn't much better off doesn't really change the fact that at the rate things are going our fancy Navy vessels might start looking like the old Soviet ones. Kind of hard to run a big Navy when nobody accepts your currency as a form of payment, including your own citizens.
Moreover, Saddam would still be funding suicide bombers in the Gaza Strip:
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-202_162-543981.html
How is one going to have any sort of peace process there w/ that kind of outside influence?
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Unless, of course, congress ends up in a 50-50 split on an important issue. Like, for example, abortion...
And Biden. But he wanted you to forget that when he chastized Ryan for voting for the wars.
1. Break union contracts, good. They are often very costly to the schools. I remember one complaining mid-career 5th grade teacher making over 85,000 in pay and benefits.
2. Destroy public schools, no. Charter schools are public schools, just not government-run schools, but held to the same standards of education.
3. Destroying the unions. I note your sig saying "I wanted an FDR." FDR absolutely opposed the concept of public sector unions, and did not allow them to happen during his tenure. Public sector unions are the union bosses negotiating with the politicians they help put into office how to put more taxpayer money into union coffers, which goes back around to reelecting those same politicians. Do you see the kids anywhere in that equation? It isn't. As one famous teacher union boss said, they'll start looking out for kids when the kids start paying union dues.
Sounds like you're more pro-union than pro-education. You've moved to the left.
You can't put lawmakers in jail for how they vote. Dodd is retired and Frank will soon, so we won't be able to fire them for preventing the higher oversight sought by Bush. And it would be politcially impossible to prosecute all those bad-credit homebuyers who wanted something for nothing.
Because ACORN was obviously willing to help people engage in criminal enterprise. He did do some selective editing, but overall the evidence is quite damning.
Yes they would. They're capable of any underhanded tactic, even racist. They filibustered the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the DC appeals court (first time ever at that level) because he's Hispanic. He was being groomed to be the next Supreme Court justice, but staff notes got leaked that the Democrats did not want the Republicans to appoint the first Hispanic justice to the court. The Democrats wanted that honor for themselves, and were willing to push that date back by years in order to get it. There would be an Estrada instead of an Alito or Roberts.
That's true, and applies to the particularly uninspiring Republican side too.
pretending [...] that everything that has gone wrong in that country post-invasion was Bush's fault.
The numbers (from the Lancet survey at least; not sure about the others) are based on the difference in the death rate before and after the invasion. If the death rate jumped by ~100,000/year when the invasion occurred, I think it's reasonable to attribute those extra deaths to the invasion.
Most of them aren't from violence, either: they're from lack of food, inadequate medical care, and other failings of the usual apparatus of civilized society that is disrupted by military action.
Because moving in, turning the world around, and then just pulling out again, is a dick move.
You have to at least pay for dinner as well.
I was really hoping Biden would use the words "separation of church and state" in his argument but it seems that's political suicide now. :^(
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
By that reasoning (which I'd only slightly dispute), the massacre in Iraq began long before we invaded. The sanctions on Iraq were undermining its infrastructure since 1990.
Which is something I think about every time Obama brags about how tough the sanctions against Iran are, and every time Romney brags about how much tougher he'd make them. The whole point of sanctions is to make life under the sanctioned government so awful that they have to either do what we tell them or risk open revolt by the common folk of the country. In other words, they use the suffering of the masses as a political weapon.
Something ain't right there.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
The Lancet journal study was censured:
In a highly unusual rebuke, the American Association for Public Opinion Research today said the author of a widely debated survey on "excess deaths" in Iraq had violated its code of professional ethics by refusing to disclose details of his work. The author's institution later disclosed to ABC News that it, too, is investigating the study.
http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/story?id=6799754&page=1#.UHgfJJWZx3g
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
The fundamental problem facing our nation right now is materialism. People value money and ease of life over freedom. We need only look to recent history--and current events in other places--to have reason to choose freedom over material wealth. But that's not popular now. Our Founding Fathers--and the nameless men who died under them--must be spinning in their graves. This is not the freedom they died for.
This mindless tirade against "the rich" or "the 1%" is just that: mindless. It's a tool used to manipulate the masses. And I'm nowhere near being part of that "1%". The question is, who is pulling the strings?
I don't care if cutting taxes benefits "the rich": it benefits ME by letting ME keep MY money in MY pocket and letting ME decide what to do with MY money--not the government. It also gives the government less money to spend--and we need less government, not more.
This "1%" movement is emotionally driven. It's about materialism. It's about enforced equality, about forced redistribution of wealth, about "fairness". People just want to be as rich as "the rich". They care more about that than about FREEDOM.
Freedom is our most valuable possession as citizens. Freedom includes the right to own property and seek wealth. Freedom means that some people will have more than others. That's how life works. Life is not fair.
People would rather cede control of their money--and, ultimately, their lives--to the government and let the government even things out between them and "the 1%." It's easier than taking responsibility for oneself.
Elections aren't about principles or values anymore. They're all about "what will you do for ME during the NEXT TERM." They're about, "Will he MAKE things 'better' in the next four years?" with "better" best defined as "making my life easier."
We are spoiled in this country. We have had it easy for so long, and we take our freedoms for granted to such an extent that we are willing--even wanting--to hand them over for the sake of empty promises. We need to do more interviews with immigrants who came from communist countries, who escaped the Iron Curtain, and heed their warnings. We need to listen to how much they value the freedoms we enjoy here in the USA, the freedoms we are trying to give up.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
--John Donne
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
That quote could be applied to any election in which the incumbent President were a Republican--or just any election, period. That quote boils down to, simply, "We want to help you, too! We will just do it better than the incumbent! So vote for me!" You're being disingenuous.
It seems to me that the Republicans are more candid about the costs of welfare spending. The Republican platform leans more toward small government than does the Democrats'. That's not to say that the Republicans have done everything right, or that they will in the future. GWB and the Republicans have done many things I disagree with. But I think there is a more substantial difference between the parties than most people will admit. The problem is that the focus on short-term, "what will you do for ME" issues obscures the deeper principles.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
It's easy to twist statistics to prove whatever you want.
Invading a nation and replacing an evil regime (i.e. having a war) will obviously cost many lives. Comparing the lives lost in war to those lost during relative peacetime is comparing apples and oranges.
Regardless of whether one thinks the Iraq War was a good idea or justified, it's mind-boggling that anyone would try to downplay the evils of Saddam Hussein's regime, to suggest that he would be the lesser of two evils. Collateral damage and civilian casualities are indeed tragic--but at least a purpose was to replace an evil regime with a democracy. How much more tragic are the needless deaths perpetrated by an evil dictator bent on preserving his own power.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
I find it difficult to believe that Democrats would appoint SCOTUS justices who would defend the Constitution to a greater extent than those whom Republicans would appoint. I'm not saying that Republican-chosen ones would defend it to any great extent, either. I think it's a bit of a false dilemma. There doesn't seem to be any great value placed upon the Constitution by either party.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Not magic! He's just glossing over the stuff he'd cut from domestic spending and the unfunded mandates he'd push out to the states. And he's only doing that because if he actually told us, the Obama administration would seize the opportunity to class warfare him! You don't want to see the poor guy class warfared, do you?! That would be like some obscenely rich guy getting all bent out of shape because people below the poverty line pay less of a percentage of taxes than he does!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"The only agenda I have is to be treated like a human being." Your sig is so ironic. You advocate good treatment of human beings, yet at the same time you advocate destruction of human life.
If banning abortion would be a decision based on religion, then why not legalize murder? After all, Christianity is against murder, and we mustn't have laws against things which Christianity declares wrong.
"Because your right to do whatever you want ends when it interferes with my right to life."
Then a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her own body ends when it interferes with an unborn baby's right to life.
The only way to justify abortion is to devalue human life. And, of course, without religion, there is no reason to value human life--humans are just bags of randomly-generated organic goo. Therefore, murder is just as justifiable as abortion. Survival of the fittest, you know.
Of course, you conclude by equating Christian values with Islamic law. It's hard to be much more intellectually dishonest than that.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
I'm sorry, but I don't believe a word ut of Romney's mouth.
Especially about this. When Romney ran for senate against Ted Kennedy he said he was pro choice. Now, somehow, he has become anti-abortion. Has he had a religious conversion in the meantime? Has abortion somehow become less safe than it was in 1994? Has something fundamentally changed about abortion that would cause someone to change their views as he seemingly has? Did he undergo a personal experience where he had to reforms late his stance? Did his wife have one? Did someone close to him have one that he is aware of? What, other than him needing to pander, changed to make him anti-abortion?
Further, during the debate last night, Ryan said that it would be the policy of the administration to seek to limit abortion to cases of rape, incest or protecting the health of the mother. He avoided saying whether or not they would seek to change the rules - he started talking about how his religious freedom was being impinged upon because abortion is legal.
There is no way that they will not try to put anti-abortion justices on the bench. None.
Romney has proved he is willing to say whatever his audience wants to hear and then he will angrily deny that he ever had a different position when called on it. Because of this, I am just left to assume that literally the worst things he has said in public or on camera are true and that is his agenda. If he had actually showed a shred of principle at any time in his public life, if he actually had a consistent platform or, a least showed some reason other than "so religious fundamentalists will vote for me so I can be president" for his views on so many things to change, I am going to ignore any of his more moderate versions of his platform and go with the ones that are considered the worst by me, that he has promoted.
Obama hasn't always done what he said he will, and he has changed his public opinion on things, but at least when he does he can point at a reasonable process by which a reasonable person can change their mind. And we have also had 4 years of him actually being in power to see that in fact, he isn't doing anything particularly crazy like some conspiracy theorists have suggested he would. He may be a pandering politician but at least it's not nearly as blatant and at least I have some reason based on his track record to believe he won't start doing batshit crazy stuff in term 2.
Also, if Romney/Ryan get elected, do remember that they will also likely then have a republican house and possibly a republican senate. Obama being re-elected will likely have a minori house and the senate is close to a toss-up. Romney will be in a position to vastly more damage imposing his agenda vs. Obama, who will have a more hostile legislative body than before (which was already pretty hostile!)
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
The GOP platform has nothing whatsoever to do with gender equality. You're simply framing it that way to make them look bad. How ironic, then, that you criticize others for lying.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
I'm sorry, but I don't believe a word ut of Romney's mouth.
I guess there's no point in debating you with facts and evidence then, is there?
At least Saddam knew how to run a country.
Oh, yeah. Gassing an ethnic minority is a great way to run a country. I'm sure the Kurds loved to see those clouds descending on their villages, killing them indiscriminately. And he suppressed the Islamic extremists so they wouldn't bother his Ba'athist extremists. I could Godwin this post, but I won't. The similarities are already clear enough anyway.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
"Yes it does!"
"No it doesn't!"
That's all it boils down to. It's all about short-term economic growth, about "What will you do for me in the next four years?" Nevermind the deeper principles at stake, like "Make them give their money to the government so the government can give some of it to me (in the form of services or benefits)! Feed me, government, feed me! Peep, peep!"
I don't care if tax cuts also benefit "the rich": I want to keep more of my money in my pocket. I want the government to have less of it to spend foolishly and wastefully. I want to have the freedom to make my own decisions.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
It's destroying the unions.
As someone who works in an industry rife with unions (and thankfully not in one), you say this like it's a bad thing....
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The GP asserts an ad hominem against the entire USA. The parent points out that the GP's argument ignores the problems in the rest of the world and creates a false dichotomy. Then you claim the parent's examples are ad hominems against the continent of Europe. WHOOSH. It's ok for one guy to do it, but not the other? Hypocrisy is rampant.
Reverse discrimination is as bad as discrimination. Reverse bullying is as bad as bullying.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Your posting illustrates my point rather nicely, thanks.
1. Greece is pretty irrelevant to the EU it is so tiny, the situation of Spain is not well characterized by this one number, and there is a bit more world outside the US than just the EU.
2. Forward to where? On a downward spiral? Do you even understand what you wrote?
3. You think the US Navy is necessary for that? Your are just useful idiots doing the dirty work.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Except that in 1994 where ran against Kennedy for Senate he said he was pro-choice. Again when he ran for Governor he said he was pro-choice. And now he is walking that back.
So no, I am perfectly aware of the evidence of what Romney has said. The problem, as I pointed out, was that he has been talking out of both sides of his mouth and contradicting himself so much that I have no choice but to assume the absolute worst things he has said are the things he believes and will try to do.
The real reason there's no point in debating me is because you will not be able to get me to unsee all the things I have seen And heard Romney say, and if you honestly believe at this point, despite copious fact checking that has been done, that Romney doesn't lie at will to pander, I won't persuade you to re-examine your views either.
There is nothing Romney could do other than apologize for his mendacity and then drop out of the Presidential race that would make me think he is a remotely honest or principled human being. He has himself to blame for that. Himself, as captured numerous times on camera and in press interviews.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
You have a very simple minded vision. those jobs that were created meant more than 1 year's employment. The money spent was re-spent many times. The labor of some person was harvested for the benefit of the GDP with that money (as opposed to giving them money for free). And it maintained bussiness enterprises as functional, preserving other jobs. It helped jumpstart new industries like green power.
More importantly, cities can't deficit spend (have to use bonds). Hence in recessions when revenues fall, cities have to lay off. Which makes the recession jobs spiral worse. In cities where the tax base doesn't fall in a recession (property tax) then this also take smore money out of the disretioanry economy and bussinesses fail. Stimulus money is thus a way for the tax payers to loan the city money (the feds rpovide it, and future taxes pay it back).
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Joe Biden is not trying to get elected to any position where he would write laws!
Romney is on record supporting a life-begins-at-conception amendment and has pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices
Note that part of how "The Pill" works is by preventing fertilized (aka: "Concieved") embryos from emplanting. So Romney's ammendment would outlaw birth control pills.
This would be a massive change. You just flat out cannot have the society we have today without The Pill. How radical of a change banning it would be not only can't be overstated, it is hard to even wrap your mind around if you grew up after 1965. This really ought to be a huge issue.
Yes, that's the basis for the Helpless Bystander Fable. The problem is it's the liberal version of the GOP's "no one could have predicted" excuse for their inaction in the face of Hurricane Katrina. A false argument that insults the intelligence of the listener.
How is it false? Let us count the ways...
1) The filibuster could have been ended when the new Congress was sworn in with a new set of rules for the Senate, which only requires a simple majority. The GOP was already setting filibuster records when the Dems first took back the Senate in 2006, so they cannot claim they were shocked, shocked! at continued abuse of the filibuster. Obama was running around promising a public option and the Employee Free Choice Act with only 51 Democrats in the Senate, yet he's suddenly a helpless bystander with 59 or 60 Democrats? Bitch please.
2) The filibuster could still be ended via the Nuclear Option, which only takes 50 Democrats + Biden. The filibuster is a Senate rule, not a Constitutional one. So all it would take to amend the Senate rules is a majority vote, with Biden casting the tie-breaking vote if need be. They could do it in the next five minutes if they wanted to.
3) Reconciliation bypasses the filibuster, and could have been used to pass most of the 2008 party platform, with a serious jobs bill to boot. It could have been used to end the Bush Tax Cuts for the rich while keeping those for the middle class....but the Democrats chose not to use it.
4) The Bully Pulpit. If you can think of a bigger sword for the GOP to fall on than obstructing a serious jobs bill in the face of a depression, by all means call up OFA and suggest one.
5) The one and only time you hear about the filibuster or the "60 votes" nonsense is when some liberal idea is being killed. It wasn't an issue for passing telecom immunity, where Reid even ignored a hold from a member of his own party. It wasn't an issue when it came time to reconfirm Bernanke to the Fed, when the supposedly ironclad 60 vote requirement disappeared.
It was all a commercial.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
"Vote for us, because the alternative is horrible" is not a very inspiring reason to vote.
I dunno, "the alternative is horrible" inspires me pretty well . . .
Americans like to be lied to so they can keep their precious illusions intact. That is a huge part of the reason your country is in such a mess now.
Spanish unemployment ~ 25%, Greece borders on revolt, the PIGS face economic collapse. The Eurozone is in danger of dissolving. Native European birthrates are so low that Europe is heading toward demographic catastrophe. Large percentages of the large numbers of immigrants brought into Europe do not accept European values and represent a long term danger of civil war. And yet, you cast stones. . .
Low and negative "native" birth rates are usually associated with more developed countries, because of higher equality and rights for women and higher standard of living overall. It's not sustainable long-term and needs to be addressed via immigration or something else with their own issues, but it's a definite correlation. That the US is able to sustain and grow its population even without immigration should tell you something.
Germany: relatively socialist. Doing pretty well thankyouverymuch. Canada: also relatively socialist, and its Liberal banking regulations saved it from tanking as badly as it could have (the present Conservatives like taking credit for that, despite their initial failed attempts to pass deregulation laws).
Whether Romney is pro-choice or pro-life depends seems to change every week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldWDF1uQH4s
Well, honestly, he'd never be able to pass a life begins at conception amendment. That's just a pipe dream of the American Taliban. So I'm not worried about the pill getting outlawed, though the fact that he doesn't seem to realize that such an amendment would outlaw the pill is sort of worrisome.
But he will get to appoint justices to replace members of the current liberal wing of the SCOTUS, and the conservatives only need one more vote to overturn Roe v Wade. Abortion will be outlawed in a Romney presidency. Not necessarily because he's a religious fanatic (who can even tell what he believes?) but because he's beholden to them.
This is, of course, a lie. The mujahedeen in Afghanistan that was supported by the United States became the Northern Alliance, whose leader was murdered by the Taliban the day before 9/11.
Dunno, I think Biden probably is more terrifying than Cheney there. Cheney was evil, but at least competent.
Why, as it's a thoughtfully Republican health insurance (not care) plan? First proposed by the Heritage Foundation when H.W. Bush was running for re-election, then championed by Bob Dole in '96, then implemented by Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts, and it was still a Republican plan when Obama signed it into law.
Before someone asks why the Republicans were suddenly opposed to it, the answer to that is obvious. If a policy supported by Obama is a success, credit will go to Obama. That's why Republicans vote against ideas that were Republican suggestions to begin with, like the end-of-life planning that was smeared as "Death Panels". Secondly, if an Obama policy is going to be a failure or unpopular, they don't want to have their votes attached to it.
Like, oh, say, the mandate to buy junk health insurance. It wont matter that the mandate was a Republican idea or that they don't have a better health care plan as an alternative. They wont be the ones that saddled the poor and middle class with the mandates that Obama ran against but enthusiastically supported as president.
That's almost certainly a tautology. McCain was the GOP candidate that was chomping at the bit to "bomb bomb bomb" Iran, not Romney.
Secondly, if Romeny were to become president, Obamabots might remember they were antiwar before Obama decided to embrace war. Speaking of, Obama had gotten away with a lot of shit that would have had Democrats out in the streets if it was Bush doing it, like assassinating Americans or starting a war without Congressional authorization.
Speaking of, Obama's own VP threatened to impeach Bush for hinting at doing to Iran what Obama went ahead and did with Libya: start a war without Congressional authorization.
The "consequence" of not having the elderly die in their homes from the lack of basic medical care? Now, go be a good little Libertarian sociopath and tell us how your standard of living is completely independent of the society in which you live....
Your argument is based on the presupposition that men cannot think objectively about issues relating to women since they are not women. That is a fallacy.
You talk about women's history. How right you are: calling up "women's rights" brings to bear centuries of baggage like feminism, suffrage, slavery, and misguided religious beliefs used to subjugate women.
But those issues are not the issues here. It's a cheap, manipulative trick. Many people don't see through it, they are simply like dogs who salivate at the bell rather than thinking.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
The Health Insurance Profit Protection Act is not only not the first step towards single payer, it's the first step towards ending Medicare. Because it provides no government based platform to be expanded upon, the way Social Security did in the 30's. Because if vouchercare is good enough for a low income person of 64 years of age, it's good enough for a low income person of 70 years of age.
They sold directly to Iraq and indirectly to Iran through proxies.
The reason the rest of the world is cheaper is because their health care systems are subsidized by US taxpayers, US pharmas, and US medical device makers.
US Pharms do the R+D, operations, marketing and manufacturing that US investors and taxpayers pay for and then the rest of the world gets all the benefits at a lower cost per pill/treatment
Merck, Pfizer, BMY-Squibb, Lilly, JNJ, Abbott, Watson, Mylan, Gilead Sciences, etc. are all US based companies. There are almost no equivalents in the rest of the world. For example, drug development is almost completely dead in Europe except for the Swiss (Roche), and the lone ~2 remaining UK players.
Same thing goes for medical devices: JNJ, GE, BSX, MDT, STJ, EW, BCR, EK, et al. [Siemens being the main exception.]
As it stands, the rest of the world only pays the variable costs of all the research, drugs, and new products invented in the US after being subsidized by US taxpayers, gov't, and investors, essentially behaving as free-riders.
There are numerous academic studies demonstrating this, as well as the market itself showing how simple it is, for example, to make a profit re-importing the same drug from Canada *back* to the US.
What will be very interesting is the effect of a health care system like the affordable care act on the US. The reason other countries get to free-ride is because the US pays so much. If the US tries to change that then house of cards comes crashing down, and either the quality of medical care will go down all across the board, or the medical costs of the rest of the world will escalate.
But it helps to be a sociopathic libertarian when you want to ignore the fact that socialized medicine provides better care for less money.
Because people don't deal with waiting queues, shortages and quotas in the United States on a daily basis....oh wait, they do. You wait in an ER, you wait to see a primary physician, you wait to see a specialist, and your insurance company has quotas up the wazoo on everything from where you can see a doctor to how much medication they will to cover to what 50 year old procedures might be denied as "experimental".
Any more sociopathic talking points?
The Republican candidate I wanted could write a bubble sort.
That was really scary, it was apparent to me that as far as understanding how trivial it is to make a nuclear weapon out of weapons grade uranium;
the current administration is a "Beavis and Buthead" team.
At least Bidden go Cornholio on TV, with all of the laughing to himself, I wasn't sure what was going to happen.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Laughable. As if you wingers aren't still ranting about the 16th Amendment, FDR, or the CRA. Yet we're supposed to forget the incompetence of Obama's immediate predecessor...who do you think you're kidding?
It's unlikely in the extreme that Gore would have responded to point-blank warnings that Bin Laddin was determined to attack the United States, that he wanted to do it soon, and that he might use hijacked planes to do with with an "Okay, now you've covered your ass" and then ignored it.
Biden was constantly interrupting Ryan, 82 times in fact. His condescending laughs weren't good either. He came off as a petulant bully, and he failed in his promise to keep 100% factual. And Ryan had the best zingers, about Biden needing to come from behind (due to Obama's loss), and about Biden's propensity of sticking his foot in his mouth (Biden has had some bad gaffes, and in a couple cases flat-out contradicted Obama's positions).
You're right, I meant to include "overly religious" as a factor in higher birth rates.
I'm afraid you are projecting, as far more people died in the invasion and occupation than if Saddam was left in power. You could have left Saddam in power, killing dissidents, and it wouldn't have come to but a percentage of the fraction of the numbers killed in the invasion or resulting civil war.
And that's just a fact that war supporters will have to deal with.
If it meant that hundreds of thousands of people were still alive and millions of refugees were still in their homes? If it meant that girls and women were as free to attend school as men? If it meant that you had constantly running electrical and sewage services rather than a couple hours a day?
Your math, and your priorities, need some work.
Was Saddam giving them billions the way the U.S. does every year with the Israeli military? The Israel that was founded on land stolen from the native population by a bunch of immigrants? The Israel that was illegally expanded in Israel's war of choice in 1967?
Resistance to a hostile military force that has invaded and occupied your homeland is not terrorism.
Right, because making plans for a possible war is the same thing as waging it.
/facepalm
As someone working in a unionized industry, you're sneering at the higher pay, longer vacations and due process that unions bring? Why don't you go ahead and Go Galt and let us know how that works for you....
Bush wasn't stupid is a liberal fact?
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
But it helps to be a sociopathic libertarian when you want to ignore the fact that socialized medicine provides better care for less money.
until it doesn't. Costs are a function of multitude of things. Demographics? Go way below fertility ratio of 2 and things go south quickly (1.4 here). There is no country with more fat asses roaming than the US, wouldn't that add a shitton? The fact that the US HC is easily the worst of both worlds doesn't help either (supposedly free market, yet the competition is pretty much forbidden by law)
Where i live you can wait 11 months to see a specialist and begin treatment for breast cancer or whatever, only because the quota runs out right of the bat in January. Public HC here is only for old people, because only they have all the time in the world to waste in several hours long queues.
If you took the tax money you pay in taxes you'd have a very nice coverage in private sector with all the convenience like making appointments online that make sure you can show up on time and go on with your life soon after.
Oh yeah, attack a giant straw man. No one is saying that Saddam was a teddy bear. People are pointing out the fact that yes, Iraq would have been better off if Saddam had been left in power. Hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive, millions wouldn't have been made refugees, the country wouldn't have been bombed back into the stone age, and women's rights wouldn't have been rolled back 200 years. That Saddam was a ruthless authoritarian changes none of that.
Deal with it, war supporters.
Of course they are Bush's fault. The only dishonesty here is pretending that the deaths in the resulting civil war isn't the fault of both the sectarians who were engaging in it and those who set if off with a dishonest war of choice.
You're seriously engaging in deflection with an obvious straw man. Saddam was a bad guy. Iraq would also have hundreds of thousands of people still alive, millions of refugees still in their homes, they would still have a 2nd world infrastructure and health care system, there would have been no sectarian civil war, and civil rights for women wouldn't have been set back 200 years. Both these things can be true at the same time, so...
Of course Iraq would have been better off if the invasion had never happened.
Deal with it, war supporters.
Sayeth the pot.
Except that's a bullshit straw man. The only ones whitewashing crimes or downplaying deaths are the Iraqi war supporters in this thread pretending that more people and more destruction weren't caused by the invasion than if Saddam had simply been left in power.
"Enough Democrats (including Hillary and Kerry) voted for the Iraq war that GWB could get away with it."
I hear this alot, but its kind of disingenuous to say it when the guys controlling the intelligence apparatus were lying through their teeth even to the point that guys that are basic good, smart people who are genuinely working for the good of the country within that same administration like Colin Powell were fooled into believing the administrations case.
You have a little cabal within the administration working on this fiction so hard that even the people closest to them have to go along in the interests of defending us from this phantom threat and you expect democrats on the outside to be able to magically tell that they are lying hit the brakes on this thing when the result if they are wrong is a serious threat to the basic security of the nation? Sounds like bullshit to me. Democratic legislators got lied to and fooled, just like everyone else
We won't disagree there, but that isn't what I was talking about. A 5th grade teacher making that much mid-career has no reason to complain about how much he's making. But this guy was.
You have the breaking union part right, unions being considered an impediment to education.
And if FDR had his way, they wouldn't exist. And Reagan was a former union boss himself (although not a public one). I'm not much of a Reagan fan.
Difference between public and private union. In a private union, the union negotiates with the company on the allocation of the company's money. Both have an interest in getting the best deal, both protect their own interests. In a public union, the union works with the politician to give them both the best deal, paid for the taxpayers who get screwed. The taxpayer money is funneled back from the union to the politicians to help ensure the taxpayers' interests don't get a seat at the table.
When the rich son of the public school board member starts bullying your kid, what are you going to do about it? When your daughter turns out to be dyslexic, but the board has cut special education to pay for union excesses, administrator pay and perks, what do you do about it?
One anecdote about a worker, which could have been resolved with a lawsuit. This versus a founder of teacher unions in this country giving his opinion on the role of the union. All anecdotes aren't equal.
It shows the Democrats were in the pockets of the bankers as much as anybody.
This is about ACORN helping a guy claiming to be a pimp of underage illegal alien kids defraud the government, and various other successful stings along the same line. That is what finally killed the organization. No Democrat wanted to be associated with an organization that would do that.
There's the little problem of a leaked Senate Democrat memo saying they must oppose him because of his race, they can't give the Republicans that advantage.
And killed half a million Iraqi children by restricting food and medicine. Which the Secretary of State said was "worth it" when asked.
We've called actions far less severe "terrorism". Even if you don't want to call it that, there is something evil about punishing a civilian population to force out a dictator that they don't even like. Now, before some neocon brings up Dresden or Hiroshima, we weren't at war with Iraq, and the sanctions did as much to cripple any opposition as the rest of the population.
Or, I don't know, go for Option 3: don't drone bomb or invade people that have not attacked us nor are in the process of attacking us. Here's your sign.....
That's pretty funny, I always hear this argument, except that my girlfriend recently had a pretty bad fall and waited several hours to see someone anyway. So in a first world nation with insurance we're still waiting, so why not insure everyone again? Why force people into bankruptcy or worse?
You alluded to this, but I think it's important to stress that the idea of a "filibuster proof majority" is mainly used as a distraction. As in "blame my opponent for not preventing me from blocking that bill".
If there are 60 Dem and Dem-friendly Senators, and only 59 vote for cloture on an issue you care about, you should assign more blame to the GOP's 40 Senators (100% voting against your interest) than the Democratic + Independent Senators (2% voting against your interest).
Important to whom? I am a man. I do not have abortions.
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
First of all, they're optional and don't carry the force of law. It's just a road map for the next year (and next 4 years). Appropriations bills are what fund or defund specific things.
Second, the House and Senate need to agree. Currently the Senate has a Democratic majority and the House has a Republican majority.
A budget resolution is not a law. It doesn't fund or defund any agency or program.
You do realize that this is satire, written by a liberal, don't you?
loyalty above all, save honor
The American Association for Public Opinion Research is an organization of pollsters who work mostly in the U.S. The Lancet surveys were conducted in a country at war, where foreigners were likely to be killed, and even the surveyors and respondents might be killed. As the Lancet authors said, they could not disclose the details the AAPOR was asking for, because it was too dangerous. Their coworkers and sources might have been killed.
The answer to them is, if you don't like the survey, go to Iraq and do your own survey. They wouldn't because it was too dangerous.
You want to talk about professional ethics? What about ABC's professional ethics in publishing a news story about a controversy written by one party to the controversy?
"Full disclosure: Gary Langer is a member of AAPOR and past president of its New York chapter."
at least a purpose was to replace an evil regime with a democracy.
A purpose was to replace the dictator Saddam Hussein with our hand-picked dictator, Ahmed Chalabi. Instead, we replaced the dictator with mob rule. Now Iraq has a hundred Saddam Husseins.
http://www.juancole.com/2007/02/3-month-record-for-us-troops-killed.html
Speaking of scams, Neoconservative Douglas Feith is teaching at Georgetown. So in the run up to the 2003 war, I’m told, Douglas Feith was challenged by a State Department official who knows the Middle East about what in the world the US would do in Iraq once it won the war.
State Dept. Official: “Doug, after the smoke clears, what is the plan?”
Feith: “Think of Iraq as being like a computer. And think of Saddam as like a processor. We just take out the old processor, and put in a new one–Chalabi.”
State Dept. Official: “Put in a new processor?”
Feith: “Yes! It will all be over in 6 weeks.”
State Dept. Official: “You mean six months.”
Feith: “No, six weeks. You’ll see.”
State Dept. Official: “Doug.”
Feith: “Yes?”
State Dept. Official: “You’re smoking crack, Doug.”
Feith: “Oh, so you’re disloyal to the President, are you?”
We shouldn't let anyone tell us we're so incompetent we can't have a better, cheaper and universal health care system in this country. Other countries do it and we can too.
Sayeth the pot.
Now, now, I'm not the one citing statistics. Maybe you confused me with other people in this thread.
Except that's a bullshit straw man. The only ones whitewashing crimes or downplaying deaths are the Iraqi war supporters in this thread pretending that more people and more destruction weren't caused by the invasion than if Saddam had simply been left in power.
I don't think those are the only ones doing that. I think both sides are doing that. And neither side can prove what WOULD have happened had the U.S. not invaded. It's all speculation.
The real question is whether Iraq is better off now, or whether it can be better off in the future, than it would have been if Saddam and his sons had remained in power. That's not provable either way, either. But that Saddam and his sons were evil is hardly disputable. And while many have died as a result of the invasion, and while the U.S. has made many mistakes, it's rather ludicrous to say that the U.S. is more evil than Saddam and his sons and their regime.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
If your point is that there were people in favor of the war who had ulterior motives, I'm sure that's true, even inside the administration. The government is not monolithic, nor is the Cabinet. So what?
My point is simply this: Saddam and his sons were just plain evil. They committed horrific atrocities and would have continued to do so. Now I'm sure the U.S. government has people in it who have less than altruistic motives, and I'm sure there were plenty of them involved in all the activities surrounding and leading up to the invasion. But I still think it's rather absurd to say that the nation of Iraq would ultimately be better off if Saddam's evil regime were still in place. Has the U.S. made mistakes? Of course. Does that mean it's as bad as or worse than Saddam? Of course not. That's just hyperbole, which obscures truth and hampers rational discourse.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Actually Iraq's health care system was up to first world standards. Saddam sent students to medical school in London. There were a lot of Iraqi doctors in London (and I read articles and letters in The Lancet and BMJ that they had written denouncing Saddam Hussein's human rights abuses). According to a Washington Post story, Iraq had one of the best health care systems in the Arab/Persian middle east, and people came from all over the region to use their hospitals.
The Iraqi war was an interesting case history to show what the world would be like if the Republicans had their way. GWB was essentially the dictator of Iraq, and he could organize it any way he wanted. According to the Washington Post, GWB fired an experienced public health person who had done this before. He appointed some Evangelical Christian anti-abortion hack to reorganize the health care system. First thing he did was "privatize" the drug delivery system. In order for the privatization system to work, he needed a computer system. He never got the computer system working. Hospitals couldn't get drugs, except on the black market. That's your neocon free market.
As one famous teacher union boss said, they'll start looking out for kids when the kids start paying union dues.
Among all your misinformation, this one is the most egregiously wrong and easily disproven.
http://shankerblog.org/?p=2562
Quote, Unquote
Posted by Matthew Di Carlo on May 13, 2011
This post is co-authored by Matt Di Carlo and Esther Quintero.
Update: Please see this May 2012 “Fact Checker” piece on the Shanker quote in the Washington Post.
***
This week, in an Atlantic article, former New York City Public Schools Chancellor Joel Klein dropped an incendiary Albert Shanker quote that you’ve probably heard before:
When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.
The negative implications of this statement are obvious, which is why it is so frequently quoted by (mostly) conservative pundits and journalists.
We didn’t know Al Shanker personally. He died while we were still college undergraduates. So, we were surprised to learn that the people who knew and worked with Shanker have long thought this quote to be apocryphal.
We were skeptical but intrigued, and decided to do a little detective work.
The quote has been used many hundreds, perhaps many thousands, of times in newspapers, magazines, blogs, and speeches. Virtually none of the authors has bothered to provide a source – a date, an event, anything. Nevertheless, we uncovered two possible sources of origin.
The first is an article in the Meridian Star (a newspaper in Meridian, MS) from August 13, 1985. It is the earliest published version of the quote that we could find, and a couple of subsequent articles also suggest that it is the first (see here). In addition, this paper cites it as the original (page 176), as do a couple of blog posts (this one, for instance). We were unable to locate an electronic copy of this article, so we took a quick trip over to the Library of Congress, and found it on microfilm.
The article, called “Teacher unions made their bed, must sleep in it”, has no byline. Here is the relevant passage:
American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker may have hit the key difference between his organization and both the public and the legislature a couple of years ago when he said, “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.
So, unless you consider “a couple of years ago” to be journalistically-rigorous sourcing, this is not a source.
The second possible origin is the Congressional Record, also from August 1985. For example, a 1995 book, Do the Right Thing: The People’s Economist Speaks, by George Mason University economist Walter E. Williams, attributes the quote (page 83) to a statement made by Shanker that was supposed to have been included in the August 1985 Congressional Record. A 1997 paper by David W. Kirkpatrick, published by the conservative Reason Public Policy Institute, also uses the quote, citing (via footnote on page 10) a Washington Times article called “Rip-Offs in the Schools?” (9/5/92). This article also attributes the quote to the 1985 Congressional Record.
So we searched the Congressional Record. The quote does not appear in August 1985. In fact, there are only two instances in which that quote has ever been entered into the Congressional Record. The first was on March 23, 1994, when former Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX) used the quote secondhand. The second was on May 23, 2001, when the quote was put forth (again secondhand, with no source) by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO). It’s plausible that the Meridian Star article was entered into the record.
It is very difficult – sometimes impossible – to prove a negative, especially w
Cloture votes to break a filibuster are 60% of Senators (whether present and voting or not), and that may change as the next Senate votes on its rules.
If you can't tell the difference, you're not paying attention.
Why don't you explain to women why equal pay, access to contraception and abortion shouldn't really be important to them?
Solely with your choice of username, that is. :)
Biden was condescending, rude, disruptive, immature.
Yeah...about the only thing he had going for him was that he had better policy positions.
Equal pay is not an issue of women's rights. No one has a right to get paid anything. It would be better and more fair if women always got paid the same as men for doing the same job, but hey, not all men get paid the same for doing the same job, either. Should men demand equal pay as other men? What if there are some men who get paid less than some women for doing the same job? I don't hear men complaining about that. It's not about equality anymore, it's about retribution.
No one is suggesting that women be denied access to contraception. That is a strawman. The idea that the government should provide it to everyone free of charge is not an issue of rights. No one has a right to get free stuff. Besides, every single woman has free access to contraception: it's called abstinence.
Finally, if abortion is an issue of women's rights, then it's also an issue of fathers' rights and unborn babies' rights. Why don't you explain to fathers why their children being killed before they have a chance to live shouldn't really be important to them. Why don't you explain to unborn babies why life shouldn't really be important to them--oh, wait, you can't, because they were killed--I mean, "aborted"...
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Bollocks. There are a lot more non-US based pharma companies than that. Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, Roche and AstraZeneca are examples but only two of those are from the UK. These all have large R&D budgets. I keep hearing this crap that US companies do more R&D but it isn't quite as simple as you think it is. Quite often when I did in deeper some drug allegedly invented by an US pharmaceutical company was originally discovered by state funded European university researchers and the US company basically spent money to develop a method to produce it in quantity and to conduct clinical trials. While this is important work there is more R&D work being done outside the US than you seem to realize.
Plainly bollocks considering Bin Laden himself was part of these "mujahedeen" back then when he was back in Pakistan helping to run training camps to fight the Soviets. The "mujahedeen" included all sorts of tribal warlords including what would become the Taliban funded by Pakistan's secret services.
Iran-Contra? Oliver North? Rings a bell?
Actually, women do have the right to equal pay. It's the law. You seem to prefer that everyone is free to discriminate, but I think you can probably understand why most women would not want to give up their right to equal pay.
It's not a straw man, since there are many Republicans supporting so-called "personhood" measures, which would outlaw hormonal birth control. Romney and Ryan have both voiced support for that idea.
Yes, of course abortion is not just a woman's right. But to me (and to many), a few cells do not deserve the rights of a fully formed human being, with a brain, a heart and so on. If I were a woman, I'd be offended by the GOP telling me what to do with my body.
I like your signature.
The problem is, how do you define equal pay? What do you compare one person's salary to? And salaries are relatively private information, anyway. I'm all for fairness, but there is a limit to how much fairness can or should be legislated. You can't make people be nice to each other or like each other.
So where do you draw the line? Every embryo has the potential to develop into a breathing, beating, thinking human being. When does a human being become a human being? It's an entirely arbitrary decision. The only safe decision--and the only reasonable one, since there is no objective standard--is at conception.
If I were the father of an unborn child, I'd be offended by anyone telling me that it is ok to kill my child--my own flesh and blood. If I were an unborn child, I'd--oh wait, I'd be dead, so I wouldn't have the chance to be offended.
You just skip over those issues and repeat "women...GOP...my own body...offended."
Thanks. I found it while reading about Henry Ford. I had to whittle it down to fit in Slashdot's sig box. I think we'd have a much better economy if we hadn't forgotten his nugget of wisdom. Back then it was a race to the top, but now it's a race to the bottom--the bottom line, I suppose.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Look kid, when somebody points out that the US economy is not in fantastic shape just now it's not fair to cherrypick Spain, Greece or even fucking North Korea when more than half the worlds population live in places where the economy is growing.
What we have here is somebody projecting an image of boom times while your economy is struggling (hence the guy above writing "Americans like to be lied to so they can keep their precious illusions intact"). It's being done just to make people happy and win votes and has nothing to do with reality. So that's Romney, and maybe Obama too, but either way it's a lie.
The posts above are the stupid kneejerk reaction to somebody pointing out that lie. It was pointed out in a pretty blunt way but still the reaction of deflecting things to places that are experiencing what the USA went through in 2008 (plus more in some cases), really has nothing to do with Romney pandering to a feeling that everything is going to be fine without anyone doing anything. I agree with gweihir but would have substituted "voters" for Americans to be both more accurate and avoid the over-patriotic backlash from people turning their brains off the second they think somebody is insulting their nation. Your news and entertainment monopolies are more to blame than apathy on the part of citizens - you are being trained to be apathetic and xenophobic. All you guys can do is get your parents to look after your kids as much as possible so the next generation is less of a writeoff.
The big one for me is this:
Romney/Ryan: Their faiths say that abortion is wrong and they want to change the rules so even if you aren't a member of their respective religions, you have to live by those rules.
Obama/Biden: Their faiths say that abortion is wrong, but they do NOT want to change the rules; if you are not an adherent of their faiths they won't try to force you to live by those rules.
I'm fairly libertarian, but I don't think this issue is nearly as clear-cut as you suggest.
Suppose my religion teaches that human sacrifice is fine. Yours does not. What gives you the right to force me to live by your rules? If I want to sneak into my neighbor's house in the middle of the night and knife them, why shouldn't I be able to do so?
My problem with abortion is this - how is killing somebody 10 seconds after birth any different than killing them 10 seconds before birth? It seems to me that birth is a poor point in time to assign basic human rights. I'd think that the point at which a child is sentient would be a better place to make that distinction, whether that happens to be before or after birth. Is that less convenient legally? Sure. However, since when was morality supposed to be a matter of convenience?
And Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house (that was Tina Fey).
And Romney never said he didn't care about the 47% (he said that 47% will never vote for him).
And Obama did say "You didn't build that." Which, taken in context was bad enough. But then they said that wasn't the context, but the context they said it was supposed to be was just as bad as the original.
I think the point at which a fetus is able to survive without being connected to the mother's body would be a reasonable cut off point.
And if "Christians" want to put their money where their mouths are, they can pay for the medical facilities to do exactly that - keep children removed from pregnant women who do not wish to be pregnant anymore when those children would require heroic measures to keep alive.
On the question about human sacrifice or whatever other example one wants to bring up:
1) are your neighbors capable of surviving outside of your body without medical intervention?
2) are you responsible for your neighbors, to the point where if your neighbors continue to live you will be held legally responsible for caring for them?
3) is it possible for you to be forced to carry your neighbors in your body for 9 months and then be required to care for them (or give them up to be cared for by other parties) if you are raped?
4) what percentage of people in the US believe human sacrifice is religiously necessary, and what percentage of the US population I believes abortion is acceptable?
For 1,2 and 3 I think my point is clear. For 4 - things change over time. Morals and ethics change as generations change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Right now, a sufficient number of people in the US think abortion should be legal for it to be legal. Putting people in power who would try to do an end run around the rights of a significant portion of the population is fucked. Further, allowing abortion takes rights away from no one who is a capable of consenting, while prohibiting abortion takes away rights.
A fetus, in my eyes, does not have rights. Once it is able to survive without the mother, it has rights.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
We're already at war. It's just subversive and no one is dieing in direct conflict with Iran. But like the Cold War, we are fighting an Iranian war on their terms.
By the way, Mexico is at Civil War, a lot of us don't even know it. We didn't start the fire, It was always burning, Since the world's been turning, We didn't start the fire, No we didn't light it, But we tried to fight it.
Also, why do the dissidents always try to fight when the USA has a weak President with no fortitude to assist them? (Okay, not ALWAYS, but the US has a mediocre record since WW2's aftermath rebuilding Japan and Germany.)
And Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house...
That's correct. What Palin said (in interview, to 'prove' her international policy experience) was:
GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of this state give you?
PALIN: They're our next door neighbors. And you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.
I don't know who you're responding to with the rest of that. Are you are misquoting things just so you can correct them?
Here's a bone:
"Mitt Romney would be a horrible president."
Abraham Lincoln -- 1862
"The thing about quotes on the internet is that you cannot confirm their validity." -Abraham Lincoln. Yes, pretty much. There are a lot of mischaracterization of Romney - a caricature developed by Kennedy, the MSM, Republican opponents and the Democrats that just isn't true. Obama believed the hype and got caught during his first face-to-face meeting.
A fetus, in my eyes, does not have rights. Once it is able to survive without the mother, it has rights.
I think that is a reasonable proposal, but I don't think most people will be OK with denying human rights to children until the age of 20. With the current job market it might be closer to 30.
Before birth there is a placenta, and after birth there are bottles, spoons, and then more traditional utensils. However, the fact remains that there is a continuum of life support provided to children up until what is now a fairly advanced age. For some, that life support can be even more invasive than that of the placenta - do those with end stage renal failure qualify for human rights? Even a fetus can generate its own urine...
As far as Christianity goes - I don't see how abortion has anything to do with Christianity/Islam/etc. Should Christians pay for the medical care of those who are unable to sustain some of their own bodily functions but who still are neurologically functional - absolutely. But, so should everybody else. Unless we plan to only tax people for Medicare on the basis of their religious beliefs I'm not sure what they have to do with the care of children/fetuses/etc.
As to your questions:
1) are your neighbors capable of surviving outside of your body without medical intervention?
Most are. Am I free to kill those who are not?
2) are you responsible for your neighbors, to the point where if your neighbors continue to live you will be held legally responsible for caring for them?
Yes. Last time I checked my last paycheck had medicare, social security, and various income taxes deducted. A decent percentage of my neighbors benefit from these directly.
3) is it possible for you to be forced to carry your neighbors in your body for 9 months and then be required to care for them (or give them up to be cared for by other parties) if you are raped?
Nope, though I'm forced to care for them financially whether I am raped or not. And per my guidelines anybody who is raped or just feels like it could have an abortion - as long as they do so before the child is sentient. To allow abortion after that point is to simply kill one of the victims of the rape.
4) what percentage of people in the US believe human sacrifice is religiously necessary, and what percentage of the US population I believes abortion is acceptable?
Frankly, I don't care. What percentage of the country thinks that killing people who look like muslims as suspected terrorists is acceptable? Per the constitution human rights are NOT granted by a majority of the population - they are endowed at birth.
Right now, a sufficient number of people in the US think abortion should be legal for it to be legal.
That amounts to little more than might makes right.
allowing abortion takes rights away from no one who is a capable of consenting
Again, might makes right. So, killing anybody who is incapable of complaining about it is acceptable? Can a two-year old consent to anything? Legally we don't even let 17-year-olds consent to things, though clearly they are at least capable.
My problem with abortion is this - there is little difference between a kid shortly before and after birth. Many kids even require life support after birth, but killing those kids is illegal.
In general I'm not a fan of telling people what they can/can't do with their own bodies. The issue with pregnancy is that there is more than one body involved.
After birth children red taking care of, yes. However, it's obvious some children survive after birth without their mothers: children give up for adoption or raised by the state, children of mothers who die during childbirth, etc. I am obviously referring to situations in which the fetus is not able to survive outside the mother's body - as in, even if there are other people willing to take care of the child, it cannot survive since it has not developed sufficiently.
On to your responses to my questions:
1) Yes, absolutely, if you have neighbors who are literally unable to survive unless contained in your body, you can absolutely have them aborted. Such a circumstance has very likely never happened in human history, but I would be AOK if it did and you chose to abort them.
2) So if you lost your job your neighbors would have no other means of support at all? You are fully legally responsible for them in the exact same way a parent is legally responsible for their child once that child is born?
3) we actually agree somewhat - I think abortion past the point where the offspring could be kept alive outside of the mother should be restricted to certain special cases (health of the mother, coercion or force being used to have prevented the mother from seeking an abortion earlier, potentially in the case of extreme birth defects that were not testable prior to that stage). I can't tell you what age a fetus becomes sentient, so instead I use the 'can it survive outside the mothers body with appropriate medical care' as the cut off. Interestingly, as technology advances, that date is pushed earlier and earlier. The good news is that the people who are anti-abortion can, if they like, fund organizations that will provide such care to infants taken from unwilling mothers who are past that point. The mother will not have to carry the child, and the anti-abortion person can then take responsibility for the life of that child since they clearly feel they have more of a right to determine what happens that he mother does. Win-win!
On the might makes right issue and issues of kids being snorted the day before they would have been born: the number of abortions performed that late is vanishingly small. I have, several times, in fact, said that I think that the cut off should be the point in development when the fetus could survive externally of the mother. At that point I think the offspring should be removed and put up for adoption rather than simply terminated.
Honestly, I think you're being facile. Most of your arguments ignore points I have already made or involve ridiculous situations that could never come to pass, or seem to intentionally misconstrue my points. An example of this would be the way you approach the neighbor stuff. It's ridiculous on the face of it and you know it.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I love autocorrect... Clearly I was not referring to children being snorted. Though that doesn't happen often either!
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
So, I won't go tit-for-tat - I think if you read the literal wording of your questions and my answers you'll probably find them legit. However, quibbling over wording isn't terribly productive, as you're getting at at the end of your post.
3)I can't tell you what age a fetus becomes sentient, so instead I use the 'can it survive outside the mothers body with appropriate medical care' as the cut off.
Well, I can at least see the logic in that. That is much of my debate about abortion - actual birth isn't really a very logical place to make the demarcation. Once the fetus is viable in incubation there really isn't any imposition on the mother to care for it. Before then there is an imposition.
There are actually a lot of things about the nature of parent-child relationships that could arguably be changed, For instance, does it really make sense to make a parent legally responsible for the care of their kids? They don't do it anyway, so you're just making a kid suffer with somebody who'd rather they were out of the picture. Why not let parents turn over their kids if they don't care to raise them.
Then if you step back and look at the big picture, why do we license drivers but not parents? Parents cause a heck of a lot more damage to kids than any car is capable of causing. Perhaps pregnancy should be prohibited without a license. If you stop unwanted pregnancies in the first place the whole abortion debate goes away entirely. Either stick people on contraception of some kind from puberty (assuming you can work out the medical issues with that), or forced abortion at a very early point in development. The world would look a lot different if kids were planned for. That would be something out of Ringworld though...