The new theories emerging from research into game theory, social science, economics and decision making paint a fairly encouraging picture of human nature. We are not primarily selfish creatures, in fact we are more motivated by ideals of fairness and reciprocity than greed, unless we live in a society where everyone is greedy and being fair gets you taken advantage of.
The question for me is not "are there natural or God given rights?" It is, are there rights that are so fundamental that no (or few) individuals disagree with having and upholding them. I think there are such rights, but they are never absolute. Even the right to life: in certain cases, nearly all societies agree that that right needs to be removed. For murder, for instance, or in the case of war.
What a lovely straw man you've built there. The use of fossil fuels creates externalities, bad things we all have to pay for, and the carbon tax is not 'weighing down productive systems' it is making those systems pay their fair share of the true costs they create.
No, you can not borrow my car for an extended period of time because we, as a society, have agreed that individuals have certain limited rights to control their own possessions.
Funny, you did not address the part where I explained how and why absolute property rights lead to slavery, you just assert that I am wrong. If property rights are absolute, then the rich can simply buy up all property and force non property owners to work for them, because the non property owners have no other means of support.
Let me be very clear about this concept of natural or God given rights. It is authoritarian, because, if rights are immutable and present from birth, there is only one true set of rights, and these are not open for discussion. So, we have the situation where one person is dictating to others what their rights are, saying "No! These are the natural rights. Rights I do not agree to are not natural, therefore, they don't exist. So shut up, your stupid ideas about rights are unnatural."
Natural and God given rights are an appeal to authority, and they appeal to authority, because they preempt all discussion about rights. Either the right is natural, or it does not and can not exist. No new rights, ever. All the old rights, immutable and unchanging. That is very, very appealing to authoritarian types.
Dur hur, just because you are too stupid to think up any other way of fixing global warming except for everyone becoming Amish, does not mean that more intelligent people are unable to come up with more feasible plans.
Gah, you still don't even seem to understand the gist of my argument, you are arguing on meaningless tangents. You are talking the ideal of rights, I am talking the implementation.
The fact that no one will defend the freedom of the slave means the slave is not free, and his rights are meaningless except as the basis for an argument to come to his aid.
I DO NOT have the right to remain alive, that is ludicrous and demonstrably untrue! I WILL die. No ifs ands or buts. I could die at any second, despite my supposed right to life. Someone could easily kill me by accident and walk away without any sort of punishment. I do not have a right to life. I have the right to be free from unwanted violence originating from other human beings, because I live in a society where we have all agreed we all value freedom from being killed by other people over the freedom to kill other people.
Do you see, at the very least, how your argument about rights only applies to other humans? If we had the inherent right to life, we would be immortal. Sadly, other animals and natural processes do not respect our rights, and, so far as the avalanche or fire is concerned, we have no right to life, and no argument will sway Mr. Avalanche or Mr. House Fire. If the argument only applies to other humans, then that means it is based in societal agreements, not in some inherent quality we possess.
Sadly, the second ammendment will not help us resist oppression from the government, who have nuclear weapons, tanks, and planes. Your little pop-gun ain't doing shit against the US army, so sorry.
But natural rights are simply human ideas, and not everyone agrees what those natural or God given rights are, and so in the end, it all boils down to agreement anyway.
So, a majority (or even a minority) agrees that those 'others' do not have rights. Does the first group have the power to impose its will on the second? If so, then for all practical purposes, that second group does not have rights. If the second group has enough power that they can demand the first group recognize their rights, then they do have those rights.
If you want rights, you need to fight for them, not appeal to a belief in some sky daddy or philosophical rationalization. You need to convince those other people, who do not think you should have certain rights, that it is in their best interest for everyone to have those rights.
I do not wish it were different, because I do not want some ultimate authority setting the rules of the game, because then I am not truly free.
Can you point out these rights to me? Are they physical things? If someone has a right, but no one backs him up, does he still have that right? Did slaves have the right to freedom? Does saying they did even make sense? I mean, they obviously did not have that right until we all agreed they should.
Would it be sensible to talk of rights if there were only one human being left alive on the planet? I don't think so. We do not have rights outside of society. All we have is power. Can we do something, or can't we? It is only applicable to talk of rights when we are functioning within a society. And within a society, rights derive only from agreements, and the idea of natural rights is just an argument used to compel agreement.
Of course I can stop you from speaking. I can throw you in jail and put a ball gag in your mouth. People have done that for millenia. Saying that no one can take away your free speech is just about the stupidest and most counter-factual argument I've heard in a while.
Without society, free speech is meaningless. If you are the last man left alive, free speech is meaningless. Alone, your speech is no more meaningful than the chirping of crickets.
I fully realize that the idea that we only have rights that we all agree to is frightening. That means that we need to fight very hard for what we believe in. There is no ultimate authority that we can appeal to, that everyone will agree to. If someone does not agree with our argument about rights, they don't agree, and if we are in a position where we can not resist them, then we do not have those rights.
You and I are talking about two different things, though. You are talking about the ideal of rights. Ideals are well and good, but not everyone has the same ideals. I am talking about the practical implementation of rights, of rights as they actually exist.
The slave may say to himself "I have the right to be free" but if no one else will back him up, does he have that right? No. He is not free and simply saying "I have the right to be free," while it might make him feel good, does not make him free. Ideals never changed anything. Actions change things. Imagining yourself to be free does not make you free. You can whine about your rights all you like, but what will that do? The real question is not, do you have the right to be free, the real question is, do you have the power?
You don't understand the difference between weather and climate? Really? That's been a huge part of the debate for decades now, because every moron out there thought he could debunk climate research with weather anecdotes, and so other people have had to explain the difference, again, for decades now. So I'm surprised you have not had this explained to you before now.
Take a pot of water. Put it on a hot stove. Given that you know the temperature of the stove, the water, the air, the material of the pan, the humidity, and the altitude, you can predict exactly when the pan will boil (climate) but you will not be able to predict the location of the first bubble to break the surface (weather).
If that explanation helps, please take some of the burden off the rest of us and pass it on the next time you hear someone saying "But we can't predict the weather." Thanks.
I can easily disprove the claims of these so called "scientists." They claim that global warming is undeniable, and yet we see people denying it right here in the comments.
Cute, but it's implied that it's undeniable by people who actually understand the science and look at it objectively. They really don't care what morons and jebus freaks "think" about their work..
Ahaha, I was thinking "but anti abortionists don't use that... oh" Hmm, I guess you're right, the pro choice people use it. It's still just a foolish appeal to authority. I mean, we're potentially talking about two people's bodies, but one of them is a total leach and can't survive without the other.
In this case, argument is still stupid and on the wrong track. We do not need to delve into the philosophical morass in search of when human life begins. We need to look at the concept of killing versus murder. Many, if not most of us agree that sometimes, ending someone else's life is okay, because society has an overriding interest. I don't think the death penalty is the greatest idea, but I do believe in killing in self or national defense, for instance.
So the argument is simple, does society have the same kind of vested interest in ending the gestation of a fetus that we accept as valid reasons for killing in other circumstances? The evidence says yes, it does. Look at crime rates, since abortion was legalized they have gone down. Unwanted children often turn into criminals. They ruin the lives of their parents and communities and create costs that all of us have to bear.
If you want to argue positions, it seems advantageous to do so on the utility to the individual. As I believe rights are derived from agreements, in order to create or destroy rights, all you need is agreement of the majority (or whatever your constitution says. You do have a constitution you all agreed to, right?) So all you need is to convince people. Sure, you can try to convince people using arguments based on 'God given' or 'natural' rights, but these are mere appeals to authority and should not serve to convince anyone with half a brain and a grasp of logic.
To some, the idea that there are no rights but what we make may seem terrifying and arbitrary. To me, it is the ultimate liberation. Freedom is not happy "I get to do whatever I like" funtime. Freedom is hard, and it comes with responsibilities that many, I think, would rather not face.
I can easily disprove the claims of these so called "scientists." They claim that global warming is undeniable, and yet we see people denying it right here in the comments. Ha HA!
Now, if they had said something along the lines of "At this point, the proof is so overwhelming that only mentally deficient conservative hippie-hating anti-environmentalist shills for big business will attempt to deny it," well, that is just self evidently true.
Then I guess we are all slaves because someone tried to put some THC into his body the other day and got arrested for doing so......
This is not logical. For instance, perhaps no one can possibly "own" a living human being. If you don't own yourself because no one can, then you aren't a slave. You can also "own" your body but still be a slave. You can have your liberty compromised without your body being compromised, for instance if someone threatens to take away your only livelihood unless you comply with their demands. You can also effectively be a slave simply through a lack of understanding of your own freedom.
I only ever see this 'you own your own body' argument from libertarians, who use it to justify absolute property rights. But these absolute property rights lead directly to 'voluntary' slavery: do what I say or starve to death because we own all the property and you do not. The entire premise is a simplistic piece of philosophical masturbation. I say, just as no one can (or should) own the air we breath, no one can (or should) own a human, including themselves. Libertarians want to make everything about ownership, but ownership is a simplistic and selfish concept. I would rather have society based on mutual agreement (which is the only thing society can be based on, really, I just want that explicitly acknowledged.)
Libertarians say, "You own your body, therefore you own the rewards of your work, therefore no one can tell you what to do with your property because that amounts to slavery." I like that conclusion, but why go to such convoluted lengths to reach it? It's much simpler like this: "You control the rewards of your work because everyone agrees that they would like to control the rewards of theirs." That's it. No need to invoke ownership or slavery at all, just agreement. And it leaves open the idea that we can and should limit property rights when they interfere with society. Sometimes, there are things that are more important than having total control over your own stored labor. For instance, pollution is an externality. That means that you should not be allowed to pollute your own property, because it imposes a cost on others. You should also not be allowed to buy up all the property and make everyone work for you or starve to death.
In short, "I own my own body and therefore should have absolute property rights" leads, inevitably, to slavery. "We agree to these sets of rights and obligations" does not necessarily lead to slavery.
This has been debunked so many times, cameras were not trained no these guys the whole time. You don't know whether their accusation is based in fact, you are speculating that it is unfounded.
You can claim whatever you like about some small, non racist segment of teabaggers supporting minorities. I never claimed the whole Tea Party was racist, I'm just saying a significant and vocal segment of teabaggers are virulently racist.
I'm sorry you suffer from reading comprehension problems, but what can I do? I have not confused fact with speculation. The money, at this point, has disappeared. It is missing. No one can account for it. Perhaps it will be found, perhaps it won't. I've been completely honest and accurate. Trying to twist the meaning of words to throw uncertainty and doubt onto another person's argument won't help you to be taken seriously by learned folk.
There is every point in singling out BP for this. No one else even comes close to being as cheap about safety as BP. They had 760 willful, egregious safety violations in a three year period where the next worst oil company had 9.
The US government failed because George Bush inserted sleeper agents into Federal agencies. These were people that Bush appointees hired, so they are simply career bureaucrats and were not replaced when Bush left office. Their job was to stand in the way of enforcing regulations.
We create a demand for oil and gas. We do not create a demand for unsafe extraction of oil and gas. Plenty of oil companies make a fine profit while playing it safe. BP did not.
You know, I'm not a dualitic thinker by nature, and I understand that everything affects everything else, but trying to blame everyone but the criminals involved in this disaster is just taking that concept too far.
How were those tags unfounded? I'd say they were on the nose. And based on the unabashed racism on display at every single Tea Party rally, I'd be willing to believe those CBC members over the racist denialists.
This whole idea that pensions and 401ks benefit from evil corporatist actions is true, but ultimately meaningless. Do you know what percentage of these stocks are owned by pensions and 401ks? Very, very little. In fact, the bottom fifty percent of Americans own zero point five percent of all stocks. http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4
Read the whole thing.
Having greedy bastards making money hand over fist for extracting resources from the ground with little oversight and no safety is hardly ideal for conservation. You see, they are likely to ignore all regulations, endangering workers and the environment in their quest to make next quarters profits slightly higher. In fact, BP racked up over 760 egregious and willful safety violations in a three year period, when Exxon, having learned it's lesson up in Alaska, had only one.
Profitable oil companies, bad. Oil extraction is inherently a natural monopoly, as it is utterly inefficient to have more than one company tapping the same source. And the oil business in general is a well protected oligopoly, there are very few suppliers world wide. Thus, it is not the sort of business that free market competition will make any more efficient. Therefore, it is in the public interest to manage it carefully for the public good rather than for individual profit. Nationalize it, tell the rich bastards that they haven't done good enough and they lose the privilege. Pay off that tiny 0.5% owned by the poor, the rich owners did not insists on safety from the boards they elected, they are culpable too. Keep the workers, they know what they are doing, but give them actual workplace safety.
See, if we do things right, the guilty get screwed, the innocent are protected, the public interest is served, and greedy bullies learn that being a bully is no longer profitable.
Obama's favorite president is Ronald Reagan, so said his law school adviser on The Daily Show election night coverage. Obama is about as far from socialist as it is possible to get.
You are basically saying that the rich are engaging in class warfare against the poor, using any tool they can manipulate? Color me shocked. There is a simple solution, though: take money out of politics, and then tax the hell out of the rich so they don't have the resources to engage in class warfare and steal our money using the government. Tax them until their eyes bleed. Transfer all that wealth they've stolen back to the people that actually worked to create it.
As you are against corporate tools, I'm sure you'll support this plan. Unless you are actually a corporate tool in disguise. You'll pardon my mentioning it, but those seem to be common these days, don't they?
Both sides do not have the exact same problems. One side has a chest cold, the other has lung cancer. Yes, they both have a cough, but the underlying problems are not the same.
I'm not excusing 'my side' as I don't have a side. I'm explaining that this false equivalency is ridiculous, one side is by far the lesser of two evils. Evil, yes, but much, much less so.
Democrats are bought by 'race baiters?!?' WTF?!? Republicans are shameless race baiters. Look at that lying sack of shit Breitbart. I'm sorry, but this tactic of blaming one side for everything the other side is guilty of does not make things equal. You know you are part of a lost cause when the best argument your side can come up with is "but they are just as bad!"
It was indirectly Bush's fault, but of course, Obama being the corporate tool he is, he did not move to ferret out the Bush plants. So it is equally his fault.
What I'm saying is this: true or not, one party campaigns on deregulation, while the other party campaigns on more regulation and better enforcement. They may be lying, but I'll go with them over the fools who actually claim deregulation as their stated goal.
I really don't see what is so hard to understand about that. You do realize that Obama is not Superman, right? You see, there is this thing called the filibuster, and Republicans have been using it to paralyze government. Even if Obama wants to fix the regulations, he and his party have to fight their way past the brazen corporate obstructionists of the Republican party.
It may not be a problem of (D) vs. (R) but I think the evidence clearly shows that Republicans are bought, lock stock and barrel, by moneyed corporate interests. Democrats may be lying, but at least they claim to be on our side. Republicans are shamelessly on the side of big business.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but the article you linked to talks about recorded revenues and poorly accounted-for expenditures on reconstruction. It follows that with a statement from CentCom saying that the money can be properly accounted for. Where's the part about us going to Iraq to steal their oil?
The part where nearly 9 billion disappeared. If you believe it will ever be accounted for, I've got a nice bridge to sell you. Companies like Halliburton knew they would be paid in oil that mysteriously fell of the back of a truck.
Of that amount, the military failed to provide any records at all for $2.6 billion in purported reconstruction expenditure, says the report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is responsible for monitoring U.S. spending in Iraq. The rest of the money was not properly deposited in special accounts as required under Treasury Department rules, making it difficult to trace how it was spent
So, 2.6 billion is completely unaccounted for, with the rest merely missing and poorly accounted for.
In response to the audit findings, the Defense Department concurred with recommendations that it establish better guidelines for managing such funds. But a letter from U.S. Central Command emphasized that failure to establish deposit accounts for the $8.7 billion does not mean it all cannot be accounted for.
CentCom does not claim the money can be accounted for. It is making the laughable (but trivially true) claim that just because the money is unaccounted for now, and not in the proper accounts, does not mean it won't be accounted for at some vague time in the future. That is not the same thing as claiming the money can be accounted for, and claiming the money can be accounted for is not the same thing as accounting for it.
What's to argue? An unbiased reading of that article would lead anyone to my conclusion. I'm satisfied with my debunking work here, so unless you have further information to add, I'll bid you good day.
I'm deliberately misreading that?!? Please. You've got one quote, from one guy, about one small part of the spill being eaten by microbes, evaporated, etc. Toxins in the oil eaten by microbes bio-accumulate, as the microbes are in turn eaten by other organisms. And evaporation means that the volatile part of the oil evaporates into the atmosphere (bad) while the other parts sink (also bad).
But the reality is, this article talks about the oil slick, not the deep water plumes. BP was using dispersant underwater to keep the oil from making it to the surface and becoming obvious. We've got these huge plumes of oil frappe emulsified with the most toxic dispersants available.
Your case is weak and your argumentation is poor. It's almost as if you are parroting back right wing talking points without understanding the underlying data.
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The new theories emerging from research into game theory, social science, economics and decision making paint a fairly encouraging picture of human nature. We are not primarily selfish creatures, in fact we are more motivated by ideals of fairness and reciprocity than greed, unless we live in a society where everyone is greedy and being fair gets you taken advantage of.
The question for me is not "are there natural or God given rights?" It is, are there rights that are so fundamental that no (or few) individuals disagree with having and upholding them. I think there are such rights, but they are never absolute. Even the right to life: in certain cases, nearly all societies agree that that right needs to be removed. For murder, for instance, or in the case of war.
What a lovely straw man you've built there. The use of fossil fuels creates externalities, bad things we all have to pay for, and the carbon tax is not 'weighing down productive systems' it is making those systems pay their fair share of the true costs they create.
No, you can not borrow my car for an extended period of time because we, as a society, have agreed that individuals have certain limited rights to control their own possessions.
Funny, you did not address the part where I explained how and why absolute property rights lead to slavery, you just assert that I am wrong. If property rights are absolute, then the rich can simply buy up all property and force non property owners to work for them, because the non property owners have no other means of support.
Let me be very clear about this concept of natural or God given rights. It is authoritarian, because, if rights are immutable and present from birth, there is only one true set of rights, and these are not open for discussion. So, we have the situation where one person is dictating to others what their rights are, saying "No! These are the natural rights. Rights I do not agree to are not natural, therefore, they don't exist. So shut up, your stupid ideas about rights are unnatural."
Natural and God given rights are an appeal to authority, and they appeal to authority, because they preempt all discussion about rights. Either the right is natural, or it does not and can not exist. No new rights, ever. All the old rights, immutable and unchanging. That is very, very appealing to authoritarian types.
Dur hur, just because you are too stupid to think up any other way of fixing global warming except for everyone becoming Amish, does not mean that more intelligent people are unable to come up with more feasible plans.
Gah, you still don't even seem to understand the gist of my argument, you are arguing on meaningless tangents. You are talking the ideal of rights, I am talking the implementation.
The fact that no one will defend the freedom of the slave means the slave is not free, and his rights are meaningless except as the basis for an argument to come to his aid.
I DO NOT have the right to remain alive, that is ludicrous and demonstrably untrue! I WILL die. No ifs ands or buts. I could die at any second, despite my supposed right to life. Someone could easily kill me by accident and walk away without any sort of punishment. I do not have a right to life. I have the right to be free from unwanted violence originating from other human beings, because I live in a society where we have all agreed we all value freedom from being killed by other people over the freedom to kill other people.
Do you see, at the very least, how your argument about rights only applies to other humans? If we had the inherent right to life, we would be immortal. Sadly, other animals and natural processes do not respect our rights, and, so far as the avalanche or fire is concerned, we have no right to life, and no argument will sway Mr. Avalanche or Mr. House Fire. If the argument only applies to other humans, then that means it is based in societal agreements, not in some inherent quality we possess.
Sadly, the second ammendment will not help us resist oppression from the government, who have nuclear weapons, tanks, and planes. Your little pop-gun ain't doing shit against the US army, so sorry.
But natural rights are simply human ideas, and not everyone agrees what those natural or God given rights are, and so in the end, it all boils down to agreement anyway.
So, a majority (or even a minority) agrees that those 'others' do not have rights. Does the first group have the power to impose its will on the second? If so, then for all practical purposes, that second group does not have rights. If the second group has enough power that they can demand the first group recognize their rights, then they do have those rights.
If you want rights, you need to fight for them, not appeal to a belief in some sky daddy or philosophical rationalization. You need to convince those other people, who do not think you should have certain rights, that it is in their best interest for everyone to have those rights.
I do not wish it were different, because I do not want some ultimate authority setting the rules of the game, because then I am not truly free.
Can you point out these rights to me? Are they physical things? If someone has a right, but no one backs him up, does he still have that right? Did slaves have the right to freedom? Does saying they did even make sense? I mean, they obviously did not have that right until we all agreed they should.
Would it be sensible to talk of rights if there were only one human being left alive on the planet? I don't think so. We do not have rights outside of society. All we have is power. Can we do something, or can't we? It is only applicable to talk of rights when we are functioning within a society. And within a society, rights derive only from agreements, and the idea of natural rights is just an argument used to compel agreement.
Of course I can stop you from speaking. I can throw you in jail and put a ball gag in your mouth. People have done that for millenia. Saying that no one can take away your free speech is just about the stupidest and most counter-factual argument I've heard in a while.
Without society, free speech is meaningless. If you are the last man left alive, free speech is meaningless. Alone, your speech is no more meaningful than the chirping of crickets.
I fully realize that the idea that we only have rights that we all agree to is frightening. That means that we need to fight very hard for what we believe in. There is no ultimate authority that we can appeal to, that everyone will agree to. If someone does not agree with our argument about rights, they don't agree, and if we are in a position where we can not resist them, then we do not have those rights.
You and I are talking about two different things, though. You are talking about the ideal of rights. Ideals are well and good, but not everyone has the same ideals. I am talking about the practical implementation of rights, of rights as they actually exist.
The slave may say to himself "I have the right to be free" but if no one else will back him up, does he have that right? No. He is not free and simply saying "I have the right to be free," while it might make him feel good, does not make him free. Ideals never changed anything. Actions change things. Imagining yourself to be free does not make you free. You can whine about your rights all you like, but what will that do? The real question is not, do you have the right to be free, the real question is, do you have the power?
You don't understand the difference between weather and climate? Really? That's been a huge part of the debate for decades now, because every moron out there thought he could debunk climate research with weather anecdotes, and so other people have had to explain the difference, again, for decades now. So I'm surprised you have not had this explained to you before now.
Take a pot of water. Put it on a hot stove. Given that you know the temperature of the stove, the water, the air, the material of the pan, the humidity, and the altitude, you can predict exactly when the pan will boil (climate) but you will not be able to predict the location of the first bubble to break the surface (weather).
If that explanation helps, please take some of the burden off the rest of us and pass it on the next time you hear someone saying "But we can't predict the weather." Thanks.
I can easily disprove the claims of these so called "scientists." They claim that global warming is undeniable, and yet we see people denying it right here in the comments.
Cute, but it's implied that it's undeniable by people who actually understand the science and look at it objectively. They really don't care what morons and jebus freaks "think" about their work..
You don't say...
Ahaha, I was thinking "but anti abortionists don't use that... oh" Hmm, I guess you're right, the pro choice people use it. It's still just a foolish appeal to authority. I mean, we're potentially talking about two people's bodies, but one of them is a total leach and can't survive without the other.
In this case, argument is still stupid and on the wrong track. We do not need to delve into the philosophical morass in search of when human life begins. We need to look at the concept of killing versus murder. Many, if not most of us agree that sometimes, ending someone else's life is okay, because society has an overriding interest. I don't think the death penalty is the greatest idea, but I do believe in killing in self or national defense, for instance.
So the argument is simple, does society have the same kind of vested interest in ending the gestation of a fetus that we accept as valid reasons for killing in other circumstances? The evidence says yes, it does. Look at crime rates, since abortion was legalized they have gone down. Unwanted children often turn into criminals. They ruin the lives of their parents and communities and create costs that all of us have to bear.
If you want to argue positions, it seems advantageous to do so on the utility to the individual. As I believe rights are derived from agreements, in order to create or destroy rights, all you need is agreement of the majority (or whatever your constitution says. You do have a constitution you all agreed to, right?) So all you need is to convince people. Sure, you can try to convince people using arguments based on 'God given' or 'natural' rights, but these are mere appeals to authority and should not serve to convince anyone with half a brain and a grasp of logic.
To some, the idea that there are no rights but what we make may seem terrifying and arbitrary. To me, it is the ultimate liberation. Freedom is not happy "I get to do whatever I like" funtime. Freedom is hard, and it comes with responsibilities that many, I think, would rather not face.
I can easily disprove the claims of these so called "scientists." They claim that global warming is undeniable, and yet we see people denying it right here in the comments. Ha HA!
Now, if they had said something along the lines of "At this point, the proof is so overwhelming that only mentally deficient conservative hippie-hating anti-environmentalist shills for big business will attempt to deny it," well, that is just self evidently true.
If you don't own your body, then you are slave.
Then I guess we are all slaves because someone tried to put some THC into his body the other day and got arrested for doing so......
This is not logical. For instance, perhaps no one can possibly "own" a living human being. If you don't own yourself because no one can, then you aren't a slave. You can also "own" your body but still be a slave. You can have your liberty compromised without your body being compromised, for instance if someone threatens to take away your only livelihood unless you comply with their demands. You can also effectively be a slave simply through a lack of understanding of your own freedom.
I only ever see this 'you own your own body' argument from libertarians, who use it to justify absolute property rights. But these absolute property rights lead directly to 'voluntary' slavery: do what I say or starve to death because we own all the property and you do not. The entire premise is a simplistic piece of philosophical masturbation. I say, just as no one can (or should) own the air we breath, no one can (or should) own a human, including themselves. Libertarians want to make everything about ownership, but ownership is a simplistic and selfish concept. I would rather have society based on mutual agreement (which is the only thing society can be based on, really, I just want that explicitly acknowledged.)
Libertarians say, "You own your body, therefore you own the rewards of your work, therefore no one can tell you what to do with your property because that amounts to slavery." I like that conclusion, but why go to such convoluted lengths to reach it? It's much simpler like this: "You control the rewards of your work because everyone agrees that they would like to control the rewards of theirs." That's it. No need to invoke ownership or slavery at all, just agreement. And it leaves open the idea that we can and should limit property rights when they interfere with society. Sometimes, there are things that are more important than having total control over your own stored labor. For instance, pollution is an externality. That means that you should not be allowed to pollute your own property, because it imposes a cost on others. You should also not be allowed to buy up all the property and make everyone work for you or starve to death.
In short, "I own my own body and therefore should have absolute property rights" leads, inevitably, to slavery. "We agree to these sets of rights and obligations" does not necessarily lead to slavery.
No, he's saying that coal plants will burn the coal at night that we didn't burn during the day because we were using solar.
This has been debunked so many times, cameras were not trained no these guys the whole time. You don't know whether their accusation is based in fact, you are speculating that it is unfounded.
You can claim whatever you like about some small, non racist segment of teabaggers supporting minorities. I never claimed the whole Tea Party was racist, I'm just saying a significant and vocal segment of teabaggers are virulently racist.
I'm sorry you suffer from reading comprehension problems, but what can I do? I have not confused fact with speculation. The money, at this point, has disappeared. It is missing. No one can account for it. Perhaps it will be found, perhaps it won't. I've been completely honest and accurate. Trying to twist the meaning of words to throw uncertainty and doubt onto another person's argument won't help you to be taken seriously by learned folk.
You are flat out wrong about this.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1658137/infographic-of-the-day-bps-horrifying-safety-record
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bps-dismal-safety-record/story?id=10763042
http://www.businessinsider.com/bp-has-been-fined-by-osha-760-times-has-an-awful-track-record-for-safety-2010-6
There is every point in singling out BP for this. No one else even comes close to being as cheap about safety as BP. They had 760 willful, egregious safety violations in a three year period where the next worst oil company had 9.
The US government failed because George Bush inserted sleeper agents into Federal agencies. These were people that Bush appointees hired, so they are simply career bureaucrats and were not replaced when Bush left office. Their job was to stand in the way of enforcing regulations.
We create a demand for oil and gas. We do not create a demand for unsafe extraction of oil and gas. Plenty of oil companies make a fine profit while playing it safe. BP did not.
You know, I'm not a dualitic thinker by nature, and I understand that everything affects everything else, but trying to blame everyone but the criminals involved in this disaster is just taking that concept too far.
How were those tags unfounded? I'd say they were on the nose. And based on the unabashed racism on display at every single Tea Party rally, I'd be willing to believe those CBC members over the racist denialists.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
This whole idea that pensions and 401ks benefit from evil corporatist actions is true, but ultimately meaningless. Do you know what percentage of these stocks are owned by pensions and 401ks? Very, very little. In fact, the bottom fifty percent of Americans own zero point five percent of all stocks. http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4
Read the whole thing.
Having greedy bastards making money hand over fist for extracting resources from the ground with little oversight and no safety is hardly ideal for conservation. You see, they are likely to ignore all regulations, endangering workers and the environment in their quest to make next quarters profits slightly higher. In fact, BP racked up over 760 egregious and willful safety violations in a three year period, when Exxon, having learned it's lesson up in Alaska, had only one.
Profitable oil companies, bad. Oil extraction is inherently a natural monopoly, as it is utterly inefficient to have more than one company tapping the same source. And the oil business in general is a well protected oligopoly, there are very few suppliers world wide. Thus, it is not the sort of business that free market competition will make any more efficient. Therefore, it is in the public interest to manage it carefully for the public good rather than for individual profit. Nationalize it, tell the rich bastards that they haven't done good enough and they lose the privilege. Pay off that tiny 0.5% owned by the poor, the rich owners did not insists on safety from the boards they elected, they are culpable too. Keep the workers, they know what they are doing, but give them actual workplace safety.
See, if we do things right, the guilty get screwed, the innocent are protected, the public interest is served, and greedy bullies learn that being a bully is no longer profitable.
Obama's favorite president is Ronald Reagan, so said his law school adviser on The Daily Show election night coverage. Obama is about as far from socialist as it is possible to get.
You are basically saying that the rich are engaging in class warfare against the poor, using any tool they can manipulate? Color me shocked. There is a simple solution, though: take money out of politics, and then tax the hell out of the rich so they don't have the resources to engage in class warfare and steal our money using the government. Tax them until their eyes bleed. Transfer all that wealth they've stolen back to the people that actually worked to create it.
As you are against corporate tools, I'm sure you'll support this plan. Unless you are actually a corporate tool in disguise. You'll pardon my mentioning it, but those seem to be common these days, don't they?
Both sides do not have the exact same problems. One side has a chest cold, the other has lung cancer. Yes, they both have a cough, but the underlying problems are not the same.
I'm not excusing 'my side' as I don't have a side. I'm explaining that this false equivalency is ridiculous, one side is by far the lesser of two evils. Evil, yes, but much, much less so.
Democrats are bought by 'race baiters?!?' WTF?!? Republicans are shameless race baiters. Look at that lying sack of shit Breitbart. I'm sorry, but this tactic of blaming one side for everything the other side is guilty of does not make things equal. You know you are part of a lost cause when the best argument your side can come up with is "but they are just as bad!"
It was indirectly Bush's fault, but of course, Obama being the corporate tool he is, he did not move to ferret out the Bush plants. So it is equally his fault.
What I'm saying is this: true or not, one party campaigns on deregulation, while the other party campaigns on more regulation and better enforcement. They may be lying, but I'll go with them over the fools who actually claim deregulation as their stated goal.
I really don't see what is so hard to understand about that. You do realize that Obama is not Superman, right? You see, there is this thing called the filibuster, and Republicans have been using it to paralyze government. Even if Obama wants to fix the regulations, he and his party have to fight their way past the brazen corporate obstructionists of the Republican party.
It may not be a problem of (D) vs. (R) but I think the evidence clearly shows that Republicans are bought, lock stock and barrel, by moneyed corporate interests. Democrats may be lying, but at least they claim to be on our side. Republicans are shamelessly on the side of big business.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but the article you linked to talks about recorded revenues and poorly accounted-for expenditures on reconstruction. It follows that with a statement from CentCom saying that the money can be properly accounted for. Where's the part about us going to Iraq to steal their oil?
The part where nearly 9 billion disappeared. If you believe it will ever be accounted for, I've got a nice bridge to sell you. Companies like Halliburton knew they would be paid in oil that mysteriously fell of the back of a truck.
Of that amount, the military failed to provide any records at all for $2.6 billion in purported reconstruction expenditure, says the report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is responsible for monitoring U.S. spending in Iraq. The rest of the money was not properly deposited in special accounts as required under Treasury Department rules, making it difficult to trace how it was spent
So, 2.6 billion is completely unaccounted for, with the rest merely missing and poorly accounted for.
In response to the audit findings, the Defense Department concurred with recommendations that it establish better guidelines for managing such funds. But a letter from U.S. Central Command emphasized that failure to establish deposit accounts for the $8.7 billion does not mean it all cannot be accounted for.
CentCom does not claim the money can be accounted for. It is making the laughable (but trivially true) claim that just because the money is unaccounted for now, and not in the proper accounts, does not mean it won't be accounted for at some vague time in the future. That is not the same thing as claiming the money can be accounted for, and claiming the money can be accounted for is not the same thing as accounting for it.
What's to argue? An unbiased reading of that article would lead anyone to my conclusion. I'm satisfied with my debunking work here, so unless you have further information to add, I'll bid you good day.
I'm deliberately misreading that?!? Please. You've got one quote, from one guy, about one small part of the spill being eaten by microbes, evaporated, etc. Toxins in the oil eaten by microbes bio-accumulate, as the microbes are in turn eaten by other organisms. And evaporation means that the volatile part of the oil evaporates into the atmosphere (bad) while the other parts sink (also bad).
But the reality is, this article talks about the oil slick, not the deep water plumes. BP was using dispersant underwater to keep the oil from making it to the surface and becoming obvious. We've got these huge plumes of oil frappe emulsified with the most toxic dispersants available.
Your case is weak and your argumentation is poor. It's almost as if you are parroting back right wing talking points without understanding the underlying data.
Ah, I see the problem. You've mistaken me for an Obama disciple. I don't support right wing corporate tools.