As I recall, the staunchest bushies bought W's pitch that invading Iraq would nip a potential future 9/11 in the bud. In 2002-2003, it wasn't that hard to believe, even for rational people.
Perhaps they did, but even that's a far cry from the belief that Saddam was behind 9/11.
BS. We constantly stumble from one issue to another with the neo-cons making big todo's out of EVERYTHING. They believe that nobody will pay attention to their lies. Hell, look at the fact that they are doing as little as possible about the illegals here. They continue to want the illegals here, but as illegals.
Depends on where they live, the neo-cons are not truly unified on the issue. There are tons of them along, say, the Arizona border, for whom national security trumps every other issue, and border security is a pretty big thing. They don't "illegals crossing over to take American jobs," even if those jobs are toilet scrubbers. The neo-cons in the non-border states though... they might feel differently.
Of course, the ones creating all of these crisis and not compromising in the least, are the republicans. You did note that Romney lost the election and that a number of republicans congressmen lost their seats. Right? At the next election, the house will likely go to the dems.
I think that's fairly optimistic. Last election all house seats were up for grabs, and the balance of seats there didn't change to any meaningful degree. What do you anticipate changing in the next two years that will alter the status quo? Nov 2012 was a vote for more of the same -- same President, same House, same Senate.
i don't know whether you're misunderstanding my point or you're just stupid
I'm not sure you understand what you're dealing with here. You're talking to a guy who says taxes levied by the government is theft at gunpoint. At that level of radicalization, reasoned discourse becomes extremely difficult.
How in the world could a change in the Catholic stance on condoms save lives? Don't tell me that people who ignore Catholic teachings on fornication will listen to Catholic teachings on condoms.
It's more the Catholic Church being successful at blocking official support for contraception in my 3rd-world countries. It's not that contraception is available and usable in the 3rd world, but a priest says "don't do it!" It's more that a church is successful at keeping contraception out of an entire area.
The tradition was started when a Pope named Mecurious (Mercury) was elected.
Pope Mercury is remembered for his humility. He once said, "I'm just a poor boy and nobody loves me"; and indeed he was just a poor boy from a poor family.
I'm sure Freddie must have had a pope outfit. He wore just about any other sort of costume.
The same people who hated Benedict XVI and John Paul II will hate Pope Francis. How dare he believe in 2000 years worth of teachings about the sanctity of life and marriage being between a man and a woman when it's all so unfashionable?
Haha, 'unfashionable.' As if laws written thousands of years ago by superstitious old patriarchal men should be sanctified and never questioned. As if somehow in their backwards age THEY had it all figured out.
As if it was impossible for society to grow more advanced and wiser in the same way we've learned more about technology and experienced more through it.
But yeah, 2000, 3000 years ago were primitive, barbaric cultures ruled by superstition. Those are the ones we should emulate.
Theologians can persuade themselves of anything. Anyone who can worship a trinity and insists that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything -- just give him time to rationalize it.
-- Robert A. Heinlein,
Heinlein sometimes has some good points mixed up with the shitty ones in his writing, but this was a particularly poor example of reasoning on his part.
Why, because he doesn't think government should be in the marriage business, or favoring a guy who's married with special financial treats that a guy who's single has to subsidize?
I don't think it was that. It was more his implication that if the homosexual couple wants to have the same benefits that married couples get, that their relationship isn't a relationship based on love. Worse, he flat out characterizes gay couples, regardless of marriage views, as "selfish desires of people in a relationship that is destined to be sterile." I'd say that's offensive, yeah.
But you avoided his point. Being humble and denying other people the rights that you have because you believe your views are correct are not compatible.
He's not making that stuff up, though, those are the Bible's views. He's not arrogant enough to go against God's teachings.
So you're telling me that they didn't persecute Galileo because of an honest belief that his teaching was hereticial
Oh, the conviction was for heresy all right, or more accurately, a lesser charge: suspicion of heresy. Even under threat of torture Galileo swore that he did not subscribe to a Heliocentric view as opposed to a Geocentric one. But the reason for the prosecution is that it was Pope Urban VIII who initially protected him from prosecution, and when Galileo offended him, he lost that protection.
instead you're saying that God's infallible representative on earth threatened to torture an innocent old man because he was mildly offended at what might have been a caricature of him in one of Galileo's books?
"Papal infallibility" was not formalized until 200 years after Galileo's death. It's a strangely recent concept (that had its genesis during Galileo's time). Besides, infallibility is limited to only a small number of circumstances. It doesn't mean everything the pope does is right or that he doesn't make mistakes. Catholic doctrine would hold that there's only one person who never did any wrong.
The pope at the time was something of Galileo's friend, and was the one who defended him against the cardinals, who definitely didn't like Galileo's writing! Pope Urban invited Galileo to write a defense of heliotropism, and he wrote Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. We might think the pope is the supreme leader of the Catholic Church, but at least back then the church and Rome was filled with.. "court intrigue" is a polite way of putting it. Pope Urban feared for his life, growing more paranoid and was at a particularly low point in his life when the work was published (with a license from the Spanish Inquisition no less!). The pope was not a believer in Heliotropism and asked that his own views be published in the book. Unfortunately, the work was a dialogue between two philosophers, one of whom clearly parroted Galileo's views of Heliotropism, while the other was Simplicio, the defender of the Geocentric view (and whose name was suspiciously similar to "simpleton.") Pope Urban felt he was being mocked, and like all popes of the time, public ridicule was a no-no.
Pretty much everyone these days believe Galileo did not do anything out of malice and was blind-sided to the negative reaction. He was convicted of "suspicion of heresy."
Off on a tangent, one of the reasons America is so divided is too many people have tried to turn every question of policy into a constitutional issue and thus an issue for the courts.
Because the question "is this an issue that is in the government's sphere" is an important one. Many, even most issues that come up in our day-to-day life are not ones that the governments should be covering with a law.
While I am not taking issue with your arguments, are you aware that this last one essentially boils down to a plea to "think of the children"?
There's a lot of bullshit that is passed with "think of the children," but that doesn't mean that the opposite is true, that children should be ignored and you should just pretend that they're not there. There's nothing wrong with lowering the speed limit in a school zone.
Given some people's need to drive the biggest fucking vehicle they can find some times it is necessary to pull farther forward to see the oncoming traffic before making a turn because of the person with the H2 they are using to haul their groceries home in.
I drive a sedan and have to pull out all the time because someone decides to park a large van on a street corner. That usually doesn't happen on super-busy streets (no one is allowed to park on the corner in that case), but it's fairly common in my area to have to sneak over the line into streets where cross-traffic doesn't stop, just to see if there is oncoming traffic.
Or it could be the guy in front of you is a sociopath who deserves to be penalized for his reckless and dangerous behavior.
Sure. But tailgating is reckless behavior as well. It was the person driving behind who willfully put him or herself into a dangerous situation. Doesn't excuse the person in front for driving recklessly and it's clear that the front person initiated the collision, but there are many, many situations where that accident would still have occurred if the person in front had to suddenly stop -- a child chases a ball into the street. Someone jaywalks without even checking for cross traffic. Etcetc. There would still have been a rear-end collision, and that means that in all cases there should be a good chunk of culpability for the person traveling behind.
So you think overweight vehicles should all drive proportionally slower? Let's do that with tractor trailers going 30 MPH on an interstate. Let me know how you like it.
Yeah well, usually you don't have many red lights on the interstate. And there are many, many interstates (around where I live anyway) where the speed limit for cars may be 70 mph, but the speed limit for a truck with a trailer is 55 mph.
Build in a longer delay before the cross-traffic gets a green after the red goes on. Justification: Do they want to be known as the City that let someone die because they didn't account for physics when timing the light?
Nobody on the city council thinks anyone is going to die, obviously. They know there might be a few fender benders, but yes, for many towns that's a price they're willing to pay because the town is not the one getting the bill. The more important issue for them is that they need revenues (often because the state is siphoning money from the cities) but they can't raise taxes. Crafting intersections that make it difficult to avoid ticketable situations is what brings in money. Stationing patrol cars next to places where the speed limit changes many times in a short area is another. It's not intended to increase safety, it's that they need additional revenue from their citizens, but while taxes may be politically unpopular (and might need to be approved by voters), fines are harder to rally support against and need no approval.
I believe the distance is supposed to be 1 car length for ever ten miles per hour
I was taught "the three second rule." (Though sometimes it was the two second rule) It was easy, I spot a road-side marker (could be a sign, a rock, anything) and count the seconds until I pass it. If under three seconds pass, I might be a bit too close. If under two seconds pass I'm WAY too close. That's easier for me than judging "car lengths," which I just can't do.
In any sufficiently advanced feminism, every female becomes a sex object when observed by a male. Even a homosexual male.
In sufficiently advanced feminism, feminists fight -against- rights for homosexual males because any males gaining rights is a disadvantage to females.
If you like straight male porn, it's objectifying and subjugating women. If you like gay male porn, you're indulging in a misogenistic world where women have no role at all.
I wish I was making that up, but there is no winning with some people.
Slashdot Mirror
As I recall, the staunchest bushies bought W's pitch that invading Iraq would nip a potential future 9/11 in the bud. In 2002-2003, it wasn't that hard to believe, even for rational people.
Perhaps they did, but even that's a far cry from the belief that Saddam was behind 9/11.
BS. We constantly stumble from one issue to another with the neo-cons making big todo's out of EVERYTHING. They believe that nobody will pay attention to their lies. Hell, look at the fact that they are doing as little as possible about the illegals here. They continue to want the illegals here, but as illegals.
Depends on where they live, the neo-cons are not truly unified on the issue. There are tons of them along, say, the Arizona border, for whom national security trumps every other issue, and border security is a pretty big thing. They don't "illegals crossing over to take American jobs," even if those jobs are toilet scrubbers. The neo-cons in the non-border states though... they might feel differently.
Of course, the ones creating all of these crisis and not compromising in the least, are the republicans. You did note that Romney lost the election and that a number of republicans congressmen lost their seats. Right? At the next election, the house will likely go to the dems.
I think that's fairly optimistic. Last election all house seats were up for grabs, and the balance of seats there didn't change to any meaningful degree. What do you anticipate changing in the next two years that will alter the status quo? Nov 2012 was a vote for more of the same -- same President, same House, same Senate.
How about the one that hasn't put a woman up on a presidential ticket? (VP or Pres)...?
Tisk, the Democratic Party had the Mondale-Ferraro ticket in '84.
i don't know whether you're misunderstanding my point or you're just stupid
I'm not sure you understand what you're dealing with here. You're talking to a guy who says taxes levied by the government is theft at gunpoint.
At that level of radicalization, reasoned discourse becomes extremely difficult.
How in the world could a change in the Catholic stance on condoms save lives?
Don't tell me that people who ignore Catholic teachings on fornication will listen to Catholic teachings on condoms.
It's more the Catholic Church being successful at blocking official support for contraception in my 3rd-world countries. It's not that contraception is available and usable in the 3rd world, but a priest says "don't do it!" It's more that a church is successful at keeping contraception out of an entire area.
The tradition was started when a Pope named Mecurious (Mercury) was elected.
Pope Mercury is remembered for his humility. He once said, "I'm just a poor boy and nobody loves me"; and indeed he was just a poor boy from a poor family.
I'm sure Freddie must have had a pope outfit. He wore just about any other sort of costume.
The same people who hated Benedict XVI and John Paul II will hate Pope Francis. How dare he believe in 2000 years worth of teachings about the sanctity of life and marriage being between a man and a woman when it's all so unfashionable?
Haha, 'unfashionable.' As if laws written thousands of years ago by superstitious old patriarchal men should be sanctified and never questioned. As if somehow in their backwards age THEY had it all figured out.
As if it was impossible for society to grow more advanced and wiser in the same way we've learned more about technology and experienced more through it.
But yeah, 2000, 3000 years ago were primitive, barbaric cultures ruled by superstition. Those are the ones we should emulate.
Theologians can persuade themselves of anything. Anyone who can worship a trinity and insists that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything -- just give him time to rationalize it.
-- Robert A. Heinlein,
Heinlein sometimes has some good points mixed up with the shitty ones in his writing, but this was a particularly poor example of reasoning on his part.
Why, because he doesn't think government should be in the marriage business, or favoring a guy who's married with special financial treats that a guy who's single has to subsidize?
I don't think it was that. It was more his implication that if the homosexual couple wants to have the same benefits that married couples get, that their relationship isn't a relationship based on love. Worse, he flat out characterizes gay couples, regardless of marriage views, as "selfish desires of people in a relationship that is destined to be sterile." I'd say that's offensive, yeah.
But you avoided his point. Being humble and denying other people the rights that you have because you believe your views are correct are not compatible.
He's not making that stuff up, though, those are the Bible's views. He's not arrogant enough to go against God's teachings.
So you're telling me that they didn't persecute Galileo because of an honest belief that his teaching was hereticial
Oh, the conviction was for heresy all right, or more accurately, a lesser charge: suspicion of heresy. Even under threat of torture Galileo swore that he did not subscribe to a Heliocentric view as opposed to a Geocentric one. But the reason for the prosecution is that it was Pope Urban VIII who initially protected him from prosecution, and when Galileo offended him, he lost that protection.
instead you're saying that God's infallible representative on earth threatened to torture an innocent old man because he was mildly offended at what might have been a caricature of him in one of Galileo's books?
"Papal infallibility" was not formalized until 200 years after Galileo's death. It's a strangely recent concept (that had its genesis during Galileo's time). Besides, infallibility is limited to only a small number of circumstances. It doesn't mean everything the pope does is right or that he doesn't make mistakes. Catholic doctrine would hold that there's only one person who never did any wrong.
The pope at the time was something of Galileo's friend, and was the one who defended him against the cardinals, who definitely didn't like Galileo's writing! Pope Urban invited Galileo to write a defense of heliotropism, and he wrote Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. We might think the pope is the supreme leader of the Catholic Church, but at least back then the church and Rome was filled with.. "court intrigue" is a polite way of putting it. Pope Urban feared for his life, growing more paranoid and was at a particularly low point in his life when the work was published (with a license from the Spanish Inquisition no less!). The pope was not a believer in Heliotropism and asked that his own views be published in the book. Unfortunately, the work was a dialogue between two philosophers, one of whom clearly parroted Galileo's views of Heliotropism, while the other was Simplicio, the defender of the Geocentric view (and whose name was suspiciously similar to "simpleton.") Pope Urban felt he was being mocked, and like all popes of the time, public ridicule was a no-no.
Pretty much everyone these days believe Galileo did not do anything out of malice and was blind-sided to the negative reaction. He was convicted of "suspicion of heresy."
but imagine for a second if it was illegal to make any claim in an advertisement that wasn't scientifically sound ?
Mmmm, the companies that make Airborne and "dietary supplements" would go out of business overnight. In my perfect world, anyway.
If you think abou tit for a min,
I see what you did there, Mister Freud.
Off on a tangent, one of the reasons America is so divided is too many people have tried to turn every question of policy into a constitutional issue and thus an issue for the courts.
Because the question "is this an issue that is in the government's sphere" is an important one. Many, even most issues that come up in our day-to-day life are not ones that the governments should be covering with a law.
While I am not taking issue with your arguments, are you aware that this last one essentially boils down to a plea to "think of the children"?
There's a lot of bullshit that is passed with "think of the children," but that doesn't mean that the opposite is true, that children should be ignored and you should just pretend that they're not there. There's nothing wrong with lowering the speed limit in a school zone.
Given some people's need to drive the biggest fucking vehicle they can find some times it is necessary to pull farther forward to see the oncoming traffic before making a turn because of the person with the H2 they are using to haul their groceries home in.
I drive a sedan and have to pull out all the time because someone decides to park a large van on a street corner. That usually doesn't happen on super-busy streets (no one is allowed to park on the corner in that case), but it's fairly common in my area to have to sneak over the line into streets where cross-traffic doesn't stop, just to see if there is oncoming traffic.
Or it could be the guy in front of you is a sociopath who deserves to be penalized for his reckless and dangerous behavior.
Sure. But tailgating is reckless behavior as well. It was the person driving behind who willfully put him or herself into a dangerous situation. Doesn't excuse the person in front for driving recklessly and it's clear that the front person initiated the collision, but there are many, many situations where that accident would still have occurred if the person in front had to suddenly stop -- a child chases a ball into the street. Someone jaywalks without even checking for cross traffic. Etcetc. There would still have been a rear-end collision, and that means that in all cases there should be a good chunk of culpability for the person traveling behind.
So you think overweight vehicles should all drive proportionally slower? Let's do that with tractor trailers going 30 MPH on an interstate. Let me know how you like it.
Yeah well, usually you don't have many red lights on the interstate. And there are many, many interstates (around where I live anyway) where the speed limit for cars may be 70 mph, but the speed limit for a truck with a trailer is 55 mph.
Build in a longer delay before the cross-traffic gets a green after the red goes on. Justification: Do they want to be known as the City that let someone die because they didn't account for physics when timing the light?
Nobody on the city council thinks anyone is going to die, obviously. They know there might be a few fender benders, but yes, for many towns that's a price they're willing to pay because the town is not the one getting the bill. The more important issue for them is that they need revenues (often because the state is siphoning money from the cities) but they can't raise taxes. Crafting intersections that make it difficult to avoid ticketable situations is what brings in money. Stationing patrol cars next to places where the speed limit changes many times in a short area is another. It's not intended to increase safety, it's that they need additional revenue from their citizens, but while taxes may be politically unpopular (and might need to be approved by voters), fines are harder to rally support against and need no approval.
I believe the distance is supposed to be 1 car length for ever ten miles per hour
I was taught "the three second rule." (Though sometimes it was the two second rule) It was easy, I spot a road-side marker (could be a sign, a rock, anything) and count the seconds until I pass it. If under three seconds pass, I might be a bit too close. If under two seconds pass I'm WAY too close. That's easier for me than judging "car lengths," which I just can't do.
I'm glad you found at least one positive thing from having your testicles removed.
He might still have them, and still look like Lara Croft.
"It's a trap!"
In any sufficiently advanced feminism, every female becomes a sex object when observed by a male. Even a homosexual male.
In sufficiently advanced feminism, feminists fight -against- rights for homosexual males because any males gaining rights is a disadvantage to females.
I wouldn't say Yuna circa FFX was a sex object. She certainly decided to dress a little stripperiffic when FFX-2 came around though.
If you like straight male porn, it's objectifying and subjugating women. If you like gay male porn, you're indulging in a misogenistic world where women have no role at all.
I wish I was making that up, but there is no winning with some people.