Why don't stop being ignorant of the fact that Hamas' leaders have made it clear that they want Israel destroyed and all ethnic Jews eliminated
"Eliminated" is a euphemism for killed. If you'd meant deported you would have said deported. You specifically chose that word so people who have not researched the issue would assume you meant genocide, but if somebody called you on your BS you could claim a straw-man. You are young in your trolling, but you displayed talent.
As for the charter, you are showing exactly how young you are in your trolling. You purposefully sut out the bit of the first quote that indicates only Jews who oppose Hamas die. You were clearly hoping I would not notice, but as someone who is actually good at being an asshole on the internet I did. I honestly have no idea why you posted the second excerpt. I have repeatedly said Hamas kills all Jews who oppose them, that whole excerpt is basically repeating that and doubling down on it.
The mandate's magical for a simple reason: it's got all the disputed territory. Jordan's government is just not in Hamas' sights. BTW, the scope of the dispute is much larger then most people realize. For example the US does not recognize any parts of Jerusalem as official Israeli territory; even the half they won in 1948.
Moreover I didn't say Hamas don't want to destroy Israel as a state. I'm not arguing that Hamas can win and the Israeli people can retain the political rights they deserve. I said Hamas will not a) put Jews on trains to death camps, b) forcibly relocate Israeli Jews who aren't opposing Hamas politically, and c) will not start lowing up Jews who aren't in the former mandate.
The OP was accusing Hamas of being Hitler. That's BS. You can make a case that they're Stalin, but not Hitler.
Is this really the best you can do? Because (yet again), you have managed to find a quote that proves Hamas does not want to kill Jews in Brooklyn.
Mufti opens with a declaration that Palestinians have been fighting for Jerusalem for centuries. He quotes scripture condemning the current occupants of Jerusalem. He closes with a joke. Nowhere does he imply that he wants to kill anyone in Brooklyn.
The joke proves that the Gharqad tree thing is just a metaphor because if it was intended literally, and every settlement was literally surrounded by the trees, then every Jew in Israel would be behind at least one tree, and thus imune to Hamas attacks.
It's anti-Semitic, but it's clear they intend no operations outside of the Islamic Waqf of Palestine.
The key bit is actually the part you quoted. Jews will be fought unless they are "behind the Gharqad tree," and "victory prevails." If you intend to kill all Jews everywhere you don't include an out like the Gharqad tree in your metaphor. It's a metaphor for Jews knowing their proper place, behind the Gharqad tree ie: not opposing Hamas.
In their objectives section they make clear their objective is an Islamic Palestine. When asked they say an Islamic Palestine can include Jews, as long as said Jews aren't opposing Hamas' policies. Metaphorically a Jew in Jerusalem who isn't lobbying to get Israel re-instated, and follows the rules of an Islam-based legal code, would be "behind the Gharqad tree," and perfectly safe.
Granted this requires Jews to give up pretty much all their freedom, but the OP wasn't claiming Israel fights Hamas to protect political freedoms, he was claiming they do it because Hamas has a stated policy of universal genocide against the Jews. And that's just bullshit.
Well, Hamas doesn't acknowledge Israel's right to exist on any borders, and I'm not sure Abbas could "crush" Hamas. He didn't do so well the last time the two clashed.
If he had Tanks, and the Israelis were willing to let him cross the Negev, Hamas would not be able to hold Gaza. If he had a permanent peace deal with Israel that included the return of Jerusalem Jordan/Egypt/etc. would give him all the tanks he could possibly want.
Most of the Palestinian people know academically that a peace deal won't get them anything but symbolic BS in East Jerusalem, so if Abbas showed up with a deal that includes owning the whole damn place they will love him. Which means that he'd be very hard to get rid of. Yeah, in the long term Fatah could fuck everything up and be replaced with Hamas (strictly speaking, fucking up seems to be the only thing Fatah is good at). But in the long-term anything can happen. Hamas could change it's mind, the Palestinians could create yet another terror-group which has a new anti-Israel charter, etc. So that objection applies to any peace deal.
The problem with my plan is not that it wouldn't work as well the Israelis agreed to it, it's that the Israelis will never agree to it. They want Hamas to change it's charter so it's no longer dedicated to destroying them, but they also want to keep East Jerusalem, guarantees of military superiority, etc. I'm not saying whether they're right or wrong to demand that stuff on this thread, I'm just saying they are demanding it.
You do realize you just agreed with me? I am only claiming that Israel wants more from a peace deal then a press release saying "Israel has the right to exist." They also want East Jerusalem which they have already annexed, possibly other historic sites (Rachel's Tomb comes to mind), and security guarantees (probably in the form of strategic bits of West Bank territory). The OP was exaggerating his point to the level of absurdity, and you just proved it. Thanks.
BTW, the nightmare situation you're describing is not unusual. Between 1776 and 1876 the US invaded Canada officially in the Revolution and 1812, unofficially in 1830, and allowed Union Army veterans of Irish descent to invade five times between 1866 and 1871. More recently the Republic of Ireland was at best half-hearted in it's attempts to stop it's citizens from murdering people in Northern Ireland for something like 50 years. Much of the trouble in Africa is that everybody thinks funding a rebel group to rape/murder it's way to the capital is a great way to influence your neighbors.
Being a nation-state sucks. Being a small nation-state sucks more. Being a new small nation-state, surrounded by other relatively new nation-states REALLY sucks. You don't have established mechanisms for dealing with disputes, the central governments are all quite weak so unofficial invasions are common, etc.
The Palestineans did not walk away from the Camp David Accords Clinton was trying to negotiate. Negotiations actually continues for weeks after everyone had left the US for almost two months. The negotiations dragged on until Sharon took office. In short the people who actually walked away from that negotating table were the Israeli people as a whole when they elected Ariel Sharon.
Why don't stop being ignorant of the fact that Hamas' leaders have made it clear that they want Israel destroyed and all ethnic Jews eliminated? Why don't you stop being ignorant of the fact that Hamas has been initiated this exchange since they acquired Iranian weapons capable of reaching Tel Aviv months ago? Israel never fires the first shot, yet they are called the aggressors. I'm tired, TIRED of ignorant simpletons and their rhetoric.
Dude,
You're lying. Hamas has never said, implied, or hinted at some evil plot to murder the Jews of Brooklyn. They have never said, implied, or hinted that they want the Israeli people to leave Israel. What they have said is that they want an Islamic and Arab government to control the entire former British Mandate of Palestine, and that they are willing to kill anyone who stands in the way of that dream.
Granted a Hamas victory would involve a lot of deaths in the Israeli Army, and would probably cause a major refugee crisis; which would de facto ethically cleanse Israel to some extent. But having bad ideas that kill people is different from supporting the murder of those people. Otherwise everyone in the US who opposed ObamaCare would actually be in favor of all the deaths ObamaCare's free medical care for poor people will prevent.
Of course if Israel offered Abbas everything on the Jordanian side of the Green Line (including Jerusalem), Abbas'd be able to crush Hamas like a bug. But Israel's internal politics mean that anyone who proposes that, or anything remotely like that, gets crushed in the next election.
In other words Israel isn't asking for a simple recognition of it's right to exist, it's asking for recognition of it's conquest of East Jerusalem (plus probably some more territory). That's a whole different kettle of fish.
It says that a member of European Parliament is gonna write a bill. That is not particularly surprising. It is, after all, his job to write bills.
It doesn't say anything about how the other MEPs will vote on the bill, or whether European regulations would supersede national regulations in this case.
It would be impossible for Congress to be harder to work with in 2013 then it was in 2011. The GOP really pulled out all the stops.
That said, you should take a look at some of the insider reports of Obama's plan. He doesn't really need a lot of new legislation to go down in history as a great President. He's got Health Care Reform. If he gets re-elected that will be implemented and he will be this country's equivalent of Tommy Douglas or Clement Atlee. He killed Bin Laden. There are precious few presidents who gotten credit for one thing that important, Obama's got two.
What he needs is something in the short term that solves the Fiscal Cliff, because if we don't go over that all the economists say we'll create 3 million jobs a year. The GOP has to cut a deal with him on this issue because if they don't taxes go up. The deal won't be pretty, will not be done until a week after the last minute, and will probably include a serious amount of kicking-the-can down the road on deficit reduction; but it the choice is letting taxes go up and troops get fired OR keeping taxes low and not firing troops the GOP's likely to go for the latter.
He'd like Immigration Reform. He might get it. A GOP that loses partly because it pissed off Hispanics is gonna think long and hard about pissing off hispanics again.
Things like a Carbon Tax, Cap-and-Trade, and Social Security reform (particularly raising Maximum Taxable Earnings) would be nice; and if the Dems manage a miracle and win the House might even be considered; but aren't necessary for Obama's legacy.
Americans tend to think of the President as much stronger then he actually is. He's almost a Prime Minister according to many in the media. They are always shocked that Obama can't just give a great speech and magically convince Congress to bend to his will.
Canadians actually aren't that wrong to think of the President as a PM-type. In terms of the things that matter to them (primarily foreign affairs) he's actually stronger then a PM with a minority government or a shaky majority. Why? Because when the Constitution was written there was no telegraph, so the President would appoint people to important offices, get them confirmed by the Senate, and then have no idea what they were actually doing until it was too late to stop them. The confirmation process meant Congress had as much role in setting policy as he did. Both would give the appointee instructions, get the Appointee to swear he would invade Canada r whatever, and that's all anybody could do.
But since the rise of the telegraph the President has been able to change his instructions daily. Now he can fiddle with those instructions every 30 seconds if he wants. Congress can bitch and cut funding, have hearings, or even (theoretically) impeach an Ambassador but they can't say "We hate what you're doing, stop or you're fired."
Only part of America's insane election spending is America being insane. A big part of America out-spending Canada on elections is simple scale, another part of it is complexity.
You guys spent $300 million on your last election. That's $8.70 a head. We're spending $5.8 Billion, or $18.61 a head. Factoring in the exchange rate that's 2.13 times as much. But we're having a much more complex election. The entire US House is up, and is elected separately from the President, and 1/3 of the Senate representing 2/3 of the states is also up. So the average voter has 2.67 times the decisions to make as a Canadian voter, and therefore needs 2.67 times the persuasion, which should cost a lot more.
I didn't bring it up because I thought paper was the absolute perfect interface for a 150-candidate race (in fact, nobody was happier then me when I found out that my hometown had revamped t's City Council so that would stop happening), I brought it up to illustrate how diverse American elections are. Any replacement for paper needs to be able to handle huge races, with bizarre rules that only make sense to the City Clerk. It needs to handle small races. It needs t handle special elections with one race, and the 40-race monstrosities common in Presidential years. Paper just works.
As for the senile voting, like it or not they will vote. And when there's a close election the fact they did not understand the ballot will be very important to the Courts.
You are saying he said A (Empathy) leads to B (T4, the euthanasia program), leads to C (genocide everywhere, the Holocaust). Which means that simple logic says you agreed Beck's position was that Empathy leads to the Holocaust.
Your logic is broken. B-C does not equal A-C. No matter how much you ignore logic and try to impose this fallacy, you simply are wrong unless B and C is the same which requires the genocide everywhere to be the acts directly to the T4 program. Either your assertion of the holocaust is wrong or your linking of empathy to it as in the statement is wrong. And yes, it is your twisting, not his wording.
It's not my link. It's Beck's link.
If you say A leads to B leads to C the idea you are trying to get across is that A leads to C. If the idea you are trying to get across is simply that A leads to B you don't mention C at all, because it is a distraction from your actual point.
As for whether Beck is bringing up the Holocaust, if he wasn't he wouldn't have called it "genocide everywhere." Murdering the handicapped is not genocide. Genocide is a crime, with a strict legal definition, and killing the handicapped simply doesn't count. For another T4 did not apply "everywhere." The Nazis never got around to killing the handicapped in occupied Croatia or Hungary, but they did get the Jews.
The inverse is true too, if Beck meant the holocaust, he would have simply stated the holocaust.
But if he'd done that he wouldn't have you providing rationalizations for him. This way he gets exactly enough deniability that you;re carrying his water.
He's basically trolling. He wants to make everyone think he's accusing Obama of the Holocaust, but not get dinged by Godwin's Law.
As for forced sterilization of the handicapped being genocide, you are mistaken. The key phrase is "of the handicapped." Since handicapped can be of any ethnicity, race, or national group a program against them cannot be intended to eliminate a race, ethnicity, or national group from a region in general. In specific T4 was targeted at ethnic Germans, and the Nazis had no plan to eliminate ethnic Germans from any area.
Just because something's evil that des not imply it is genocide.
No, I brought Sanger up simply because she is a modern name known for her support and practice of Eugenics. You are correct though, she only advocated the sterilization and prevention of the lesser people so they wouldn't contaminate the gene pool of the good people. She thought the lesser and genetically inferior people had a right to live, just not reproduce or spread their defective genes. That is why she got into Birth control and giving it to the poor and undesirables. Some say this is why to this day that no Planned Parenthood abortion clinic has ever been set up in an area without a significant minority population. I think it is the economics of scale, any location large enough to be served efficiently by a clinic that kills off the reproduction of people would by default have a large minority population.
The other problem with the argument is it's based on a false premise. Planned Parenthood clinics are not concentrated in minority areas. Studies arguing the opposite are all done by pre-life groups who aren't really interested in finding out the truth. They're interested in getting a talking point they can use to pry the black vote from Progressive Democrats.
Their problem is black people have sources of information beyond the black church. For example, their mothers, who are well aware that when the pro-life movement's current white, southern, conservative leaders were loudly proclaiming Segregation was God's Will (and we have studies to prove it's natural and necessary) Planned Parenthood was in the coalition that beat them.
Southern conservative states were dominated by the democrat party at the time of
To quote one of your first replies to this thread: "No, he [Beck] said empathy lead to T4 (mercy killings- killing people because you think it's the right thing to do) which lead to genocide everywhere."
You are saying he said A (Empathy) leads to B (T4, the euthanasia program), leads to C (genocide everywhere, the Holocaust). Which means that simple logic says you agreed Beck's position was that Empathy leads to the Holocaust.
As for whether Beck is bringing up the Holocaust, if he wasn't he wouldn't have called it "genocide everywhere." Murdering the handicapped is not genocide. Genocide is a crime, with a strict legal definition, and killing the handicapped simply doesn't count. For another T4 did not apply "everywhere." The Nazis never got around to killing the handicapped in occupied Croatia or Hungary, but they did get the Jews.
As for Sanger, your use of her name indicates that you are the one reading too many ideological websites. She was opposed to killing the handicapped in general, and T4 in specific. Eugenics was actually less controversial in the 30s then institutionalized racism, yet the sites that argue all Sanger's ideas are BS because she supported Eugenics never mention that Rockefeller of the famous Rockefeller Republicans put millions into the international Eugenics movement, that Southern Conservative states like NC had the most "comprehensive" sterilization programs, that California of the day was classic Western populist a la Wyoming, etc.
You do not get to redefine someone's statement simply because you want them to say something you find politically advantageous to you. Beck said empathy started the T4 which led to the genocide. At best, you can say that he said euthanasia led to genocide.
And he said altruism "was the beginning" of euthanasia (which led to the Holocaust).
When I summarized it as altruism leads to euthanasia (which led to the Holocaust) you didn't disagree. You didn't claim I was manipulating his argument. You didn't do that until I proved that if "altruism leads to euthanasia leads to genocide" he's saying "altruism leads to genocide."
If the thrust of his argument was "Obama is wrong because Obama wants to kill the handicapped," he wouldn't mention the Holocaust. He's discussing the role of empathy in the Judiciary. Killing millions of Jews, a million-odd Communist POWs, hundreds of thousands of Gypsies, etc. just isn't relevant unless his entire argument rests on the basis that it IS relevant.
In other words he's either very clumsily trying to equate the Holocaust with sympathy for various sides in Judicial disputes, or he's got Tourette's.
As for the book, you'll note it's argument is a lot more complex then Beck's. It isn't arguing that empathy per se is a bad thing, or that it is humanly possible to stop empathizing. It's arguing that empathy is such a universal thing among humans that even actions that hurt millions are partly caused by empathy. The Nazis, for example, had plenty of empathy for Germans but none for anyone else. They also had some truly bizarre ideas about how non-Germans (especially Jews) related to Germans, which resulted in them murdering 10-12 million people; and when everyone else took exception to their excessively pro-German policies their Empire was destroyed, their women raped, etc.
I have personally voted in two elections where I had to make 9 choices from more then 100 candidates. In this election (I voted early) I counted 33 seperate races I was supposed to vote on.
A "Confirm button" just isn't practical in those circumstances.
It was also not "genocide everywhere." The only Nazi policy that was, in fact "genocide everywhere" was the Holocaust.
It's a typical comment of Beck's. He says that empathy leads to "genocide everywhere," just look at the Nazis, but explicitly references a non-Holocaust thing. His people (aka: you) can pretend he hasn't just blown Godwin's Law to hell, everyone else realizes you're crazy.
That could be, but I'll believe nearly anything bad said about voting machines, regardless of the source. They are pretty much designed to allow massive cheating without any possibility of verification.
Well, what gets me is, Beck claims the machines in Ohio are rigged to move Romney votes to Obama. Interestingly enough, one of Tagg Romney's companies owns the company that provides Ohio with the voting and vote counting machines. But it's not 'direct' owernship, Tagg owns a venture capital firm that funded another venture capital firm that bought the company that makes the machines. But of course with such a long paper trail, there couldn't be any chicanery, now, could there?
IIRC Tag doesn't own that particular company, he just has investments with people who do.
More importantly the guy who'd be doing the rigging (Husted) is a Republican. It's possible the local clerks are doing something behind his back, but it's kinda his job to prevent that shit.
A touchscreen allows you to mimic the historical interface of a paper ballot. A keypad requires you design a new interface that supports infinite candidates (note: two-digit candidate id numbers are insufficient. I have personally voted in elections with 100-150 candidates on the ballot twice), select among them quickly and accurately, and is easy for a 90-year-old with the beginnings of dementia to figure out.
Remember the 2000 debacle? It was caused largely by a local County Clerk re-working the old ballot interface in a way that confused a handful of senior citizens in a year when a handful of votes were enough to change the election.
Slashdot Mirror
To quote you:
Why don't stop being ignorant of the fact that Hamas' leaders have made it clear that they want Israel destroyed and all ethnic Jews eliminated
"Eliminated" is a euphemism for killed. If you'd meant deported you would have said deported. You specifically chose that word so people who have not researched the issue would assume you meant genocide, but if somebody called you on your BS you could claim a straw-man. You are young in your trolling, but you displayed talent.
As for the charter, you are showing exactly how young you are in your trolling. You purposefully sut out the bit of the first quote that indicates only Jews who oppose Hamas die. You were clearly hoping I would not notice, but as someone who is actually good at being an asshole on the internet I did. I honestly have no idea why you posted the second excerpt. I have repeatedly said Hamas kills all Jews who oppose them, that whole excerpt is basically repeating that and doubling down on it.
The mandate's magical for a simple reason: it's got all the disputed territory. Jordan's government is just not in Hamas' sights. BTW, the scope of the dispute is much larger then most people realize. For example the US does not recognize any parts of Jerusalem as official Israeli territory; even the half they won in 1948.
Moreover I didn't say Hamas don't want to destroy Israel as a state. I'm not arguing that Hamas can win and the Israeli people can retain the political rights they deserve. I said Hamas will not a) put Jews on trains to death camps, b) forcibly relocate Israeli Jews who aren't opposing Hamas politically, and c) will not start lowing up Jews who aren't in the former mandate.
The OP was accusing Hamas of being Hitler. That's BS. You can make a case that they're Stalin, but not Hitler.
Dude,
Is this really the best you can do? Because (yet again), you have managed to find a quote that proves Hamas does not want to kill Jews in Brooklyn.
Mufti opens with a declaration that Palestinians have been fighting for Jerusalem for centuries. He quotes scripture condemning the current occupants of Jerusalem. He closes with a joke. Nowhere does he imply that he wants to kill anyone in Brooklyn.
The joke proves that the Gharqad tree thing is just a metaphor because if it was intended literally, and every settlement was literally surrounded by the trees, then every Jew in Israel would be behind at least one tree, and thus imune to Hamas attacks.
Dude,
It's anti-Semitic, but it's clear they intend no operations outside of the Islamic Waqf of Palestine.
The key bit is actually the part you quoted. Jews will be fought unless they are "behind the Gharqad tree," and "victory prevails." If you intend to kill all Jews everywhere you don't include an out like the Gharqad tree in your metaphor. It's a metaphor for Jews knowing their proper place, behind the Gharqad tree ie: not opposing Hamas.
In their objectives section they make clear their objective is an Islamic Palestine. When asked they say an Islamic Palestine can include Jews, as long as said Jews aren't opposing Hamas' policies. Metaphorically a Jew in Jerusalem who isn't lobbying to get Israel re-instated, and follows the rules of an Islam-based legal code, would be "behind the Gharqad tree," and perfectly safe.
Granted this requires Jews to give up pretty much all their freedom, but the OP wasn't claiming Israel fights Hamas to protect political freedoms, he was claiming they do it because Hamas has a stated policy of universal genocide against the Jews. And that's just bullshit.
Well, Hamas doesn't acknowledge Israel's right to exist on any borders, and I'm not sure Abbas could "crush" Hamas. He didn't do so well the last time the two clashed.
If he had Tanks, and the Israelis were willing to let him cross the Negev, Hamas would not be able to hold Gaza. If he had a permanent peace deal with Israel that included the return of Jerusalem Jordan/Egypt/etc. would give him all the tanks he could possibly want.
Most of the Palestinian people know academically that a peace deal won't get them anything but symbolic BS in East Jerusalem, so if Abbas showed up with a deal that includes owning the whole damn place they will love him. Which means that he'd be very hard to get rid of. Yeah, in the long term Fatah could fuck everything up and be replaced with Hamas (strictly speaking, fucking up seems to be the only thing Fatah is good at). But in the long-term anything can happen. Hamas could change it's mind, the Palestinians could create yet another terror-group which has a new anti-Israel charter, etc. So that objection applies to any peace deal.
The problem with my plan is not that it wouldn't work as well the Israelis agreed to it, it's that the Israelis will never agree to it. They want Hamas to change it's charter so it's no longer dedicated to destroying them, but they also want to keep East Jerusalem, guarantees of military superiority, etc. I'm not saying whether they're right or wrong to demand that stuff on this thread, I'm just saying they are demanding it.
You do realize you just agreed with me? I am only claiming that Israel wants more from a peace deal then a press release saying "Israel has the right to exist." They also want East Jerusalem which they have already annexed, possibly other historic sites (Rachel's Tomb comes to mind), and security guarantees (probably in the form of strategic bits of West Bank territory). The OP was exaggerating his point to the level of absurdity, and you just proved it. Thanks.
BTW, the nightmare situation you're describing is not unusual. Between 1776 and 1876 the US invaded Canada officially in the Revolution and 1812, unofficially in 1830, and allowed Union Army veterans of Irish descent to invade five times between 1866 and 1871. More recently the Republic of Ireland was at best half-hearted in it's attempts to stop it's citizens from murdering people in Northern Ireland for something like 50 years. Much of the trouble in Africa is that everybody thinks funding a rebel group to rape/murder it's way to the capital is a great way to influence your neighbors.
Being a nation-state sucks. Being a small nation-state sucks more. Being a new small nation-state, surrounded by other relatively new nation-states REALLY sucks. You don't have established mechanisms for dealing with disputes, the central governments are all quite weak so unofficial invasions are common, etc.
Dude, you're lying again.
The Palestineans did not walk away from the Camp David Accords Clinton was trying to negotiate. Negotiations actually continues for weeks after everyone had left the US for almost two months. The negotiations dragged on until Sharon took office. In short the people who actually walked away from that negotating table were the Israeli people as a whole when they elected Ariel Sharon.
Why don't stop being ignorant of the fact that Hamas' leaders have made it clear that they want Israel destroyed and all ethnic Jews eliminated? Why don't you stop being ignorant of the fact that Hamas has been initiated this exchange since they acquired Iranian weapons capable of reaching Tel Aviv months ago? Israel never fires the first shot, yet they are called the aggressors. I'm tired, TIRED of ignorant simpletons and their rhetoric.
Dude,
You're lying. Hamas has never said, implied, or hinted at some evil plot to murder the Jews of Brooklyn. They have never said, implied, or hinted that they want the Israeli people to leave Israel. What they have said is that they want an Islamic and Arab government to control the entire former British Mandate of Palestine, and that they are willing to kill anyone who stands in the way of that dream.
Granted a Hamas victory would involve a lot of deaths in the Israeli Army, and would probably cause a major refugee crisis; which would de facto ethically cleanse Israel to some extent. But having bad ideas that kill people is different from supporting the murder of those people. Otherwise everyone in the US who opposed ObamaCare would actually be in favor of all the deaths ObamaCare's free medical care for poor people will prevent.
I guess you didn't drive to work yesterday.
Of course if Israel offered Abbas everything on the Jordanian side of the Green Line (including Jerusalem), Abbas'd be able to crush Hamas like a bug. But Israel's internal politics mean that anyone who proposes that, or anything remotely like that, gets crushed in the next election.
In other words Israel isn't asking for a simple recognition of it's right to exist, it's asking for recognition of it's conquest of East Jerusalem (plus probably some more territory). That's a whole different kettle of fish.
It says that a member of European Parliament is gonna write a bill. That is not particularly surprising. It is, after all, his job to write bills.
It doesn't say anything about how the other MEPs will vote on the bill, or whether European regulations would supersede national regulations in this case.
It would be impossible for Congress to be harder to work with in 2013 then it was in 2011. The GOP really pulled out all the stops.
That said, you should take a look at some of the insider reports of Obama's plan. He doesn't really need a lot of new legislation to go down in history as a great President. He's got Health Care Reform. If he gets re-elected that will be implemented and he will be this country's equivalent of Tommy Douglas or Clement Atlee. He killed Bin Laden. There are precious few presidents who gotten credit for one thing that important, Obama's got two.
What he needs is something in the short term that solves the Fiscal Cliff, because if we don't go over that all the economists say we'll create 3 million jobs a year. The GOP has to cut a deal with him on this issue because if they don't taxes go up. The deal won't be pretty, will not be done until a week after the last minute, and will probably include a serious amount of kicking-the-can down the road on deficit reduction; but it the choice is letting taxes go up and troops get fired OR keeping taxes low and not firing troops the GOP's likely to go for the latter.
He'd like Immigration Reform. He might get it. A GOP that loses partly because it pissed off Hispanics is gonna think long and hard about pissing off hispanics again.
Things like a Carbon Tax, Cap-and-Trade, and Social Security reform (particularly raising Maximum Taxable Earnings) would be nice; and if the Dems manage a miracle and win the House might even be considered; but aren't necessary for Obama's legacy.
Americans tend to think of the President as much stronger then he actually is. He's almost a Prime Minister according to many in the media. They are always shocked that Obama can't just give a great speech and magically convince Congress to bend to his will.
Canadians actually aren't that wrong to think of the President as a PM-type. In terms of the things that matter to them (primarily foreign affairs) he's actually stronger then a PM with a minority government or a shaky majority. Why? Because when the Constitution was written there was no telegraph, so the President would appoint people to important offices, get them confirmed by the Senate, and then have no idea what they were actually doing until it was too late to stop them. The confirmation process meant Congress had as much role in setting policy as he did. Both would give the appointee instructions, get the Appointee to swear he would invade Canada r whatever, and that's all anybody could do.
But since the rise of the telegraph the President has been able to change his instructions daily. Now he can fiddle with those instructions every 30 seconds if he wants. Congress can bitch and cut funding, have hearings, or even (theoretically) impeach an Ambassador but they can't say "We hate what you're doing, stop or you're fired."
Only part of America's insane election spending is America being insane. A big part of America out-spending Canada on elections is simple scale, another part of it is complexity.
You guys spent $300 million on your last election. That's $8.70 a head. We're spending $5.8 Billion, or $18.61 a head. Factoring in the exchange rate that's 2.13 times as much. But we're having a much more complex election. The entire US House is up, and is elected separately from the President, and 1/3 of the Senate representing 2/3 of the states is also up. So the average voter has 2.67 times the decisions to make as a Canadian voter, and therefore needs 2.67 times the persuasion, which should cost a lot more.
I didn't bring it up because I thought paper was the absolute perfect interface for a 150-candidate race (in fact, nobody was happier then me when I found out that my hometown had revamped t's City Council so that would stop happening), I brought it up to illustrate how diverse American elections are. Any replacement for paper needs to be able to handle huge races, with bizarre rules that only make sense to the City Clerk. It needs to handle small races. It needs t handle special elections with one race, and the 40-race monstrosities common in Presidential years. Paper just works.
As for the senile voting, like it or not they will vote. And when there's a close election the fact they did not understand the ballot will be very important to the Courts.
Your logic is broken. B-C does not equal A-C. No matter how much you ignore logic and try to impose this fallacy, you simply are wrong unless B and C is the same which requires the genocide everywhere to be the acts directly to the T4 program. Either your assertion of the holocaust is wrong or your linking of empathy to it as in the statement is wrong. And yes, it is your twisting, not his wording.
It's not my link. It's Beck's link.
If you say A leads to B leads to C the idea you are trying to get across is that A leads to C. If the idea you are trying to get across is simply that A leads to B you don't mention C at all, because it is a distraction from your actual point.
The inverse is true too, if Beck meant the holocaust, he would have simply stated the holocaust.
But if he'd done that he wouldn't have you providing rationalizations for him. This way he gets exactly enough deniability that you;re carrying his water.
He's basically trolling. He wants to make everyone think he's accusing Obama of the Holocaust, but not get dinged by Godwin's Law.
As for forced sterilization of the handicapped being genocide, you are mistaken. The key phrase is "of the handicapped." Since handicapped can be of any ethnicity, race, or national group a program against them cannot be intended to eliminate a race, ethnicity, or national group from a region in general. In specific T4 was targeted at ethnic Germans, and the Nazis had no plan to eliminate ethnic Germans from any area.
Just because something's evil that des not imply it is genocide.
No, I brought Sanger up simply because she is a modern name known for her support and practice of Eugenics. You are correct though, she only advocated the sterilization and prevention of the lesser people so they wouldn't contaminate the gene pool of the good people. She thought the lesser and genetically inferior people had a right to live, just not reproduce or spread their defective genes. That is why she got into Birth control and giving it to the poor and undesirables. Some say this is why to this day that no Planned Parenthood abortion clinic has ever been set up in an area without a significant minority population. I think it is the economics of scale, any location large enough to be served efficiently by a clinic that kills off the reproduction of people would by default have a large minority population.
The other problem with the argument is it's based on a false premise. Planned Parenthood clinics are not concentrated in minority areas. Studies arguing the opposite are all done by pre-life groups who aren't really interested in finding out the truth. They're interested in getting a talking point they can use to pry the black vote from Progressive Democrats.
Their problem is black people have sources of information beyond the black church. For example, their mothers, who are well aware that when the pro-life movement's current white, southern, conservative leaders were loudly proclaiming Segregation was God's Will (and we have studies to prove it's natural and necessary) Planned Parenthood was in the coalition that beat them.
Southern conservative states were dominated by the democrat party at the time of
If you're 95, and have been ticking a box for years, but have never used an ATM?
Orders of magnitude harder.
To quote one of your first replies to this thread:
"No, he [Beck] said empathy lead to T4 (mercy killings- killing people because you think it's the right thing to do) which lead to genocide everywhere."
You are saying he said A (Empathy) leads to B (T4, the euthanasia program), leads to C (genocide everywhere, the Holocaust). Which means that simple logic says you agreed Beck's position was that Empathy leads to the Holocaust.
As for whether Beck is bringing up the Holocaust, if he wasn't he wouldn't have called it "genocide everywhere." Murdering the handicapped is not genocide. Genocide is a crime, with a strict legal definition, and killing the handicapped simply doesn't count. For another T4 did not apply "everywhere." The Nazis never got around to killing the handicapped in occupied Croatia or Hungary, but they did get the Jews.
As for Sanger, your use of her name indicates that you are the one reading too many ideological websites. She was opposed to killing the handicapped in general, and T4 in specific. Eugenics was actually less controversial in the 30s then institutionalized racism, yet the sites that argue all Sanger's ideas are BS because she supported Eugenics never mention that Rockefeller of the famous Rockefeller Republicans put millions into the international Eugenics movement, that Southern Conservative states like NC had the most "comprehensive" sterilization programs, that California of the day was classic Western populist a la Wyoming, etc.
You do not get to redefine someone's statement simply because you want them to say something you find politically advantageous to you. Beck said empathy started the T4 which led to the genocide. At best, you can say that he said euthanasia led to genocide.
And he said altruism "was the beginning" of euthanasia (which led to the Holocaust).
When I summarized it as altruism leads to euthanasia (which led to the Holocaust) you didn't disagree. You didn't claim I was manipulating his argument. You didn't do that until I proved that if "altruism leads to euthanasia leads to genocide" he's saying "altruism leads to genocide."
If the thrust of his argument was "Obama is wrong because Obama wants to kill the handicapped," he wouldn't mention the Holocaust. He's discussing the role of empathy in the Judiciary. Killing millions of Jews, a million-odd Communist POWs, hundreds of thousands of Gypsies, etc. just isn't relevant unless his entire argument rests on the basis that it IS relevant.
In other words he's either very clumsily trying to equate the Holocaust with sympathy for various sides in Judicial disputes, or he's got Tourette's.
As for the book, you'll note it's argument is a lot more complex then Beck's. It isn't arguing that empathy per se is a bad thing, or that it is humanly possible to stop empathizing. It's arguing that empathy is such a universal thing among humans that even actions that hurt millions are partly caused by empathy. The Nazis, for example, had plenty of empathy for Germans but none for anyone else. They also had some truly bizarre ideas about how non-Germans (especially Jews) related to Germans, which resulted in them murdering 10-12 million people; and when everyone else took exception to their excessively pro-German policies their Empire was destroyed, their women raped, etc.
You do realize that "no harder then an ATM" is still unacceptably hard, by definition?
The Butterfly Ballot was no harder then an ATM. And it was too hard.
This is basic logic. If you say A leads to B leads to C you are implying that A leads to C.
This is especially true in political rhetoric. There is simply no point in saying "A leads to B leads to C" if you don't mean to imply A leads to C.
I suspect Dutch elections are sane.
I have personally voted in two elections where I had to make 9 choices from more then 100 candidates. In this election (I voted early) I counted 33 seperate races I was supposed to vote on.
A "Confirm button" just isn't practical in those circumstances.
It was also not "genocide everywhere." The only Nazi policy that was, in fact "genocide everywhere" was the Holocaust.
It's a typical comment of Beck's. He says that empathy leads to "genocide everywhere," just look at the Nazis, but explicitly references a non-Holocaust thing. His people (aka: you) can pretend he hasn't just blown Godwin's Law to hell, everyone else realizes you're crazy.
That could be, but I'll believe nearly anything bad said about voting machines, regardless of the source. They are pretty much designed to allow massive cheating without any possibility of verification.
Well, what gets me is, Beck claims the machines in Ohio are rigged to move Romney votes to Obama. Interestingly enough, one of Tagg Romney's companies owns the company that provides Ohio with the voting and vote counting machines. But it's not 'direct' owernship, Tagg owns a venture capital firm that funded another venture capital firm that bought the company that makes the machines. But of course with such a long paper trail, there couldn't be any chicanery, now, could there?
IIRC Tag doesn't own that particular company, he just has investments with people who do.
More importantly the guy who'd be doing the rigging (Husted) is a Republican. It's possible the local clerks are doing something behind his back, but it's kinda his job to prevent that shit.
You're ignoring the problem of interface design.
A touchscreen allows you to mimic the historical interface of a paper ballot. A keypad requires you design a new interface that supports infinite candidates (note: two-digit candidate id numbers are insufficient. I have personally voted in elections with 100-150 candidates on the ballot twice), select among them quickly and accurately, and is easy for a 90-year-old with the beginnings of dementia to figure out.
Remember the 2000 debacle? It was caused largely by a local County Clerk re-working the old ballot interface in a way that confused a handful of senior citizens in a year when a handful of votes were enough to change the election.