What you're talking about is Class A Experimental Therapy. It's heavy stuff and ranks up there with "hell if I know, maybe this'll do something" as far as the wealth of medical knowledge associated with it.
As drugs and techniques prove themselves they move down the ladder until they're used to treat the general public.
Of course, patients are only give the option of highly experimental methods once the tried and true stuff has failed.
The only people exposed to this will be the ones who allready have a death sentence from their cancers.
Sometimes cancer forces people into rough decisions. A friend of mine chose to accecpt a bone marrow transplant from an HIV positive doner because it was her only chance to beat her leukemia.
She's doing fine now, but she's on AZT and all kinds of other antivirals now to stave off AIDS.
It doesn't matter if it's trivial. It's a catch 22 thanks to the RIAA.
If P2P Apps implement encryption then breaking that encryption becomes a violation of the DMCA. Hell, even trying to break that encryption becomes a violation of the DMCA.
They can legaly require breaks, but only if they get the DMCA overturned or provide a special exception to anyone who runs an ISP.
Of course, in a world where any insecure Linksys router can be an ISP, that won't get them very far.
They won't get this through, and even if they do, they won't be able to enforce it because the ISPs can just throw up their hands and say "we couldn't break the crypt because we didn't know before hand if it was your copyright! We only have permission to break it if it's your copyright and we can't know if it is without breaking it first!"
My question is this. If the rational for this disparity is that the downloader is being punished for the theft and for his distribution of the material while the shoplifter is only being punished for the theft, is there not a fundamental conundrum?
If Alice downloads a file illegaly and then shares it with Bob, Berry, and Bart, she can be punished with the downloader penalties, which include punishment for the illegal distribution of the work (i.e. representing the copying she did as well as the copying she allowed others to do).
What then can Bob, Berry, and Bart be charged with? What if they download directly from Alice without sharing themselves? Alice has allready been convicted of the crime of distributing this data. How can they ALSO be guilty?
Perhaps a paralell is in order. Lets take the case of the shoplifter. If he takes a copy of a DVD from Wal Mart he is punished for it if caught. Should Wal Mart ALSO be punished for failing to secure and protect copywritten materials?
My point is this. If the purpose of copyright is to control the copying and we are to presume that any individual downloading is the one doing the actual copying, then it is clear that the person hosting the file is not at fault. If the person hosting the file is the one doing the copying then the person receiving the file is not at fault. If this were a criminal trial it would be one thing, but as a civil trial the plaintiff has rights only the damage done. The damge in this case works out to the value of the merchendise * the copies made.
If $5,000,000 in stuff is ripped off from Wal Mart every year but they only catch 5 shoplifters are those five liable for $1,000,000 each? Why then are file sharers liable for damages other than those representitive of the fair market value of the files on their systems?
Their BOAT technology is. Remember that figure everyone ignored during the election? 97% of cargo entering US ports isn't inspected.
If North Korea wants the ultimate deterrent to a US invasion it's already got a weapon in a shielded case sitting in a warehouse in LA somewhere.
Missiles are what you use to respond quickly to a threat you might not foresee. A Missile will get your weapon to target in 30 minutes or so but will cost you hundreds of millions of dollars to develop.
Why bother when FedEx will get your weapon to target overnight? You can even buy insurance!
(Note, the FedEx bit is in jest, they have a weight limit that precludes most nuclear weapons)
Perhaps instead of a response stemming from anger or fear you could actually learn some history and apply those lessons to current events
I hold a degree in History. I'll continue to refrain from impugning your educational credibility by assuming you may have some formal knowledge of the topic at hand.
humans got on for all of history without a governmental entitlement program
Oh, because that's always a well thought out argument. Humans got on for all of history without FIRE at one point. There exists not one single innovation which has bettered the lives of humans around the globe which has existed from the dawn of time. If it had existed from the dawn of time, it wouldn't be an innovation... now would it?
I assume you dislike the power-mongers
Most of us do. Unfortunately, as Plato would say it, when the people can elect their leaders they elect fools and naives. Our government isn't run by philosopher kings. Since every program every government in history has put into place benefits SOMEONE and, short of overthrowing all world governments and descending into anarchy, we're unlikely to rid ourselves of government and thus those programs anytime in the near future, I say we should try to encourage those in power to pass bills into law that actually benefit someone other than the power elite.
Now you can stammer on all your like about eliminating choice. Sometimes choice isn't the best option. Governments exist to protect their citizens. This is Locke, pure and simple. Read the second treatise if you haven't already and you'll have a better understanding of that. Protection of the people is about more than protecting them from foreign powers, it's about protecting them from unforeseen circumstances at home as well.
Laws against robbery, looting, mugging, counterfeiting, and insurance fraud could all be equally well addressed by your "From your vitriolic sarcasm" paragraph. You're for those laws (that restrict choice and thereby better society by the way), why not one that's a little less obvious?
The nanny state is about the concentration of power in the hands of "those who know better," and that is never for the betterment of people in general. Humans are too corruptible for that to work well for long.
Such a corruption of Locke and Madison I've never seen. ALL states are a concentration of power in the hands of "those who know better." That's what government is. It is the investiture of liberties by the people in a central and artificial authority in exchange for the protections of other liberties. You agree to give up your right to drive 152 on the interstate so that everyone else can't drive that fast either. By doing so you are safer... that's what government is.
Now apply it to SS. You give up a few bucks out of your paycheck every week. It's an inconvenience (much like not being able to drive from Atlanta to NYC in 3 hours) but by doing so you ensure that should something go wrong with your retirement accounts, things won't suck for you.
Moving along to the second half of your argument: Humans are too corruptible for that to work well for long. Of course they are! Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Fortunately for us, someone smarter and wiser than either of us came up with a solution for that problem some time ago:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself
Recognize that? It's from Federalist 51 penned by Madison [or possibly Hamilton, there is some disagreement on that] back in 1788 (and you said I didn't know my history). Of course power corrupts, but our government is designed to
He'd defending the point I didn't make and didn't mean to make... but will someone mod this guy up? I knew my country fucked over a lot of people and did so... well... really just for the hell of it... but that's a big list.
Of course, never mind that the Franklin quote doesn't apply as no one is trading liberty so much as willingly sacrificing it (as do we all who suffer to live under any government) for the greater good.
Moreover, of course SS has always been a wealth redistribution scheme. It moves money from people who are employed to those that aren't.
The benefits to the people are immense. How vibrant would our economy be if everyone worked until death? How effective would our leaders be? How effective would you be if your most productive years were sapped trying to take care of your ailing parrents? What of those that have no children?
Yes, it is quinessentialy unamerican to give up so little to help so many. It is quintessentialy unamerican for the government to intervene on behalf of the elderly who have given their life's work to the betterment of their nation. The very idea of allowing our grandmothers and grandfathers to at last rest after a lifetime of toil makes my blood burn and anger course though my veins. How DARE we defame the capitalist feeding frenzy with human emotion, human compassion.
And if we must pay taxes, if we must give back a few dollars as the dues for the civilized society we live in, can we not at least spend it on weapons of war? Why would our government betray us by using tax payer dollers to better the lives of the individual tax payer when it could use those same dollars to buy machines of war and death, giving the legions of the economicaly conscripted yet more lethal weapons to ravage the homes and villages of our unarmed unresisting enemy. While we do this, we can even continue to enrich the wealthy and give yet more graft to the corrupt.
Yes! What a fool we all were to belive in social programs. What matter is it if our elderly die in poverty? I have an extra $20 in my paycheck!
Re:liar, liar, pants on fire
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The entire point of social security is to provide a safety net. It is there to be the last fall back in the event of total economic catastrophe.
ALL investments follow a simple rule. More risk = more reward. Social Security isn't even an investment, it's a wealth redistribution system designed such that individuals who pay into the system fund those who are no longer able to.
If we redesign the system to involve trust funds, we make is less secure. That lack of security derails the entire point of the program. It's called Social Security for a reason.
Sure, your account didn't loose a lot of value, but it could have. If it had, if your retirement accounts had been completely wiped out, you'd still have social security to fall back on.
What if social security had been wiped out? What would you do then? Keeping the social security fund from capsizing (following it's legally questionable and morally objectionable raiding by the GOP in the 1980s) is very important. Preserving its character as the last, best defense against economic failure is yet more important. Re-engineering the system into a stock and bond fund only serves to provide security to the securities industry. Bankers make billions and Grandma's monthly check is tied... no matter how loosely... to the fickle whim of the stock market.
That's not security. That's not the point. That's not what we should be doing.
Nice with the Ghostbusters ref, though I doubt many people got it.
You're 100% right, for a number of reasons. First off, our security was threatened a great deal more by the Soviet Union than by international terrorism.
There are reports (which I've cited on/. before, but I'm too lazy to find right now, go find them yourself if you care) that the Soviets had gone so far as to install a small low yeild warhead in the basement of their embasy in DC so as to pull off a decpitation strike if things ever got really bad. I belive this was during the Nixon Administration.
The World Trade Center sucked, and so does the so called war on terror, but the casualties of the cold war are staggering by comparison.
Vietnam: 58,000 Dead Korea: 33,000 Dead WOMD Pointed At Us: 55,000
Compare to the War on Terror where casualties have been measued in the thousands and there remain no WMD pointed at us.
The Bush appologists will tell you this is because of the superior quality of the US military in this war, and the continued dominance of the US as a the last remaining superpower.
They might be right on that second point. Just as the school bully generaly fairs better picking on a 1st grader than a HS Senior, so also will the US fair better picking on Iraq or Afghanistan than China or Russia.
We're blowing this out of proportion. Terrorism is a threat, yes, but a threat to be compared to other fiarly innocuous problems throughout American History. Terrorism is like the 21st century's version of the 19th Century's Mexican War.
Weapons of Mass destruction are still terrifying, but as long as a superweapon can be smuggled into our cities in the bloodstream of a legaly documented traveler... what can we possibly do? It's time calm down, get our wits about us, and face the world.
Unfortunately, we've just elected a witless redneck to another four years of marioneting by Dick Cheney, Dark Lord of the Sith.
You raise an excelent point. Moreover, I'd guess you're fairly young, perhaps a recent HS graduate, in college now perhaps?
I don't say this to demean your writing or your arguments, but to simply make an observation. As we age, we tend to forget the unplesent bits.
This is a pretty normal human reaction. It's how humans deal with pain and suffering, how we heal our minds. My HS girlfriend burned me pretty bad, did some horrid things to me and caused me a lot of anguish. We're close friends now, and that's mostly because in my head, I've blocked out most of the ugly stuff that transpired between us.
I have a point here, I promise.
High School is a lot like that. We look back during our 10 year reunion, when all the people who were assholes to us are back and reminesing, being polite and curtious because they're adults. We walk into that High School gym and are called Mr. and Ms. So and So by the principls and teachers because now we're adults, taxpayers, voters, and worthy of some kind of respect.
We forget what High School was like, we forget what elementry and middle school were like. We gloss over all the ugly bits and just remember the good parts.
When my High School class was being sold rings (on a side note, if you're going to College, don't get a high school ring. They're crap and no one wants to remember highschool) we were told that "High School is the best four years of you life, you'll want this ring to remember it by." We were told this by 40 somethings who, by this point, had blotted out every trauma they'd suffered in High School. To them, it really was the best years of their lives. To us, it was a living hell.
My point is, that if you're still aware of how bitterly ugly the public school system can be, you're probably young enough to have experianced it first hand in recent memory.
My wife tought History in the public schools for a few years after graduating college. She finished College in 3 years, so she was the youngest teacher in the her school system, even during her second year teaching. She had graduated High School not to long before and remembered all to clearly how bad it really was. There was a reason she was the most well beloved teacher in the school: she understood.
Our students leave their constitutional rights at the door. The Courts have upheld this fundamental premise time and time again. The school has the right to ast in loci parenti, or in the place of the parents. The school IS the legal guardian and as a consequence has all the rights and privilages thereof unless stated otherwise in law.
I don't know if there is a good solution to this. School papers do have the right to censor what is published, there, at the same time the students have a strong case for handing out their own literature. One of the big problems is that case law about what Schools can and can't censor is complex stuff. Most teachers aren't trained in law, fewer still understand it adequately enough to make informed decisions about what they can and can't do. Most err on the side of exercising too much authority because it is theirs to exercise.
A student's life is one lived under and opressive and fundamentaly unpredictable regime. The idea that someone in authority can do whatever they want whenever they want is one reenforced by the world in which they live. It's hardly a shock to see that students translate their experiance into conclusions about the rest of the world.
I don't think the Alzheimers argument works. Ask a 22 year old about Alzheimers and he'll say "I haven't had it, haven't experianced it, don't know much about it"
Come back 60 years later and he'll say "Who are you? Why are you living under my sink? Take out the trash and stop moving my.... did someone change the channel on the radio? Ruby! So good to see you and... uh... Who are you?"
Actualy the automobile was either invented by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot [source] (a Frenchman) or by Frederick William Lanchester [source](a Brit) depending on what you count as an "automobile"
While Ford's model T was certainly the first affordable auto, European models predate the Model-T by as much as 60 years. [source]
Really? Pull up a map sometime. The Arabian Peninsula's borders are drawn to specifically exclude Israel. Now, Israel isn't defined by any particularly noteworthy geographic boundaries, so why would the boundaries of a geographic entity take into account the boundaries of a political entity?
Arab isn't an ethnicity, it's a name for persons from a specific geographic region, like European or Australian.
Quoth Wikipedia:
* Political: whether they live in a country which is a member of the Arab League (or, more vaguely, the Arab World); this definition covers more than 300 million people.
* Linguistic: whether their mother tongue is Arabic; this definition covers more than 200 million people.
* Genealogical: whether they can trace their ancestry back to the original inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula.
Jesus was born or Mary, a resident of Bethlehem. Mary traces her lineage through King David of the Israelites (as does Joseph, but for what should be obvious reasons this doesn't matter so much).
Point being that Mary traces her lineage to the traditional roots of Judaism and the highest royal family in the Jewish Faith, the house of David.
Of course, the Jews weren't always to be found in Israel. Judaism draws its roots from Abraham (as, it turns out, does Islam). Abraham was born in Ur, a city in modern day Iraq, and thus falls well within the borders of the Arabian Peninsula
In short, even if you don't want to discuss the possibility of modern day Israel being on the Arabian Peninsula, the family of Jesus, indeed all decedents of Abraham, can trace their lineage back to the Arabian Peninsula. They are they Arabs.
No, ALL Christians hold that Jesus is the Son Of God and that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the Divine Trinity, three entities, but one God.
That's fundamentally the definition of Christian. Christian is a way of describing someone who believes that.
Arab refers to people born on or who live on the Arabian Peninsula. Since the boundaries of where the Arabian Peninsula begins are really up to cartographers, it's not too much of a stretch to say that Jesus was probably Arab.
Of course, what you meant in your statement was that "[Muslims] certainly don't believe that"
Ironically, that would also be wrong. The Koran SPECIFICLY mentions Jesus as the Son of God. It differs on weather or not Christ was in fact crucified and raised from the dead. The Koran says that after Judas betrayed Christ, God made Judas to look like Jesus and the Romans crucified Judas, not Jesus. Poetic justice as it were.
The Koran doesn't really deal with what happened to Jesus after that. Years later another great prophet... the last great prophet in the view of the Muslims... comes along. Muhammad brings the word of God to the people of Ishmael and so founds the religion of Islam.
Ok... so which of the following statements would you object to.
1 - Genes provide a chemical instruction set for cellular operations 2 - Neurons are cells 3 - The brain is composed of neurons 4 - Informational organization exists in the brain in the form of connections between neurons 5 - Neurons form connections due to the interaction between their genes and the rest of the brain. 6 - Since the rest of the brain is composed of nothing more than more neurons, each of which is individualy controled by internal genetic packages, all interactions in the brain can be abstracted to genes interacting with other genes through the interfaces of the cells thoes genes control. 7 - Therefore, it is the instructions coded into our genes that "tell" the brain how to form connections between neurons, how strong those connections should be, etc.
I'm curious, if genes do not govern the formation of synaptic bonds, what does? "The Brain" is the organizatoinal structure created because those bonds exist, so to argue that it controls them is fallacy... a chicken egg problem if you will.
Is there any documentation of this or is this just your personal recolection?
I've found numerous sources (cited in previous posts) discussing Clinton's pro-stem cell funding stance. Surely if he reniged on this promise you can find a newspaper article substantiating it. Idealy a newspaper article from a source not known for a conservitive bias.
As someone asked me in a previous post on this same thread "prove it." I'd never be so crass as to phrase it that way, so I'll paraphrase instead.
Can you provide documentation to back that assertion?
Keep in mind we're talking about new embryonic stem cell lines. We're not talking about existing embryonic lines, ubmilical or placentil lines, or adult lines.
"...any researcher who touches them can kiss his [and his entire organization's Federal] funding [for each and every project in that organization] good bye."
Let is never be said the Religious Right is incapable of hypocrisy. Had I not commented on this story I'd be modding this post up right now.
This is EXACTLY the problem with the Conservative Christian views on reality. To paraphrase George Carlin "They'll do anything to save a fetus, but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it."
Either you're ok with the concept of the sacrifice of the few to benefit the many or you're not. Either you're ok with the concept of man's ability to judge his fellow man or you're not.
I don't think it's ok to sacrifice the few to save the many. I don't think that our campaign in Iraq and the hundreds of thousands we've killed there are an acceptable price to pay to foist democracy on a country that may not be ready for it yet.
I also don't think a fetus is alive, so I'm not really in any sort of logical contradiction when I say I'm all for stem cell research. That's sacrificing medical waste to benefit the many, no problem there.
I think that man can judge his fellow man. That's why I'm all for the death penalty in certain specific cases.
At the same time, to argue that you don't want to kill a fetus because it's an innocent child but you do want to kill a child molester because he's a vicious criminal is hypocritical if you ascribe to Christianity. All sin, even child molestation, is equal in the eyes of God. It is not man's place, but God's to judge, and to classify a human embryo as more or less worthy of human mercy than that child molester is a sin of pride of the highest degree.
Moreover the equally absurd argument that abortion somehow risks the disruption of God's plan is arrogance beyond words. To assume that man can somehow act in a way that would confound the all powerful and all knowing mind of the Most High? How can you believe this and still claim to be a Christian?
[To the parent, I'm not ranting against you, just in general.]
Double standards? Damn skippy. I haven't seen anything from the Right Wing in the last 10 years that hasn't smacked of hypocrisy.
But things are more complicated than that. It is logical falacy to treat something as what it may someday become as opposed to what it actualy is.
Until birth, a child is really just a clump of cells growing in a host body. It is not, in that respect, terribly unlike a tumor.
I'm not saying this is the case, just that it is an equaly vlaid way of looking at an embryo.
In reality, without any real way to make a distinctions about where life beings, we are forced into a matter of faith. Is a fetus a human being? Ethicaly, religiously, moraly, that's up to the indivudal. Legaly, no, a fetus is not a human being. To paraphrase:
The census doesn't count them When there is a miscarriage we don't have a funeral. We can't get health insurance for them. We can't get social security information for them. We can't get tax exemption for them. We can't get a passport for them.
From the point of view of the State, a fetus is not recognised as a human being in ANY RESPECT save in this one obscure corner of medical regulation. As it would happen, this is the only area in which such recognition has any possibility of negitive effect on the electorate.
For this reason, if for no other, the stem cell research regulations are a bad idea. If Bush seeks to extend legal recognition to the fetus, he should do so elsewhere... not in the medical community.
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What you're talking about is Class A Experimental Therapy. It's heavy stuff and ranks up there with "hell if I know, maybe this'll do something" as far as the wealth of medical knowledge associated with it.
As drugs and techniques prove themselves they move down the ladder until they're used to treat the general public.
Of course, patients are only give the option of highly experimental methods once the tried and true stuff has failed.
The only people exposed to this will be the ones who allready have a death sentence from their cancers.
Sometimes cancer forces people into rough decisions. A friend of mine chose to accecpt a bone marrow transplant from an HIV positive doner because it was her only chance to beat her leukemia.
She's doing fine now, but she's on AZT and all kinds of other antivirals now to stave off AIDS.
It doesn't matter if it's trivial. It's a catch 22 thanks to the RIAA.
If P2P Apps implement encryption then breaking that encryption becomes a violation of the DMCA. Hell, even trying to break that encryption becomes a violation of the DMCA.
They can legaly require breaks, but only if they get the DMCA overturned or provide a special exception to anyone who runs an ISP.
Of course, in a world where any insecure Linksys router can be an ISP, that won't get them very far.
They won't get this through, and even if they do, they won't be able to enforce it because the ISPs can just throw up their hands and say "we couldn't break the crypt because we didn't know before hand if it was your copyright! We only have permission to break it if it's your copyright and we can't know if it is without breaking it first!"
Your sig should read:
G.W. Bush: Proof that you only have to fool half of the people for about a month to win a second term.
My question is this. If the rational for this disparity is that the downloader is being punished for the theft and for his distribution of the material while the shoplifter is only being punished for the theft, is there not a fundamental conundrum?
If Alice downloads a file illegaly and then shares it with Bob, Berry, and Bart, she can be punished with the downloader penalties, which include punishment for the illegal distribution of the work (i.e. representing the copying she did as well as the copying she allowed others to do).
What then can Bob, Berry, and Bart be charged with? What if they download directly from Alice without sharing themselves? Alice has allready been convicted of the crime of distributing this data. How can they ALSO be guilty?
Perhaps a paralell is in order. Lets take the case of the shoplifter. If he takes a copy of a DVD from Wal Mart he is punished for it if caught. Should Wal Mart ALSO be punished for failing to secure and protect copywritten materials?
My point is this. If the purpose of copyright is to control the copying and we are to presume that any individual downloading is the one doing the actual copying, then it is clear that the person hosting the file is not at fault. If the person hosting the file is the one doing the copying then the person receiving the file is not at fault. If this were a criminal trial it would be one thing, but as a civil trial the plaintiff has rights only the damage done. The damge in this case works out to the value of the merchendise * the copies made.
If $5,000,000 in stuff is ripped off from Wal Mart every year but they only catch 5 shoplifters are those five liable for $1,000,000 each? Why then are file sharers liable for damages other than those representitive of the fair market value of the files on their systems?
Their BOAT technology is. Remember that figure everyone ignored during the election? 97% of cargo entering US ports isn't inspected.
If North Korea wants the ultimate deterrent to a US invasion it's already got a weapon in a shielded case sitting in a warehouse in LA somewhere.
Missiles are what you use to respond quickly to a threat you might not foresee. A Missile will get your weapon to target in 30 minutes or so but will cost you hundreds of millions of dollars to develop.
Why bother when FedEx will get your weapon to target overnight? You can even buy insurance!
(Note, the FedEx bit is in jest, they have a weight limit that precludes most nuclear weapons)
Perhaps instead of a response stemming from anger or fear you could actually learn some history and apply those lessons to current events
I hold a degree in History. I'll continue to refrain from impugning your educational credibility by assuming you may have some formal knowledge of the topic at hand.
humans got on for all of history without a governmental entitlement program
Oh, because that's always a well thought out argument. Humans got on for all of history without FIRE at one point. There exists not one single innovation which has bettered the lives of humans around the globe which has existed from the dawn of time. If it had existed from the dawn of time, it wouldn't be an innovation... now would it?
I assume you dislike the power-mongers
Most of us do. Unfortunately, as Plato would say it, when the people can elect their leaders they elect fools and naives. Our government isn't run by philosopher kings. Since every program every government in history has put into place benefits SOMEONE and, short of overthrowing all world governments and descending into anarchy, we're unlikely to rid ourselves of government and thus those programs anytime in the near future, I say we should try to encourage those in power to pass bills into law that actually benefit someone other than the power elite.
Now you can stammer on all your like about eliminating choice. Sometimes choice isn't the best option. Governments exist to protect their citizens. This is Locke, pure and simple. Read the second treatise if you haven't already and you'll have a better understanding of that. Protection of the people is about more than protecting them from foreign powers, it's about protecting them from unforeseen circumstances at home as well.
Laws against robbery, looting, mugging, counterfeiting, and insurance fraud could all be equally well addressed by your "From your vitriolic sarcasm" paragraph. You're for those laws (that restrict choice and thereby better society by the way), why not one that's a little less obvious?
The nanny state is about the concentration of power in the hands of "those who know better," and that is never for the betterment of people in general. Humans are too corruptible for that to work well for long.
Such a corruption of Locke and Madison I've never seen. ALL states are a concentration of power in the hands of "those who know better." That's what government is. It is the investiture of liberties by the people in a central and artificial authority in exchange for the protections of other liberties. You agree to give up your right to drive 152 on the interstate so that everyone else can't drive that fast either. By doing so you are safer... that's what government is.
Now apply it to SS. You give up a few bucks out of your paycheck every week. It's an inconvenience (much like not being able to drive from Atlanta to NYC in 3 hours) but by doing so you ensure that should something go wrong with your retirement accounts, things won't suck for you.
Moving along to the second half of your argument: Humans are too corruptible for that to work well for long. Of course they are! Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Fortunately for us, someone smarter and wiser than either of us came up with a solution for that problem some time ago:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself
Recognize that? It's from Federalist 51 penned by Madison [or possibly Hamilton, there is some disagreement on that] back in 1788 (and you said I didn't know my history). Of course power corrupts, but our government is designed to
He'd defending the point I didn't make and didn't mean to make... but will someone mod this guy up? I knew my country fucked over a lot of people and did so... well... really just for the hell of it... but that's a big list.
Of course, never mind that the Franklin quote doesn't apply as no one is trading liberty so much as willingly sacrificing it (as do we all who suffer to live under any government) for the greater good.
Moreover, of course SS has always been a wealth redistribution scheme. It moves money from people who are employed to those that aren't.
The benefits to the people are immense. How vibrant would our economy be if everyone worked until death? How effective would our leaders be? How effective would you be if your most productive years were sapped trying to take care of your ailing parrents? What of those that have no children?
Yes, it is quinessentialy unamerican to give up so little to help so many. It is quintessentialy unamerican for the government to intervene on behalf of the elderly who have given their life's work to the betterment of their nation. The very idea of allowing our grandmothers and grandfathers to at last rest after a lifetime of toil makes my blood burn and anger course though my veins. How DARE we defame the capitalist feeding frenzy with human emotion, human compassion.
And if we must pay taxes, if we must give back a few dollars as the dues for the civilized society we live in, can we not at least spend it on weapons of war? Why would our government betray us by using tax payer dollers to better the lives of the individual tax payer when it could use those same dollars to buy machines of war and death, giving the legions of the economicaly conscripted yet more lethal weapons to ravage the homes and villages of our unarmed unresisting enemy. While we do this, we can even continue to enrich the wealthy and give yet more graft to the corrupt.
Yes! What a fool we all were to belive in social programs. What matter is it if our elderly die in poverty? I have an extra $20 in my paycheck!
The entire point of social security is to provide a safety net. It is there to be the last fall back in the event of total economic catastrophe.
ALL investments follow a simple rule. More risk = more reward. Social Security isn't even an investment, it's a wealth redistribution system designed such that individuals who pay into the system fund those who are no longer able to.
If we redesign the system to involve trust funds, we make is less secure. That lack of security derails the entire point of the program. It's called Social Security for a reason.
Sure, your account didn't loose a lot of value, but it could have. If it had, if your retirement accounts had been completely wiped out, you'd still have social security to fall back on.
What if social security had been wiped out? What would you do then? Keeping the social security fund from capsizing (following it's legally questionable and morally objectionable raiding by the GOP in the 1980s) is very important. Preserving its character as the last, best defense against economic failure is yet more important. Re-engineering the system into a stock and bond fund only serves to provide security to the securities industry. Bankers make billions and Grandma's monthly check is tied... no matter how loosely... to the fickle whim of the stock market.
That's not security. That's not the point. That's not what we should be doing.
Your point is well taken and you're right, hundreds of thousands of civilians have died in Iraq alone.
That said, in a discussion of threats to American security, it seems logical to speak of casualties in terms of American casualties.
Nice with the Ghostbusters ref, though I doubt many people got it.
/. before, but I'm too lazy to find right now, go find them yourself if you care) that the Soviets had gone so far as to install a small low yeild warhead in the basement of their embasy in DC so as to pull off a decpitation strike if things ever got really bad. I belive this was during the Nixon Administration.
You're 100% right, for a number of reasons. First off, our security was threatened a great deal more by the Soviet Union than by international terrorism.
There are reports (which I've cited on
The World Trade Center sucked, and so does the so called war on terror, but the casualties of the cold war are staggering by comparison.
Vietnam: 58,000 Dead
Korea: 33,000 Dead
WOMD Pointed At Us: 55,000
Compare to the War on Terror where casualties have been measued in the thousands and there remain no WMD pointed at us.
The Bush appologists will tell you this is because of the superior quality of the US military in this war, and the continued dominance of the US as a the last remaining superpower.
They might be right on that second point. Just as the school bully generaly fairs better picking on a 1st grader than a HS Senior, so also will the US fair better picking on Iraq or Afghanistan than China or Russia.
We're blowing this out of proportion. Terrorism is a threat, yes, but a threat to be compared to other fiarly innocuous problems throughout American History. Terrorism is like the 21st century's version of the 19th Century's Mexican War.
Weapons of Mass destruction are still terrifying, but as long as a superweapon can be smuggled into our cities in the bloodstream of a legaly documented traveler... what can we possibly do? It's time calm down, get our wits about us, and face the world.
Unfortunately, we've just elected a witless redneck to another four years of marioneting by Dick Cheney, Dark Lord of the Sith.
Is there any room up in Canukistan?
Could be worse....
You raise an excelent point. Moreover, I'd guess you're fairly young, perhaps a recent HS graduate, in college now perhaps?
I don't say this to demean your writing or your arguments, but to simply make an observation. As we age, we tend to forget the unplesent bits.
This is a pretty normal human reaction. It's how humans deal with pain and suffering, how we heal our minds. My HS girlfriend burned me pretty bad, did some horrid things to me and caused me a lot of anguish. We're close friends now, and that's mostly because in my head, I've blocked out most of the ugly stuff that transpired between us.
I have a point here, I promise.
High School is a lot like that. We look back during our 10 year reunion, when all the people who were assholes to us are back and reminesing, being polite and curtious because they're adults. We walk into that High School gym and are called Mr. and Ms. So and So by the principls and teachers because now we're adults, taxpayers, voters, and worthy of some kind of respect.
We forget what High School was like, we forget what elementry and middle school were like. We gloss over all the ugly bits and just remember the good parts.
When my High School class was being sold rings (on a side note, if you're going to College, don't get a high school ring. They're crap and no one wants to remember highschool) we were told that "High School is the best four years of you life, you'll want this ring to remember it by." We were told this by 40 somethings who, by this point, had blotted out every trauma they'd suffered in High School. To them, it really was the best years of their lives. To us, it was a living hell.
My point is, that if you're still aware of how bitterly ugly the public school system can be, you're probably young enough to have experianced it first hand in recent memory.
My wife tought History in the public schools for a few years after graduating college. She finished College in 3 years, so she was the youngest teacher in the her school system, even during her second year teaching. She had graduated High School not to long before and remembered all to clearly how bad it really was. There was a reason she was the most well beloved teacher in the school: she understood.
Our students leave their constitutional rights at the door. The Courts have upheld this fundamental premise time and time again. The school has the right to ast in loci parenti, or in the place of the parents. The school IS the legal guardian and as a consequence has all the rights and privilages thereof unless stated otherwise in law.
I don't know if there is a good solution to this. School papers do have the right to censor what is published, there, at the same time the students have a strong case for handing out their own literature. One of the big problems is that case law about what Schools can and can't censor is complex stuff. Most teachers aren't trained in law, fewer still understand it adequately enough to make informed decisions about what they can and can't do. Most err on the side of exercising too much authority because it is theirs to exercise.
A student's life is one lived under and opressive and fundamentaly unpredictable regime. The idea that someone in authority can do whatever they want whenever they want is one reenforced by the world in which they live. It's hardly a shock to see that students translate their experiance into conclusions about the rest of the world.
I don't think the Alzheimers argument works. Ask a 22 year old about Alzheimers and he'll say "I haven't had it, haven't experianced it, don't know much about it"
Come back 60 years later and he'll say "Who are you? Why are you living under my sink? Take out the trash and stop moving my.... did someone change the channel on the radio? Ruby! So good to see you and... uh... Who are you?"
Maybe Parkinsons would have been a better topic.
Actualy the automobile was either invented by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot [source] (a Frenchman) or by Frederick William Lanchester [source](a Brit) depending on what you count as an "automobile"
While Ford's model T was certainly the first affordable auto, European models predate the Model-T by as much as 60 years. [source]
I stand corrected. Numerous referances to Jesus as Messiah are there, but none that I can now find where he is refered to as the Son of God.
My appologies.
Really? Pull up a map sometime. The Arabian Peninsula's borders are drawn to specifically exclude Israel. Now, Israel isn't defined by any particularly noteworthy geographic boundaries, so why would the boundaries of a geographic entity take into account the boundaries of a political entity?
Arab isn't an ethnicity, it's a name for persons from a specific geographic region, like European or Australian.
Quoth Wikipedia:
* Political: whether they live in a country which is a member of the Arab League (or, more vaguely, the Arab World); this definition covers more than 300 million people.
* Linguistic: whether their mother tongue is Arabic; this definition covers more than 200 million people.
* Genealogical: whether they can trace their ancestry back to the original inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula.
Jesus was born or Mary, a resident of Bethlehem. Mary traces her lineage through King David of the Israelites (as does Joseph, but for what should be obvious reasons this doesn't matter so much).
Point being that Mary traces her lineage to the traditional roots of Judaism and the highest royal family in the Jewish Faith, the house of David.
Of course, the Jews weren't always to be found in Israel. Judaism draws its roots from Abraham (as, it turns out, does Islam). Abraham was born in Ur, a city in modern day Iraq, and thus falls well within the borders of the Arabian Peninsula
In short, even if you don't want to discuss the possibility of modern day Israel being on the Arabian Peninsula, the family of Jesus, indeed all decedents of Abraham, can trace their lineage back to the Arabian Peninsula. They are they Arabs.
I don't know why I bother, but I'll argue anyway.
" Most Christians hold that Jesus is God"
No, ALL Christians hold that Jesus is the Son Of God and that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the Divine Trinity, three entities, but one God.
That's fundamentally the definition of Christian. Christian is a way of describing someone who believes that.
Arab refers to people born on or who live on the Arabian Peninsula. Since the boundaries of where the Arabian Peninsula begins are really up to cartographers, it's not too much of a stretch to say that Jesus was probably Arab.
Of course, what you meant in your statement was that "[Muslims] certainly don't believe that"
Ironically, that would also be wrong. The Koran SPECIFICLY mentions Jesus as the Son of God. It differs on weather or not Christ was in fact crucified and raised from the dead. The Koran says that after Judas betrayed Christ, God made Judas to look like Jesus and the Romans crucified Judas, not Jesus. Poetic justice as it were.
The Koran doesn't really deal with what happened to Jesus after that. Years later another great prophet... the last great prophet in the view of the Muslims... comes along. Muhammad brings the word of God to the people of Ishmael and so founds the religion of Islam.
Ok... so which of the following statements would you object to.
1 - Genes provide a chemical instruction set for cellular operations
2 - Neurons are cells
3 - The brain is composed of neurons
4 - Informational organization exists in the brain in the form of connections between neurons
5 - Neurons form connections due to the interaction between their genes and the rest of the brain.
6 - Since the rest of the brain is composed of nothing more than more neurons, each of which is individualy controled by internal genetic packages, all interactions in the brain can be abstracted to genes interacting with other genes through the interfaces of the cells thoes genes control.
7 - Therefore, it is the instructions coded into our genes that "tell" the brain how to form connections between neurons, how strong those connections should be, etc.
I'm curious, if genes do not govern the formation of synaptic bonds, what does? "The Brain" is the organizatoinal structure created because those bonds exist, so to argue that it controls them is fallacy... a chicken egg problem if you will.
Is there any documentation of this or is this just your personal recolection?
I've found numerous sources (cited in previous posts) discussing Clinton's pro-stem cell funding stance. Surely if he reniged on this promise you can find a newspaper article substantiating it. Idealy a newspaper article from a source not known for a conservitive bias.
And while that establishes him as on the fence as to the morality of abortion, it does not indicates that he "favors" stem cell research.
"On the fence" is not the same thing as "in favor of." If it was, not one would give a crap about voting for the 87 Billion before voting against it.
As someone asked me in a previous post on this same thread "prove it." I'd never be so crass as to phrase it that way, so I'll paraphrase instead.
Can you provide documentation to back that assertion?
Keep in mind we're talking about new embryonic stem cell lines. We're not talking about existing embryonic lines, ubmilical or placentil lines, or adult lines.
no....
"...any researcher who touches them can kiss his [and his entire organization's Federal] funding [for each and every project in that organization] good bye."
A yet more important distinction.
Let is never be said the Religious Right is incapable of hypocrisy. Had I not commented on this story I'd be modding this post up right now.
This is EXACTLY the problem with the Conservative Christian views on reality. To paraphrase George Carlin "They'll do anything to save a fetus, but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it."
Either you're ok with the concept of the sacrifice of the few to benefit the many or you're not. Either you're ok with the concept of man's ability to judge his fellow man or you're not.
I don't think it's ok to sacrifice the few to save the many. I don't think that our campaign in Iraq and the hundreds of thousands we've killed there are an acceptable price to pay to foist democracy on a country that may not be ready for it yet.
I also don't think a fetus is alive, so I'm not really in any sort of logical contradiction when I say I'm all for stem cell research. That's sacrificing medical waste to benefit the many, no problem there.
I think that man can judge his fellow man. That's why I'm all for the death penalty in certain specific cases.
At the same time, to argue that you don't want to kill a fetus because it's an innocent child but you do want to kill a child molester because he's a vicious criminal is hypocritical if you ascribe to Christianity. All sin, even child molestation, is equal in the eyes of God. It is not man's place, but God's to judge, and to classify a human embryo as more or less worthy of human mercy than that child molester is a sin of pride of the highest degree.
Moreover the equally absurd argument that abortion somehow risks the disruption of God's plan is arrogance beyond words. To assume that man can somehow act in a way that would confound the all powerful and all knowing mind of the Most High? How can you believe this and still claim to be a Christian?
[To the parent, I'm not ranting against you, just in general.]
Double standards? Damn skippy. I haven't seen anything from the Right Wing in the last 10 years that hasn't smacked of hypocrisy.
But things are more complicated than that. It is logical falacy to treat something as what it may someday become as opposed to what it actualy is.
Until birth, a child is really just a clump of cells growing in a host body. It is not, in that respect, terribly unlike a tumor.
I'm not saying this is the case, just that it is an equaly vlaid way of looking at an embryo.
In reality, without any real way to make a distinctions about where life beings, we are forced into a matter of faith. Is a fetus a human being? Ethicaly, religiously, moraly, that's up to the indivudal. Legaly, no, a fetus is not a human being. To paraphrase:
The census doesn't count them
When there is a miscarriage we don't have a funeral.
We can't get health insurance for them.
We can't get social security information for them.
We can't get tax exemption for them.
We can't get a passport for them.
From the point of view of the State, a fetus is not recognised as a human being in ANY RESPECT save in this one obscure corner of medical regulation. As it would happen, this is the only area in which such recognition has any possibility of negitive effect on the electorate.
For this reason, if for no other, the stem cell research regulations are a bad idea. If Bush seeks to extend legal recognition to the fetus, he should do so elsewhere... not in the medical community.