Maybe Congress should be more concerned about the country that they are supposed to be writing laws for. Maybe Congress should be more concerned with fixing the messes in the country that they are supposed to be representing.
They might be if uninformed people like you would learn that the debt isn't even slightly the cause of the problems in this country.
The problems in this country are due to decades of neglect of the US industrial base, a massive theft by the superrich, and the destruction of the middle class. Combine that with a banking industry out of control that hallucinated it figured out how to make money from bad loans, which kept people from actually realizing how bad things had gotten by having them living on borrowed money, so the problem was hidden for an entire decade until it blew up.
We do, at some point, need to deal with the debt, but that isn't the current problem at all.
Remember 2006, when Pelosi made the big speech about ending the years of Republican deficits?
Hey, Pelosi actually deserves some credit there. If the economy hadn't exploded, the deficit would have gone down.
Or Obama's fierce moral urgency of ending the Bush surveillance state?
Obama, OTOH, deserves no credit at all.
But that's not really the same thing. Those are just empty promise for actual useful things.
Pelosi wasn't opposed to deficits because the Republicans were for them. (Lasted I checked, the Republicans are against them too, at least in theory.) She was against them because they're a bad idea. Except, well, they aren't, but we're pretending they're a bad idea.
Likewise, while some of the left was against Bush's surveillance state because the right was for them, a larger percentage simple didn't like it.
Although the 'percentage' isn't really the thing...party loyalists will always be okay with something if their own party does it, and politicians always lie.
The difference is that the left cares about their own policies, except when party loyalty overrides that. The right cares about the left's policies, except when party loyalty overrides that. (This is quite possibly because the right literally has no policies anymore except 'cut taxes' and 'reduces spending'.)
No one sees 'any reason' that couldn't happen. I have no objection to such a situation either.
The problem is that won't happen, and hence is actually a solution for the fact that gay people cannot get married.
I mean, we could reduce the amount of oil this country uses by 50% if everyone would agree to swap houses with someone closer to where they work. But that is not an actual workable solution, because such a hypothetical thing will never happen.
I'm tired of people coming up with stupid glib answers like that. That does not help to actually solve anything at all. States are not going to stop marrying people. Marriage will not stop having additional rights that can't be gained through contract law.
The Declaration of Independence held that the just purpose of government is to secure our rights.
Sigh.
I know libertarians have decided that 'taxes' are infringement our rights, but that's something that libertarians invented. That is not actually an infringement of rights, and no one pre-1950 or so would have ever thought it was.
That's about as small-l libertarian as you'll find anywhere. Classical Liberals such as Madison, Jefferson, and Paine really were libertarians.
No, they were liberals. They promoted equal justice before the law, and they wanted inalienable rights that all men had and couldn't be removed.
They didn't give a flying fuck about taxes, or even 'less laws'.
You read the Declaration of Independence, notice how many complaints there are about taxes (two, one of which is complaining about the fact they were basically paying taxes to a country that is functionally at war with them) and how many complaints about the fact the US cannot create laws it needs because England refuses to let it (eight).
Complaining about the lack of laws is right up there with complaining about the fact England isn't following the laws that do exist. The only complaints about taxes, the only complaints about actually enforced laws, are mere afterthoughts.
The founders of the US wanted a 'government of laws, not man'. They did not want a government of 'less laws'.
I don't care what sort of absurd revisionism you've managed to internalized, read the damn Declaration of the Independence, actually look at the complaints listed as reasons the US was founded.
The only 'small government' stuff WRT to the founding of the US that existed was the idea that the states would be a lot more powerful, and the US a lot less. But while a lot of people on the right think that would mean 'less government', that wasn't the reason they 'wanted' that, nor is there any particular reason that state governments would be less intrusive.
They 'wanted' states to have more power, because they figured it was the only way the states would agree, and because turning everything over to the Federal government couldn't work at that time anyway.
And there were plenty of places where Jesus said to give to the poor, but I can’t think of any where he said to take other people’s money (without their consent) in order to give it to the poor.
No, because he knew that was already happening
The state of Israel was a theocracy. (A theocracy operating under Rome control, which was, strangely, a different theocracy, but a theocracy non-the-less.) The government were the people you were supposed to give tithes to. The government and the temple were the same.
The government/temple, if you did not give them tithes, could do all sorts of things to you.
Strangely, this evil organization that took money from people to redistribute as charity, that evil communist organization...Jesus required people to give them that money.
Weird, huh? Almost as if he had no problem with it.
As I read it, Christ was supportive of the host government, and encourages us to pay our taxes accordingly.
And the Roman government were invaders. The idea he'd have a problem with a democratic government having taxes is insane.
Do note, though, that this is outside of God's tribute, which is considered an additional duty to be paid.
I think that's one of those things that aged poorly. Roman taxes all went to Rome, and they only way they helped Jews was to fend off (other) invaders. Rome did not run social programs.
Every Jewish citizen was expected to pay the temple, which ran the social programs, and functionally were the government in that regard. They could even make laws and arrest people for not following them...if they ordered you to give X% of your grain to the poor, you had to do it.
Remember, Jesus himself was arrested under Jewish, not Rome law. Two legal systems. The temple was essentially the state government. People seem to entirely miss the idea that when Jesus said to pay tithe, he was saying it in what was partially a theocracy, to pay a tithe to the government.
A lot of problems with people reading the Bible is failing to understand the context. Don't ask 'What did God ask those people to do?', as 'What was the effect of what God asked them to do?'
We have an obligation to pay for stuff like roads and stuff, which Jesus's day, and our day, was the government, and we have an obligation to pay for stuff like social programs for the poor, which in Jesus's day was the temple, and in our day is the government.
And, as I pointed out, in Jesus's day, the religious leader helped people based on all sorts of criteria, working on minute interpretations of The Law as to who deserved how much, and Jesus, essentially, shot that idea dead, by pointing out you should love (and help) everyone, period. They'd let people starve because they weren't Jewish, and some of our churches will do the same because they aren't Christian, whereas the government, and Jesus, wouldn't.
Like I said, Christians should be grateful they live in a country that is officially secular, that, in theory, loves all citizens equally, so that they don't fall into the trap of just helping Christians.
(The views stated in this article about women are clearly not my own, and if you think they are, you aren't paying attention.)
Which, by the way, is how the original intent of the laws play out.
Not exactly.
The original intent of the marriage law is to formally declare ownership of a offspring production machine, along with penalties for men who would attempt to use that machine to cuckold the man by having it produce offspring that were not his.
Asserting it was originally about offspring is like asserting that a car title is about transporting people. Car titles do not transport people. They are use to prove ownership, and keep other people from using, and recover when lost, your property, which is used to transport people.
The original purpose of women, not 'marriage', is for offspring. The purpose of marriage just is a way to keep track of who owns what women.
Otherwise, what's the explanation for the notion of consummation?
The man formally takes ownership of the offspring production machine when he breaks the seal on it. You know, it's like those safety seals on food? You can only return food if you haven't broken those.
I'm not entirely sure this 'let's go back to original marriage law' is where you want the argument to go at all.
Granted, I'm confused as to what, exactly, you're arguing at all, considering you did call this 'unpalatable'. The reason that marriage laws were about one man marrying one woman is the fact they were, instead, originally about one man owning one woman, or even more than one woman. It is rather 'unpalatable' to point that out the entire basis of marriage is 'ownership'.
It's also unpalatable to point in this 'historical' environments, that, often, men could 'own' other men or even young boys in exactly the same manner, and no one cared what women did when alone together, and often the only women with rights were the one who managed to avoid getting married.
So your theory is that we should wait 100 years for marriage to...become more and more unpopular, until the government will stop doing them? (You know, like how black people got the vote.)
I'm sure you're trying to argue we're closed...but we're not. If gay marriage is equal rights for blacks, we're in 1962, where societal pressure is building.
But if no marriage is equal rights, we're in fricking 1840. Society does not disapprove of government issued marriages. Society does not even vaguely disapprove of them. Hell, 1840 is way too close. You're, like, pre-enlightenment.
And yes, if we hypothetically, over hundreds of years, destroyed the institute of marriage, the government would get out of marriage licenses. Good job there. Pardon me if that actually sounds worse, societally speaking, than any of the imaginary bad things that would happen if gay marriage was legal.
Some of us think stable marriages and families are an important part of society, and because there's absolutely no sane reason to have sexist rules in marriage law that anyone can think of, people of either gender should be able to marry people of any other gender.
Right now, that is, as opposed to the smoking post-apocalyptic wasteland where no one cares about marriage and all people grow up in single-parent homes that lurch from community to community without anyone actually bothering to improve a place they'll be out of in a year.
Perhaps by then we'll be growing everyone in jars, and it's goddamn Brave New World. Excuse me if I want to resolve the issue now, not after centuries of trying to convince people the government-licensed marriage is a bad thing.
Laws about 'possession' are inherently absurd. Laws about information possession are even more absurd.
The only laws about possession should be for stuff that is nearly impossible to acquire accidentally and have nearly no legitimate uses without causing hard to others.
Stuff like plutonium, basically. Or pipe bombs, or biological weapons.
Everything else we really should wait until you use it, and make that illegal.
Which, yes, would make both drugs and child porn 'legal', although I suggest we regulate the distribution of both those. In the case of the latter, no distribution at all would be legal, obviously. Whereas with drugs, well, I'd like to see those regulated like alcohol, but whatever.
'Possession' is a crazy crime, conceptually. Crimes are supposed to be actions.
You can't propose a solution that has no chance in hell of ever actually happening in any manner, and declaring victory. The solution you propose cannot, ever, under any circumstances, happen. The US government is not going to stop recognizing the existence of marriage. No US state is going to stop granting marriage licenses.
It's like saying 'The way to win World War 2 is for the all Nazis to decide to lay down their arms'.
So, with that utterly absurd and unlikely 'solution' removed as an option, now what is your solution?
Therefore, Christians also tend to believe that the government should be, generally, more or less staying out if the way, and letting them give their money to charities they personally want to support.
...which is used in the most unChristian manner to only give charity to people who are 'good people', which usually means 'people like us' and 'people we know' and 'member of the church fallen on hard times'.
Despite the fact that is explicitly discouraged by the Bible...re 'Good Samaritan'. You are not told to help people like, it's sorta presumed you'll help those people. You're told to help those weird people, over there, with the odd religious beliefs (Samaritans, people forget, were 'heretical' Jews.) that you'd never choose to associate with.
I forget who it was, a sci-fi writer, who said no one understands that parable, because the only 'Samaritan' that people know of is the 'good' one. Today (he wrote in the 70s), the Samaritan should be a poor black man. Today, it should probably be a gay vegan Wicca or something. Who is your neighbor, the religious leader who left you on the side of the road, of the gay vegan Wicca who took you home and gave you a soyburger?
Christians who actually understand the Bible should be very happy the government is willing to give charity based on actual need over an entire nation, that they don't actually have to locate the most needy.
Whatever you did unto the least of you, you did to me. The US is giving Jesus food stamps, right now.
Read the actual text, and stop making up gibberish claiming that Jesus wouldn't like the government providing for the poor.
And, um, if you want 'huge overhead'...please actually look at the money you donate to a church. Even the most honest and ethical church gives less to actually help people than, oh, Medicaid.
Except the bill specifically states what can be funded.
The Senate bill, which is what specifically what the Republicans voted down, is here. There is a list of things that can be done. None of it is even providing health care, just encouraging nations to enable to access to health care.
The idea that 'support for community-based activities that encourage community members to address beliefs or practices that promote child marriage and to educate parents, community leaders, religious leaders, and adolescents of the health risks associated with child marriage and the benefits for adolescents, especially girls, of access to education, health care, livelihood skills, microfinance, and savings programs;' somehow is causing abortion is absurd. It's trying to get people to accept the idea that young girls are actually human beings.
Plus, um, nothing was stopping Republicans from putting an amendment into the bill to stop any hypothetical issues WRT abortion.
It's just an absurd goddamn excuse because the Republicans don't like to spend any money that doesn't benefit their rich friends.
I also don't know about the history of this legislation, but if you were cynical, you might consider the idea that some politicians could use exactly this type of legislation to paint others as "pro-raping children."
Oh, they're not pro-rape.
They're just not anti-rape. Attempting to discourage rape is a huge overreach of government power.
Or the alternate idea is that Senate Republicans are horribly sexist, which, frankly, is not insane.
It was a counter to the energy policy of 'more offshore drilling' that the Republicans were pushing for. (That got cut out with my truncated sentence, I think.)
Obama pointed out that, at most, that would produce 1% of oil we needed by the time they were built, and that everyone simply checking their tires air pressure would save 3% of gas used in cars, and maintence would save another 4%.
Which would not, let's be clear, actually reduce total oil used by 7%, because automobiles are not the only users of oil. But it would probably reduce it by at least 1%.
You're assuming that there actually are two high speed providers in town.
I live in a town with one high speed provider, Windstream, because apparently it's okay for the same company to own both phone and cable.
And, of course, I don't know how 'dialup' would fix anything, considering that, even if there was a third party offering that, they'd end up hooking into, tada, the phone company's internet connection. And, yes, that phone company owns the entire local calling area, and hence any local dialup ISP (If any still exist) would hook into the same internet, so unless I want to make a long distance internet call, dialup is out. (Not that I could functionally watch Hulu over that.)
Alternately, I could get satellite internet, but that has rather serious bandwidth caps so cannot be used to watch Hulu over either.
If I want internet that I can watch Hulu over, if Windstream decides to slow Hulu, I'd literally have to purchase a dedicated 50 mile T1 line to another county and find somewhere to have it hooked up.
(Please note that Hulu is just an example here. Replace with netflix or fox news or whatever.)
Almost all 'the cops are out of control' organizations are formed by liberal activists, often because the cops are blatantly racist in addition to being abusive. Hell, all you have to see where Copwatch was founded...Berkley California.
But let's stop talking generalities. Let's take the most famous tape of police misbehavior, and Limbaugh. Let's check what he said about that:
"The videotape of the Rodney King beating played absolutely no role in the conviction of two of the four officers. It was pure emotion that was responsible for the guilty verdict."
Yes, that's right. Apparently, it was just 'emotion' that convicted two of the officers caught on tape beating someone. Not any sort of justice.
The same telcos who owe their ability to do business and make tons of money on the legal rights-of-way and monopolies granted to them by that same government.
Fuck 'legal right-of-ways'. Let me fix it for you:
The same telcos who owe their ability to do business and make tons of money on the fact the government has granted them a corporate license.
Remember that Every. Single. Fucking. Time. you hear about 'the government interfering in the free market'. All corporations, every single one, exist solely because the government created the laws that allow them to exist, period, end of story.
If corporations don't want fucking 'government regulation in the marketplace', let's get get rid of corporate existence at all, and see how powerful businesses get without limited liability and existence independent of their owners.
No government created corporation ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, gets to complain about being regulated by the government. It's the equivalent of people crying 'censorship' because their posts were deleted on a private forum by the forum owner.
No, just evil people who grab and increase their power over us because we are dumb enough to let them. We've even let them destroy the language -- liberal used to mean something a lot more like "libertarian"
No it didn't. The libertarian position is one that honestly did not exist in politics until about 50 years ago.
I know, in conservative mythos, the founding fathers were libertarians, but they were not. Liberal, in that day, was basically anti-classism and anti-crown, a position that really doesn't exist anymore in modern politics.
Once the crown was gone, it continued to be anti-special-rules-for-the-ruling class, a position it still holds, at least in theory. (As we don't actually have any liberal political party, it doesn't really hold any position anymore.) All liberal fights, though the entire history of this country and back to John Locke, are to stop one group of withholding power-sharing from another group, with the groups being the crown, nobles, slaveowners, the superrich, the corporate owners, the whites, the straights...and, apparently, the superrich again. Except now the superrich have intelligently bought both parties.
(Please note when I say 'liberals', I am, indeed, aware that liberals used to be on the right, and flopped to the left around when I said 'the whites')
Libertarianism is not classical liberalism, it is neo-classical liberalism. It reinvents the idea that the problem is 'the crown'. Which, frankly, would be a rather strange idea to various classical liberal thinkers, whose biggest problem with the government is the fact that it often failed to enforce laws equally, and not that those laws existed at all!
and "conservative" used to mean, you know, look before you leap, spend less than you make, stuff like that. Or even "not all change is for the better, so examine it first before deciding".
Here, you're right. Conservatives, to paraphrase something David Brin wrote on the topic, used to be the serious guys in suits at NASA who did the math. The guys running around in the background monitoring stuff that seemed entirely pointless (Until it was wrong, then they calmly and efficiently saved everyone's life.), and wasn't glamorous, and they went home to their family and read the paper each evening. Whereas liberals were the astronauts and the sci-fi writers and the dreamers, and got all the credit, but without the guys in suits, wouldn't know how to do what they were trying to do. There's the guys who try to do everything, and the guys who figure out what can and can't happen and managed to get some of it done, while otherwise raining on the parade.
But that ended about two decades ago, when it was decided that the best way to rule the country is not to point out the parts of the left's plans that can't work, and invent better ways...but to simply assert, very loudly, that anything the left wants is wrong. Morally wrong, politically wrong, won't work, every single possible objection.
Even stuff like cap and trade or the public mandate for health insurance, both of which were conservative alternatives to the left's previous plan. Or stuff like bills attempting to stop child 'marriage', which the Republicans shot down for absurd reasons two week ago. (Apparently, educating women that it is not acceptable for them to be sold to older men when they're 13 as his 'wife' is...um...pro-abortion.)
I remember when Obama recommended that people check their tire pressure (And maintain their cars.) instead of allowing new offshore drilling during the election.
The Republicans, of course, decided to act like checking your tire pressure was an insanely stupid thing for human beings to do. (Sadly, as Obama was not elected yet, they couldn't act like his suggestion was a government dictate.)
eventually happened with offshore drilling.
Remember my Republican friends, if a Democrat suggests something that would, for the cost of a $10 air pump from Wal-Mart and 5 minutes of your time every month, save you 3% of your gasoline costs, (Which by my math would pay for itself the first time you use it, if you spend at least $33 on gas a month.) why, they're crazy. If they're elected, or even if they're just the spouse of someone elected, they're a fascist.
The government should never attempt to provide information that would make the lives of their citizens better!
Being 'against everything the left like' is a pretty goddamn shitty political position.
OTOH, it actually is the Republican position. Just the other day, they were against a bill to attempt to reduce 'child marriage' around the world. ('Child marriage' actually means 40 year old men purchasing 13 year old girls from their parents, 'marrying' them, and then, when their female children are old enough, selling them off to other men.)
A simple bill that uses already existing US development programs to help break the cycle of abuse by simply attempting to educate women, and requires countries that get our aid to explain the status of this practice in them, and was only $108 million dollars. (To compare, we just passed a $858 billion tax cut extension, which is, oh, 800,000x more. The damn 'bridge to nowhere' was $223 million.)
The joke used to be that the Democrats should come out against raping children, and see what the Republicans do. Horrifically, twp weeks ago, they did, and the Republicans, indeed, came in favor of it. Or at least not against it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, numbnuts, there's no such thing as legalized theft. Theft by definition is unlawful.
Maybe Congress should be more concerned about the country that they are supposed to be writing laws for. Maybe Congress should be more concerned with fixing the messes in the country that they are supposed to be representing.
They might be if uninformed people like you would learn that the debt isn't even slightly the cause of the problems in this country.
The problems in this country are due to decades of neglect of the US industrial base, a massive theft by the superrich, and the destruction of the middle class. Combine that with a banking industry out of control that hallucinated it figured out how to make money from bad loans, which kept people from actually realizing how bad things had gotten by having them living on borrowed money, so the problem was hidden for an entire decade until it blew up.
We do, at some point, need to deal with the debt, but that isn't the current problem at all.
Remember 2006, when Pelosi made the big speech about ending the years of Republican deficits?
Hey, Pelosi actually deserves some credit there. If the economy hadn't exploded, the deficit would have gone down.
Or Obama's fierce moral urgency of ending the Bush surveillance state?
Obama, OTOH, deserves no credit at all.
But that's not really the same thing. Those are just empty promise for actual useful things.
Pelosi wasn't opposed to deficits because the Republicans were for them. (Lasted I checked, the Republicans are against them too, at least in theory.) She was against them because they're a bad idea. Except, well, they aren't, but we're pretending they're a bad idea.
Likewise, while some of the left was against Bush's surveillance state because the right was for them, a larger percentage simple didn't like it.
Although the 'percentage' isn't really the thing...party loyalists will always be okay with something if their own party does it, and politicians always lie.
The difference is that the left cares about their own policies, except when party loyalty overrides that. The right cares about the left's policies, except when party loyalty overrides that. (This is quite possibly because the right literally has no policies anymore except 'cut taxes' and 'reduces spending'.)
No one sees 'any reason' that couldn't happen. I have no objection to such a situation either.
The problem is that won't happen, and hence is actually a solution for the fact that gay people cannot get married.
I mean, we could reduce the amount of oil this country uses by 50% if everyone would agree to swap houses with someone closer to where they work. But that is not an actual workable solution, because such a hypothetical thing will never happen.
I'm tired of people coming up with stupid glib answers like that. That does not help to actually solve anything at all. States are not going to stop marrying people. Marriage will not stop having additional rights that can't be gained through contract law.
The Declaration of Independence held that the just purpose of government is to secure our rights.
Sigh.
I know libertarians have decided that 'taxes' are infringement our rights, but that's something that libertarians invented. That is not actually an infringement of rights, and no one pre-1950 or so would have ever thought it was.
That's about as small-l libertarian as you'll find anywhere. Classical Liberals such as Madison, Jefferson, and Paine really were libertarians.
No, they were liberals. They promoted equal justice before the law, and they wanted inalienable rights that all men had and couldn't be removed.
They didn't give a flying fuck about taxes, or even 'less laws'.
You read the Declaration of Independence, notice how many complaints there are about taxes (two, one of which is complaining about the fact they were basically paying taxes to a country that is functionally at war with them) and how many complaints about the fact the US cannot create laws it needs because England refuses to let it (eight).
Complaining about the lack of laws is right up there with complaining about the fact England isn't following the laws that do exist. The only complaints about taxes, the only complaints about actually enforced laws, are mere afterthoughts.
The founders of the US wanted a 'government of laws, not man'. They did not want a government of 'less laws'.
I don't care what sort of absurd revisionism you've managed to internalized, read the damn Declaration of the Independence, actually look at the complaints listed as reasons the US was founded.
The only 'small government' stuff WRT to the founding of the US that existed was the idea that the states would be a lot more powerful, and the US a lot less. But while a lot of people on the right think that would mean 'less government', that wasn't the reason they 'wanted' that, nor is there any particular reason that state governments would be less intrusive.
They 'wanted' states to have more power, because they figured it was the only way the states would agree, and because turning everything over to the Federal government couldn't work at that time anyway.
And there were plenty of places where Jesus said to give to the poor, but I can’t think of any where he said to take other people’s money (without their consent) in order to give it to the poor.
No, because he knew that was already happening
The state of Israel was a theocracy. (A theocracy operating under Rome control, which was, strangely, a different theocracy, but a theocracy non-the-less.) The government were the people you were supposed to give tithes to. The government and the temple were the same.
The government/temple, if you did not give them tithes, could do all sorts of things to you.
Strangely, this evil organization that took money from people to redistribute as charity, that evil communist organization...Jesus required people to give them that money.
Weird, huh? Almost as if he had no problem with it.
As I read it, Christ was supportive of the host government, and encourages us to pay our taxes accordingly.
And the Roman government were invaders. The idea he'd have a problem with a democratic government having taxes is insane.
Do note, though, that this is outside of God's tribute, which is considered an additional duty to be paid.
I think that's one of those things that aged poorly. Roman taxes all went to Rome, and they only way they helped Jews was to fend off (other) invaders. Rome did not run social programs.
Every Jewish citizen was expected to pay the temple, which ran the social programs, and functionally were the government in that regard. They could even make laws and arrest people for not following them...if they ordered you to give X% of your grain to the poor, you had to do it.
Remember, Jesus himself was arrested under Jewish, not Rome law. Two legal systems. The temple was essentially the state government. People seem to entirely miss the idea that when Jesus said to pay tithe, he was saying it in what was partially a theocracy, to pay a tithe to the government.
A lot of problems with people reading the Bible is failing to understand the context. Don't ask 'What did God ask those people to do?', as 'What was the effect of what God asked them to do?'
We have an obligation to pay for stuff like roads and stuff, which Jesus's day, and our day, was the government, and we have an obligation to pay for stuff like social programs for the poor, which in Jesus's day was the temple, and in our day is the government.
And, as I pointed out, in Jesus's day, the religious leader helped people based on all sorts of criteria, working on minute interpretations of The Law as to who deserved how much, and Jesus, essentially, shot that idea dead, by pointing out you should love (and help) everyone, period. They'd let people starve because they weren't Jewish, and some of our churches will do the same because they aren't Christian, whereas the government, and Jesus, wouldn't.
Like I said, Christians should be grateful they live in a country that is officially secular, that, in theory, loves all citizens equally, so that they don't fall into the trap of just helping Christians.
(The views stated in this article about women are clearly not my own, and if you think they are, you aren't paying attention.)
Which, by the way, is how the original intent of the laws play out.
Not exactly.
The original intent of the marriage law is to formally declare ownership of a offspring production machine, along with penalties for men who would attempt to use that machine to cuckold the man by having it produce offspring that were not his.
Asserting it was originally about offspring is like asserting that a car title is about transporting people. Car titles do not transport people. They are use to prove ownership, and keep other people from using, and recover when lost, your property, which is used to transport people.
The original purpose of women, not 'marriage', is for offspring. The purpose of marriage just is a way to keep track of who owns what women.
Otherwise, what's the explanation for the notion of consummation?
The man formally takes ownership of the offspring production machine when he breaks the seal on it. You know, it's like those safety seals on food? You can only return food if you haven't broken those.
I'm not entirely sure this 'let's go back to original marriage law' is where you want the argument to go at all.
Granted, I'm confused as to what, exactly, you're arguing at all, considering you did call this 'unpalatable'. The reason that marriage laws were about one man marrying one woman is the fact they were, instead, originally about one man owning one woman, or even more than one woman. It is rather 'unpalatable' to point that out the entire basis of marriage is 'ownership'.
It's also unpalatable to point in this 'historical' environments, that, often, men could 'own' other men or even young boys in exactly the same manner, and no one cared what women did when alone together, and often the only women with rights were the one who managed to avoid getting married.
So your theory is that we should wait 100 years for marriage to...become more and more unpopular, until the government will stop doing them? (You know, like how black people got the vote.)
I'm sure you're trying to argue we're closed...but we're not. If gay marriage is equal rights for blacks, we're in 1962, where societal pressure is building.
But if no marriage is equal rights, we're in fricking 1840. Society does not disapprove of government issued marriages. Society does not even vaguely disapprove of them. Hell, 1840 is way too close. You're, like, pre-enlightenment.
And yes, if we hypothetically, over hundreds of years, destroyed the institute of marriage, the government would get out of marriage licenses. Good job there. Pardon me if that actually sounds worse, societally speaking, than any of the imaginary bad things that would happen if gay marriage was legal.
Some of us think stable marriages and families are an important part of society, and because there's absolutely no sane reason to have sexist rules in marriage law that anyone can think of, people of either gender should be able to marry people of any other gender.
Right now, that is, as opposed to the smoking post-apocalyptic wasteland where no one cares about marriage and all people grow up in single-parent homes that lurch from community to community without anyone actually bothering to improve a place they'll be out of in a year.
Perhaps by then we'll be growing everyone in jars, and it's goddamn Brave New World. Excuse me if I want to resolve the issue now, not after centuries of trying to convince people the government-licensed marriage is a bad thing.
Laws about 'possession' are inherently absurd. Laws about information possession are even more absurd.
The only laws about possession should be for stuff that is nearly impossible to acquire accidentally and have nearly no legitimate uses without causing hard to others.
Stuff like plutonium, basically. Or pipe bombs, or biological weapons.
Everything else we really should wait until you use it, and make that illegal.
Which, yes, would make both drugs and child porn 'legal', although I suggest we regulate the distribution of both those. In the case of the latter, no distribution at all would be legal, obviously. Whereas with drugs, well, I'd like to see those regulated like alcohol, but whatever.
'Possession' is a crazy crime, conceptually. Crimes are supposed to be actions.
You can't propose a solution that has no chance in hell of ever actually happening in any manner, and declaring victory. The solution you propose cannot, ever, under any circumstances, happen. The US government is not going to stop recognizing the existence of marriage. No US state is going to stop granting marriage licenses.
It's like saying 'The way to win World War 2 is for the all Nazis to decide to lay down their arms'.
So, with that utterly absurd and unlikely 'solution' removed as an option, now what is your solution?
Therefore, Christians also tend to believe that the government should be, generally, more or less staying out if the way, and letting them give their money to charities they personally want to support.
Despite the fact that is explicitly discouraged by the Bible...re 'Good Samaritan'. You are not told to help people like, it's sorta presumed you'll help those people. You're told to help those weird people, over there, with the odd religious beliefs (Samaritans, people forget, were 'heretical' Jews.) that you'd never choose to associate with.
I forget who it was, a sci-fi writer, who said no one understands that parable, because the only 'Samaritan' that people know of is the 'good' one. Today (he wrote in the 70s), the Samaritan should be a poor black man. Today, it should probably be a gay vegan Wicca or something. Who is your neighbor, the religious leader who left you on the side of the road, of the gay vegan Wicca who took you home and gave you a soyburger?
Christians who actually understand the Bible should be very happy the government is willing to give charity based on actual need over an entire nation, that they don't actually have to locate the most needy.
Whatever you did unto the least of you, you did to me. The US is giving Jesus food stamps, right now.
Read the actual text, and stop making up gibberish claiming that Jesus wouldn't like the government providing for the poor.
And, um, if you want 'huge overhead'...please actually look at the money you donate to a church. Even the most honest and ethical church gives less to actually help people than, oh, Medicaid.
Except the bill specifically states what can be funded.
The Senate bill, which is what specifically what the Republicans voted down, is here. There is a list of things that can be done. None of it is even providing health care, just encouraging nations to enable to access to health care.
The idea that 'support for community-based activities that encourage community members to address beliefs or practices that promote child marriage and to educate parents, community leaders, religious leaders, and adolescents of the health risks associated with child marriage and the benefits for adolescents, especially girls, of access to education, health care, livelihood skills, microfinance, and savings programs;' somehow is causing abortion is absurd. It's trying to get people to accept the idea that young girls are actually human beings.
Plus, um, nothing was stopping Republicans from putting an amendment into the bill to stop any hypothetical issues WRT abortion.
It's just an absurd goddamn excuse because the Republicans don't like to spend any money that doesn't benefit their rich friends.
I also don't know about the history of this legislation, but if you were cynical, you might consider the idea that some politicians could use exactly this type of legislation to paint others as "pro-raping children."
Oh, they're not pro-rape.
They're just not anti-rape. Attempting to discourage rape is a huge overreach of government power.
Or the alternate idea is that Senate Republicans are horribly sexist, which, frankly, is not insane.
The bill was attached to a huge omnibus spending package.
No, it wasn't. You need to actually pay attention.
The bill was S. 987. The text is here. It's three fucking pages on my screen.
And you do realize that the bailout was under Bush, right?
You meant 8,000x not 800,000x. Unless you meant $1.08 million for the other program. However your point remains.
My math is very poorly edited today.
Why don't they hold Republicans' feet to the fire?
Because then Republicans say mean things about them.
Of course, Republicans do that anyway, so I don't know.
It was a counter to the energy policy of 'more offshore drilling' that the Republicans were pushing for. (That got cut out with my truncated sentence, I think.)
Obama pointed out that, at most, that would produce 1% of oil we needed by the time they were built, and that everyone simply checking their tires air pressure would save 3% of gas used in cars, and maintence would save another 4%.
Which would not, let's be clear, actually reduce total oil used by 7%, because automobiles are not the only users of oil. But it would probably reduce it by at least 1%.
I was originally assuming that tires would remain pumped up for a year.
Then I googled what he said and realized you should probably check more often then that, and changed it to every month, and didn't fix my math.
You're assuming that there actually are two high speed providers in town.
I live in a town with one high speed provider, Windstream, because apparently it's okay for the same company to own both phone and cable.
And, of course, I don't know how 'dialup' would fix anything, considering that, even if there was a third party offering that, they'd end up hooking into, tada, the phone company's internet connection. And, yes, that phone company owns the entire local calling area, and hence any local dialup ISP (If any still exist) would hook into the same internet, so unless I want to make a long distance internet call, dialup is out. (Not that I could functionally watch Hulu over that.)
Alternately, I could get satellite internet, but that has rather serious bandwidth caps so cannot be used to watch Hulu over either.
If I want internet that I can watch Hulu over, if Windstream decides to slow Hulu, I'd literally have to purchase a dedicated 50 mile T1 line to another county and find somewhere to have it hooked up.
(Please note that Hulu is just an example here. Replace with netflix or fox news or whatever.)
You are a goddamn moron. Almost no one has more than two ISPs available, and a good portion of the country has just one.
Erm, that the fuck are you talking about?
Almost all 'the cops are out of control' organizations are formed by liberal activists, often because the cops are blatantly racist in addition to being abusive. Hell, all you have to see where Copwatch was founded...Berkley California.
But let's stop talking generalities. Let's take the most famous tape of police misbehavior, and Limbaugh. Let's check what he said about that:
"The videotape of the Rodney King beating played absolutely no role in the conviction of two of the four officers. It was pure emotion that was responsible for the guilty verdict."
Yes, that's right. Apparently, it was just 'emotion' that convicted two of the officers caught on tape beating someone. Not any sort of justice.
The same telcos who owe their ability to do business and make tons of money on the legal rights-of-way and monopolies granted to them by that same government.
Fuck 'legal right-of-ways'. Let me fix it for you:
The same telcos who owe their ability to do business and make tons of money on the fact the government has granted them a corporate license.
Remember that Every. Single. Fucking. Time. you hear about 'the government interfering in the free market'. All corporations, every single one, exist solely because the government created the laws that allow them to exist, period, end of story.
If corporations don't want fucking 'government regulation in the marketplace', let's get get rid of corporate existence at all, and see how powerful businesses get without limited liability and existence independent of their owners.
No government created corporation ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, gets to complain about being regulated by the government. It's the equivalent of people crying 'censorship' because their posts were deleted on a private forum by the forum owner.
No, just evil people who grab and increase their power over us because we are dumb enough to let them. We've even let them destroy the language -- liberal used to mean something a lot more like "libertarian"
No it didn't. The libertarian position is one that honestly did not exist in politics until about 50 years ago.
I know, in conservative mythos, the founding fathers were libertarians, but they were not. Liberal, in that day, was basically anti-classism and anti-crown, a position that really doesn't exist anymore in modern politics.
Once the crown was gone, it continued to be anti-special-rules-for-the-ruling class, a position it still holds, at least in theory. (As we don't actually have any liberal political party, it doesn't really hold any position anymore.) All liberal fights, though the entire history of this country and back to John Locke, are to stop one group of withholding power-sharing from another group, with the groups being the crown, nobles, slaveowners, the superrich, the corporate owners, the whites, the straights...and, apparently, the superrich again. Except now the superrich have intelligently bought both parties.
(Please note when I say 'liberals', I am, indeed, aware that liberals used to be on the right, and flopped to the left around when I said 'the whites')
Libertarianism is not classical liberalism, it is neo-classical liberalism. It reinvents the idea that the problem is 'the crown'. Which, frankly, would be a rather strange idea to various classical liberal thinkers, whose biggest problem with the government is the fact that it often failed to enforce laws equally, and not that those laws existed at all!
and "conservative" used to mean, you know, look before you leap, spend less than you make, stuff like that. Or even "not all change is for the better, so examine it first before deciding".
Here, you're right. Conservatives, to paraphrase something David Brin wrote on the topic, used to be the serious guys in suits at NASA who did the math. The guys running around in the background monitoring stuff that seemed entirely pointless (Until it was wrong, then they calmly and efficiently saved everyone's life.), and wasn't glamorous, and they went home to their family and read the paper each evening. Whereas liberals were the astronauts and the sci-fi writers and the dreamers, and got all the credit, but without the guys in suits, wouldn't know how to do what they were trying to do. There's the guys who try to do everything, and the guys who figure out what can and can't happen and managed to get some of it done, while otherwise raining on the parade.
But that ended about two decades ago, when it was decided that the best way to rule the country is not to point out the parts of the left's plans that can't work, and invent better ways...but to simply assert, very loudly, that anything the left wants is wrong. Morally wrong, politically wrong, won't work, every single possible objection.
Even stuff like cap and trade or the public mandate for health insurance, both of which were conservative alternatives to the left's previous plan. Or stuff like bills attempting to stop child 'marriage', which the Republicans shot down for absurd reasons two week ago. (Apparently, educating women that it is not acceptable for them to be sold to older men when they're 13 as his 'wife' is...um...pro-abortion.)
I remember when Obama recommended that people check their tire pressure (And maintain their cars.) instead of allowing new offshore drilling during the election.
The Republicans, of course, decided to act like checking your tire pressure was an insanely stupid thing for human beings to do. (Sadly, as Obama was not elected yet, they couldn't act like his suggestion was a government dictate.)
eventually happened with offshore drilling.
Remember my Republican friends, if a Democrat suggests something that would, for the cost of a $10 air pump from Wal-Mart and 5 minutes of your time every month, save you 3% of your gasoline costs, (Which by my math would pay for itself the first time you use it, if you spend at least $33 on gas a month.) why, they're crazy. If they're elected, or even if they're just the spouse of someone elected, they're a fascist.
The government should never attempt to provide information that would make the lives of their citizens better!
Being 'against everything the left like' is a pretty goddamn shitty political position.
OTOH, it actually is the Republican position. Just the other day, they were against a bill to attempt to reduce 'child marriage' around the world. ('Child marriage' actually means 40 year old men purchasing 13 year old girls from their parents, 'marrying' them, and then, when their female children are old enough, selling them off to other men.)
A simple bill that uses already existing US development programs to help break the cycle of abuse by simply attempting to educate women, and requires countries that get our aid to explain the status of this practice in them, and was only $108 million dollars. (To compare, we just passed a $858 billion tax cut extension, which is, oh, 800,000x more. The damn 'bridge to nowhere' was $223 million.)
The joke used to be that the Democrats should come out against raping children, and see what the Republicans do. Horrifically, twp weeks ago, they did, and the Republicans, indeed, came in favor of it. Or at least not against it.
I think you misunderstood the man. He clearly said he doesn't exist.
Everyone, mod grandparent -1: Doesn't exist