My blog is probably the least trafficed site on the internet. Google doesn't even index the blog's sub pages as they're php and not directory roots. I basicly do news commentary. That's it.
I get between three and five entries comments every day from online poker spamers. They do their comments in HTML, and add H1 tags to the entire thing. Each comment consists of about 50 links ranging from online poker to places to buy viagra.
I write this as a hobby. I pay for it out of pocket, it makes no revenue and, as I don't sell ad space or use ad words, I never expect it to.
If I'm not going to use the resources I paied for to advertise why should someone else get to? This kind of behavior is inconsiderate, it's invasive, and it's really fucking annoying.
So yea.... I'm tired of being used as free advertising for something I'll never see a dime from.
- Law enforcement may obtain library and credit records without judicial oversight.
- Allows individuals engaging in civil disobediance to be classified as terrorists and treated as such. (linking in with the afforementioned issues)
- Gives forgien powers (including some less than savory dictatorships) the power to order searches and seizures within the United States and to extradite individuals from the United States even without a preexisting extradition treaty.
- Allows the FBI to order individuals to turn over "any tangible things" so long as the FBI informs the individual that the order is "for an authorized investigation . . . to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities"
- Allows the FBI to engage in wiretaps, searches, and other intrusive information gathering activitives against individuals without a warrant, without probable cause, and without any indication that those individuals are agents of a foreign power. Those individuals are bared from discussion of these events and are not required to be notified, even after the fact
So actualy, yes. The part about detaining individuals without a warrant for arrest.... that's part of the PATRIOT act. Denying them access to legal representation: that's part of it as well.... if you can't talk about being searched and detained you can't very well have a laywer can you?
Imprisonment on foreign soil? That's not exactly related, but we can't have these political prisoners under gag order in contact with plain old murders rapists and theives can we?
Maybe the Justice dpt has checked library records, maybe they haven't. Either way, the library staff is bared from discussing any requests with patrons, so we'll never know... will we?
I have a gun. I can shoot you in the head. It's illegal, but I can still do it.
Then Congress passes a law saying that it's prefectly legal for me to shoot you in the head.
Should you have a problem with the law?
Substitute a plethora of anti-terror, law enforcement, and security agencies for "me" and substitute the ability to detain you, search your home, tap your phone, and interogate you all without public awareness, scrutiny, or even (in some cases) a real warrant for "shoot you in the head" and you've got the PATRIOT act.
Rights to lease the Guantanimo Base facility were granted to the United States in the treaty that ended the Spanish American War (if memory serves). The base is a US military outpost wherein US troops are subject to the Code of Military Justice, a US Law.
As US Law applies on the base, it is fair and reasonable to assume that the US Constitution, the supreme law of the United States of American, also applies on the base.
Moreover, there exists no provision in the US Constitution limiting the geographic scope of the document. Further, the Constitution make little or no distinction between US Citizens and other random individuals under the power of the US Government (save for some very specific liberties like voting and holding office).
Therefore if any actions of the US Government which are in violation of the provisions of the Constitution, even if those actions take place outside the territorial boundaries of the United States (which Guantanimo Bay may or may not be within), reamain Unconstitutional and illegal.
This is EXACTLY, why the government was ordered by the Supreme Court of the United States to allow detainees in camp X-ray access to lawyers and a proper hearing.
I think that a big part of the problem is that the PATRIOT act allows abuses that we, by definition, will never hear about.
If you can detain someone outside of the country, do so under a warrant that is classified, and deny them access to legal representation, outside contact, and the US court system.... how will anyone ever know?
We're talking about the kind of stuff that used to go on in the Soviet Union (seriously, no "in Soviet Russia jokes").
Sure, right now these laws might be used against the "bad guys" as it were, but administrations change, circumstances change, governements change. Even if you're ok trusting the Bush administration with these kind of powers (and I'm not) would you be ok trusting... say... Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, or Sen. Feingold with those powers?
Ok, so in vitro fertilization is ethical as long as we don't create the zygotes in clusters and then inplant only the most viable into the mother.
Of course, it's really pretty easy to tell if a zygote is going to be viable shortly after creation. By that argument, in order to avoid "killing babies" as you put it, we should ask mom how many kids she wants and develop zygotes one at a time until we have the required number of viable zygotes.
The problem with this is that by doing so you are still destroying zygotes. Sure, they might not be likely to develop into children, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily impossible. By making the decision not to implant them however, we -=know=- that it is not their destiny to become children.
Why are these lives so much less valuable than the ones which were marginaly more viable? Where is the cut off point? Where can we draw that line?
Even ignoring that point, there are a host of other problems with what you suggest. If every clump of human cells that might someday develop into a child is human and should be accorded the rights and protections of being a person we've got a massive problem on our hands. Most fertilized eggs never implant in the uterus. We have the technology to increaes the odds that those eggs will implant. Should we be doing this? After all, our lack of action is killing children
If preventing the development of a group of human cells into a child is unethical is it also unethical to prevent the interaction of two cells that would otherwise form that group? Is Birthcontrol ethical?
I'm not pretending and I'm not pretending ignorance. These issues that you seem to belive are so clear cut are not as clear cut as you'd like to think. At every stange of "human life" (if you want to call it that) we can take a step backwards and say "what about now."
The problem is that we have to draw a legal line somewhere. It may be an uncomfortable line, but it must be drawn. Personaly, I don't have a problem with this procedure. As a religious person I don't think that the loving God I belive in would infuse a clump of cells with any of the characteristics of being human that I identify with. (Sentience, a soul, etc).
Allow me to correct your grevious and numerous errors.
Your salad wasn't human. Do we really have to talk about the difference between human life and other life?
Did you finish reading the post before you replied. That helps, it really does.
I mean, how much ignorance are you going to pretend to possess here?
You bandy about the word "strawman" but seem to have forgotten your latin. Should I translate "ad hominem" for you?
Um. Except the fact that one is human and one is a cow.
Now you're being purposefully evasive. What determines what something is? What characteristics make it human? Don't tell me that it will grow into a human and that thus is it human, that's circular and invalid.
I guess the answer to my question above is "a whole lot of ignorance."
See previous terse reply about ad hominem attacks. Shouting "you're ignorant" a lot does not make your opponent ignorant nor does it make you terribly bright.
You are ignorant of the subject under discussion. Embryonic stem cells are not recovered from aborted babies.
And yet later on you tell me that killing babies to get stem cells is wrong. Of course they're not harvested from aborted fetuses. There's no technical reason why they couldn't be, but at the moment they're not. Just because it's not being done, doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss the possibility that it will be.
They're harvested from babies that are created in vitro, sometimes specifically for the purpose of producing stem cells and sometimes as part of an unethical mass-production in-vitro fertilization technique.
Yes, of course they're harveested from in vitro zygotes. Of course, I said that earlier and you didn't read it then either. I'd challenge you to produce one shread of documentation indicating that anyone has been producing zygotes specificly for the purpose of harvesting stem cells. I won't hold my breath.
Again with the straw-man argument. Have you not been paying attention, or are you just trying to discredit me? I have zero objections to stem-cell research.
First off you seem to have little or no understanding of what a straw man argument is. My first post, which you attacked as a straw man made some assumptions about you because you provided few details. A straw man argument, in contrast, it an intentionaly distorted version of your opponent's argument. I mention that you seem to have moral objections to stem cell research (I should have said embryonic stem cell research). This isn't a straw man argument either! It's an over generalization (to be sure) and one which I'm correcting now. You on the other hand seem to be overutilizing the very argument that you're rejecting. By calling my argument a straw man when it clearly is not, you mischaracterize it and then discredit it based on your own definition of the phrase. In fact, lets just drop the rhetorical jargon. If I mischaracterize you, correct me. Don't assume malice where a simple mistake will suffice.
I have massive objections to killing babies to get to their stem cells. And you should, too.
Please cite sources. Name one baby (your words, not mine) killed to get stem cells.
It is wrong to create a baby only for the purpose of killing it later
In vitro fertilization does not grow any zygotes with the purpose of killing that specific zygote later. However, only the most viable zygotes are implanted. Were we to do things your way, the zygotes would be fertilized one at a time and disguarded until a viable one is generated. Would these disguarded zygotes be an acceptable source for embryonic stem cells? Is any form of in vitro, either in the present incarnation or under your somewhat more financialy whimsical system ethical in your world view?
Very well, I made no attempt to construct a staw man argument but simply advanced a few points based on statistical figures on abortion and the pro-life movement.
Ok, we'll do this without involving religion.
Your first assertion: an embryo is obviously alive.
Allright, so it's alive. So was my salad last night. Being alive isn't any terribly convincing reason not to kill something. It's kind of a moot point. You can't exactly kill something that's not alive now can you?
Your second assertion: An embryo is also obviously a human being
This you're going to encounter some resistance on. If an embryo is a human being allready, what does it grow in to? Moreover, this distinguishing characteristics between a human and cow embryo are pretty minimal, particularly at the early stage that we're talking about. Sure, the human embryo will grow into a human and the cow embryo into a cow (assuming all goes well) but we're not talking about what will be (or rather might be) we're talking about what IS.
Your third point: I mean, it's not going to grow up to be a salmon or a hummingbird or a hydrangea bush.
Well that's a given. But it's not necessarily going to grow up to be a human either. Given that the abortion has allready occured, or more likely that the fertilization procedure is over and the remaining cells are ready to be disposed of, they're not going to grow up to be anything.
So lets set this up. Clearly you have moral objections to stem cell research. Ok, fine. Lets take this out of context. Stem Cell research has a lot to do with in vitro fertilization. Is this procedure also objectionable?
I'm going to assume that you object on religious grounds as there is a 90+ % corolary between objections to abortion/stem cell research and strong Christian religious tendencies.
It's assumed that an embryo will grow to be a human being, that killing the embryo somehow counter acts the divine will of God and that by doing so we end what was to be human life.
How arrogant is that... really? Humans can take action that preempts the divine will of God? What audacity it must take to belive that our actions could even begin to have any impact on the will of an all powerfull all knowing God.
From the Christian point of view, this is a God who has parted seas, flooded the world, turned some chick into a pillar of salt, destroyed cities, impregnated a virgin... not like that, cured the sick, healed the lame, raised the dead, turned water into wine, and fed the hungry with some kid's sack lunch.
And against that will and power you honestly think that a doctor utilizing 19th century technology is going to prevail? Sure.
Abortion/stem cell protest aren't about concern over people's lives or the will of God. IF they were we would hear a lot more about other sins, Gulttony, Adultary, and Averice to name a few. No, this is about controling people.
1.) The purpose of the federal government is fairly fluid, but it's good that you've been able to resolve this very complex constitutional issue for us. "Congress shall make all laws necessary and proper..." Lots fits under that, it's complicated. Don't insult us all by making dogmatic statements because you can't be bothered to investigate details.
2.) California passes a law that costs a lot of money but might save a lot of people and it's derided as partisan politics by Bill Gates and Barbara Streisand. The US Congress and President puts tax cuts into place that cost the US billions upon billions of dollars and it's what? Good economic policy?
3.) Private grants are few and far between. Most high end research gets done on the government's dollar. I wonder how far the Manhattan Project would have gone on private grants.
4.) The Clinton administration certainly allowed and funded stem cell research. In fact here is an article from what would appear to be a rabbidly right wing site decrying that the Bush administration didn't do enough to GET RID of stem cell funding programs enacted under Clinton.
Sounds like while I've been drinking the Kool-Aid you've been doing lines with W. Democrats have historicaly applauded advances in science and medicine as they help people. It would seem that Democrats are for that... helping people as it were.
- Interstate Highways - Air Traffic Control - Regulations keeping your buisness honest and your job secure (SEC) - Upward Mobility in the Workforce (Social Security) - An Educated Populace - Inexpensive Food - Safeguards on Foods and Drugs . . .
and therefore shouldn't have to pay for them? Double Taxation is simply a way for the government to collect the funds it needs with a minimum of bitching and complianing from the reactionaries who disapprove of the idea of taxation in the first place.
Sure, we could do away with a lot of it and just jack up the few taxes that would remain, but then you'd scream about that too.
There exists a demographic who doesn't think the government needs "their money," but still needs and benefits from the services provided by that money. There's a word for that. Starts with "hip" ends with "ocracy"
What? It's unconstitutional for me to give money to my church if they're going to use it for proselytizing? You're crazy.
Yea, if that's what I'd meant I would be crazy. Sorry it didn't come across as I intended.
More clearly that should read: There are constitutional problems with the government giving your tax dollars to a church if they're going to use it for proselytizing. Cut the government out of the loop and it's no bodies buisness but your own.
As to the government regulating your basic instincts, we're hardly the most intelegent people to debate that topic. Locke, Hobbes, and countless others philosophical heavy weights have slogged though that one.
Ultimately, government does serve to shelter the many from the few. Sure, most of us are bright enough to wear a helmet. Those that don't can't be left to die, so we spend millions trying to patch their head together. If they can't pay for it, you and I are stuck holding the check. So we step in and make laws about wearing head gear.
In doing so, we also protect the few from either circumstance, or their own stupidity.
I think we can argue because we have different goals. You want people to be better and to have the opportunity to express the better angels of their nature.
I think people are inherently evil. I think unless otherwise compelled, either by financial incentive, or personal experiance, they will not sacrifice meaningfully for their fellow man.
It seems a logical outgrowth of these ideals that you would suggest less government intervention (thus removing bloat and inefficency) while I would suggest more governmental influence, as without it I don't belive we see much get done.
Or donate time, money, and services to small charities that don't suffer the bloat and incompetance associated with so many of the large ones you encounter on a day to day basis.
I work with a group called Special Love which provides services to children with cancer. I donate money to them (which I don't deduct from my taxes) and I volunteer several weeks of my time over the course of the year.
If you're looking for a charity to give to that won't waste all your money on lawyers this is a great one. We help hundreds of children each year and there are literaly two people on the payroll.
I know you meant the above in a "shut up and leave me alone" way, but hey.... maybe you really are upset with how charities are run. If so, this group is the real deal.
Sales tax you're right about. It's very regressive.
Income tax, not so much. Now yes, it's prone to cheating, but that's because we've made it so complicated.
If the IRS sat down and worked out a cost of living value for every zipcode in the US for a single individual and then for each additional individual in the house we could begin to implement a cheat-free system.
Take income, subtract cost of living, multiply by tax rate, pay.
Calculate the tax rate with a simple function (I know it's an important detail but I don't have a function immediately in mind) -- boom... done.
We've screwed up the income tax system in this country by adding loopholes for every special interest that comes along. Back to basics is good, but it needs to be a progressive move back to basics.
I don't think we need to worry about penalizing education and advancement. The market rewards that well enough. It's not like you pay a tax to have PhD after your name.
Ah, so it's better to be forced to be socially responsible than to do it voluntarily.
Yes. Like helmet laws, seat belt laws, and speed limits there are certain rules that should be in place to better society as a whole.
People are inherently selfish creatures (it's part of our baser instincts). Sometimes you have to force them to suffer minor inconvenience for the mass betterment of the world they live in.
The article I read stated that combined government social programs and private giving in the US outstrips combined social programs and private giving in any other nation on Earth.
Probably true, but then again more than 2/5 of the world's population lives on $2 a day, so it's not a terribly meaningfull statistic. Of the top 50 economies in the world, something like 40 are private corporations based in the United States. We have an assload of money. It tends to skew statistics. Base that on %GNP and then you might have a good statistic.
Is it bad that people give money to churches instead of "secular charity"? Most churches have excellent community outreach programs, and many have a policy of not proselytizing to the people who use those services. And, even if you DO have to listen to a sermon to get a meal, beggars can't be choosers, can they?
No, that's not bad. I have a personal objection to holding someone at gunpoint to make them listen to a sermon (I prefer more willing converts to my religion) but whatever your God prefers.
That said, constitutionaly there's a problem giving funds to religious organizations if they use it for proselytizing.
The Great Depression - 30%+ unemployment. Good luck finding a job.
That's to say nothing of the possibility of debilitating injury which can prevent you from being able to work.
Oh, and lets not forget medical expenses. With for profit corporations handeling health care more and more Americans are uninsured. My personal medical bills have topped out over $2.5 Million (I'm a cancer survivor). I was lucky enough to have really great health insurance. Not everyone is so lucky.
I suppose you're going to argue that we should cap malpractice suits to bring that down, but what about the idea of personal responcibility (raised by another respondent further down)? Why should we be giving the doctors a break when they do something boneheaded and kill some 8 year old? Why not solve the same problem by taxing us a few extra bucks a year to pay for universal health care?
You're lumping something that's really pretty flawed between two ideals which exist imperfectly if at all in the United States.
Personal Accountability: A great idea in theory, but I'm not talking about social programs to help you buy a new car. I'm talking about social programs that educate the masses, that provide housing to the homeless, food to the hungry. Your way of life, your personal wealth, indeed the very idea of your so called personal accountability is built upon the foundation of a stable society. If people are not taken care of by the system and not taken care of by the government they will take care of themselves, often by any means necessary.
Social Programs reduce crime, they care for those who are unable to care for themselves (children, the very sick, the very old).
What happens when you can't work anymore and the money runs out? Should the government simply let you starve to death? Is that protecting you from all threats "foreign and domestic?" There are some threats that a person can not guard against and can not prepare for. Should our government abandon us to these if it has the means to alleviate them?
How about capitalism? Unrestrained, capitalism is a really ugly system. Read up on the early 1900s and the American Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s. Capitalism is responsible for the greater part of the human misery on the planet.
Sure, the market may be more efficient, but it also rewards guile and deceit. The perfect example of a capitalist transaction remains a mugging. You exchange currency (your wallet and its contents) for a service (not being killed). Government regulations in the market place (and thus the perversion of capitalism) make this transaction illegal? Good? Bad? You be the judge.
Democracy? Plato once said that if you allow the people to choose their leaders they will elect "fools and naives." The United States is not a democracy, never has been. At best it's a republic, at worst an Oligarchy.
Communism (which is not what I strive for, Democratic Socialism is more my cup of tea... observe Europe) has never been tried, at least not in the Marxian sense. What we've seen tried is Bolshevism and Maoism, both of which are poor imitations of Marxes vision. Read a history book.
I do not believe in double taxation. I think its a bunch of bull.
I think the entire concept of "double taxation" is a meaningless distinction tossed around by people who think they're entitled to freebies.
Would you be happier if, rather than taxing you 10 times at 5% your government taxed you 1 time at 50%? I'll assume the answer to that question is no. Perhaps it might be a better use of funds and streamline the taxation process, but taxes are broken down and doubled up because Americans have the bizarre notion that taxes are money wasted.
Taxes are not money wasted. They are the dues you pay to live in a civilized society. Education, Defense, Crime Prevention, Transportation, Infrastructure, these are all programs and benefits funded by your tax dollar.
This is exactly what the founders of this nation were against - all these freaking taxes!
It's good to know that you didn't pay attention in American History or Civics. The founders of the United States were, at least in word, against the concept of governance without representation. They were irritated that a bunch of people who didn't represent them were making laws about how they should live their lives and taking their money to do things that they never benefited from.
They weren't against taxes. Even the Articles of Confederation, the document most against the concept of taxation in the legal history of the United States allows the Congress "to ascertain the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United States, and to appropriate and apply the same for defraying the public expenses."
The government can tax you on whatever it needs to tax you on. It's your government. You get to vote and decide what needs to be done. At least, that was the plan. There is a whole mess about campaign finance reform, but we'll touch on that later.
Fundamentally, it is a meaningless distinction as to how the government gets your money. Taxing your car or taxing your income, it's all the same thing. About the only difference is how taxes impact different portions of the population, but you seem unconcerned about that.
I suspect that your key issue is not how the government gets your money, but that it gets it at all. I suspect you are of the opinion that you shouldn't have to pay taxes because you don't like social programs like Welfare, Medicaid, etc.
Personally, I don't benefit from any of those social programs. I hope I never have to. That said, things might not always be a rosy for me as they are right now. Things can get bad, really bad really fast. I want those government programs in place so that, should catastrophe strike, my family and myself are taken care of.
I think it's a crime that in the leading agricultural producing nation on earth, children are hungry.
I think it's a crime that, in the richest nation on earth, families can't afford to send their children to college.
I think it's a crime that the US spends more money on porn than foreign aid. That we spend more money per capita on coffee than the per capita income of more than 2 Billion people.
The United States has taken a culture of independence and turned it into a culture of materialistic consumerism. We've gone from "I don't need your help" to "You can't have my help."
I can understand not liking income tax forms, not liking to fill out all the paperwork, not liking to deal with the red tape that comes from doing business with the government. That said, taxes are necessary to create government and, well, you get what you pay for. No taxes means no government.
As Thomas Hobbes once famously wrote, Without government, "the life of man [is] solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short".
I for one am sick of corps trying to preserve dieing business models by abusing existing power structures.
It will be interesting to see what will become of information infrastructure in this country in the next few years. IBM v Microsoft of the early 21st century is going to be Cable v. Telephone. Where it goes depends on the rules of the game. This decision firmly establishes that network transparency won't be sacrificed in the fray.
Bad example, but your point is well taken. A better way to say it might be that the candidate still has to RUN for office in the US. So even if they spam from an offshore account, the FEC can still hold them accountable.
That said, I have a problem with this. First off, SPAM is known to generate ill will. When you're doing it for commercial gain it's a viable (if evil) strategem. When you're trying to get people to like you it's something alltogether.
SPAM isn't a problem here. Personaly I'd like candidates not to call me at home, but that's a different issue.
The FEC's role is to make sure elections are fair. To that end they regulate campaign finance contributions etc. Applying these rules to the itnernet seems rather shortsighted. The internet allows a grass roots mobilization on a grand scale (which is what the FEC should b encouraging). There is almost no marginal cost associated with internet campaigning and as a consequence, the internet promises to eliminate much of the money driven corruption in politics.
This move strikes me as suspect. The FEC has an inherent bias against small groups and third parties. Internet campaigning as shown itself to be a powerfull tool in the hands of non-central ideologies and third parties. This seems to be yet another way to protect the two party system. This, along with the administration of presidential debates, is a symptom of the decline of democracy in the United States.
I'm building a straw man to refute a straw point. If the argument is that an armed populace is a deterant to the military oppression of a city I'll run with that. That's a good argument.
Sorry, I come from a rural corner of Virginia where people seem to honestly belive that the South's gonna rise again and that Ted Kennedy is going to show up on their doorstep to personaly take their guns.
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It's a custom job. PHP with a MySQL back end. Honestly it's one of the worst bits of PHP I've written and something I really should revamp soon.
I'd offer to share the code with you, but I must say I'm embarased to distribute the software as yet.
As a bloger, let me give you an example.
My blog is probably the least trafficed site on the internet. Google doesn't even index the blog's sub pages as they're php and not directory roots. I basicly do news commentary. That's it.
I get between three and five entries comments every day from online poker spamers. They do their comments in HTML, and add H1 tags to the entire thing. Each comment consists of about 50 links ranging from online poker to places to buy viagra.
I write this as a hobby. I pay for it out of pocket, it makes no revenue and, as I don't sell ad space or use ad words, I never expect it to.
If I'm not going to use the resources I paied for to advertise why should someone else get to? This kind of behavior is inconsiderate, it's invasive, and it's really fucking annoying.
So yea.... I'm tired of being used as free advertising for something I'll never see a dime from.
Damn.... sorry... forgot to close bold after "fact"
I suck.
Ok.... I'll be clearer.
PATRIOT Allows for the following
- Law enforcement may obtain library and credit records without judicial oversight.
- Allows individuals engaging in civil disobediance to be classified as terrorists and treated as such. (linking in with the afforementioned issues)
- Gives forgien powers (including some less than savory dictatorships) the power to order searches and seizures within the United States and to extradite individuals from the United States even without a preexisting extradition treaty.
- Allows the FBI to order individuals to turn over "any tangible things" so long as the FBI informs the individual that the order is "for an authorized investigation . . . to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities"
- Allows the FBI to engage in wiretaps, searches, and other intrusive information gathering activitives against individuals without a warrant, without probable cause, and without any indication that those individuals are agents of a foreign power. Those individuals are bared from discussion of these events and are not required to be notified, even after the fact
So actualy, yes. The part about detaining individuals without a warrant for arrest.... that's part of the PATRIOT act. Denying them access to legal representation: that's part of it as well.... if you can't talk about being searched and detained you can't very well have a laywer can you?
Imprisonment on foreign soil? That's not exactly related, but we can't have these political prisoners under gag order in contact with plain old murders rapists and theives can we?
Maybe the Justice dpt has checked library records, maybe they haven't. Either way, the library staff is bared from discussing any requests with patrons, so we'll never know... will we?
The argument goes like this.
I have a gun. I can shoot you in the head. It's illegal, but I can still do it.
Then Congress passes a law saying that it's prefectly legal for me to shoot you in the head.
Should you have a problem with the law?
Substitute a plethora of anti-terror, law enforcement, and security agencies for "me" and substitute the ability to detain you, search your home, tap your phone, and interogate you all without public awareness, scrutiny, or even (in some cases) a real warrant for "shoot you in the head" and you've got the PATRIOT act.
Rights to lease the Guantanimo Base facility were granted to the United States in the treaty that ended the Spanish American War (if memory serves). The base is a US military outpost wherein US troops are subject to the Code of Military Justice, a US Law.
As US Law applies on the base, it is fair and reasonable to assume that the US Constitution, the supreme law of the United States of American, also applies on the base.
Moreover, there exists no provision in the US Constitution limiting the geographic scope of the document. Further, the Constitution make little or no distinction between US Citizens and other random individuals under the power of the US Government (save for some very specific liberties like voting and holding office).
Therefore if any actions of the US Government which are in violation of the provisions of the Constitution, even if those actions take place outside the territorial boundaries of the United States (which Guantanimo Bay may or may not be within), reamain Unconstitutional and illegal.
This is EXACTLY, why the government was ordered by the Supreme Court of the United States to allow detainees in camp X-ray access to lawyers and a proper hearing.
I think that a big part of the problem is that the PATRIOT act allows abuses that we, by definition, will never hear about.
If you can detain someone outside of the country, do so under a warrant that is classified, and deny them access to legal representation, outside contact, and the US court system.... how will anyone ever know?
We're talking about the kind of stuff that used to go on in the Soviet Union (seriously, no "in Soviet Russia jokes").
Sure, right now these laws might be used against the "bad guys" as it were, but administrations change, circumstances change, governements change. Even if you're ok trusting the Bush administration with these kind of powers (and I'm not) would you be ok trusting... say... Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, or Sen. Feingold with those powers?
Ok, so in vitro fertilization is ethical as long as we don't create the zygotes in clusters and then inplant only the most viable into the mother.
Of course, it's really pretty easy to tell if a zygote is going to be viable shortly after creation. By that argument, in order to avoid "killing babies" as you put it, we should ask mom how many kids she wants and develop zygotes one at a time until we have the required number of viable zygotes.
The problem with this is that by doing so you are still destroying zygotes. Sure, they might not be likely to develop into children, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily impossible. By making the decision not to implant them however, we -=know=- that it is not their destiny to become children.
Why are these lives so much less valuable than the ones which were marginaly more viable? Where is the cut off point? Where can we draw that line?
Even ignoring that point, there are a host of other problems with what you suggest. If every clump of human cells that might someday develop into a child is human and should be accorded the rights and protections of being a person we've got a massive problem on our hands. Most fertilized eggs never implant in the uterus. We have the technology to increaes the odds that those eggs will implant. Should we be doing this? After all, our lack of action is killing children
If preventing the development of a group of human cells into a child is unethical is it also unethical to prevent the interaction of two cells that would otherwise form that group? Is Birthcontrol ethical?
I'm not pretending and I'm not pretending ignorance. These issues that you seem to belive are so clear cut are not as clear cut as you'd like to think. At every stange of "human life" (if you want to call it that) we can take a step backwards and say "what about now."
The problem is that we have to draw a legal line somewhere. It may be an uncomfortable line, but it must be drawn. Personaly, I don't have a problem with this procedure. As a religious person I don't think that the loving God I belive in would infuse a clump of cells with any of the characteristics of being human that I identify with. (Sentience, a soul, etc).
Allow me to correct your grevious and numerous errors.
Your salad wasn't human. Do we really have to talk about the difference between human life and other life?
Did you finish reading the post before you replied. That helps, it really does.
I mean, how much ignorance are you going to pretend to possess here?
You bandy about the word "strawman" but seem to have forgotten your latin. Should I translate "ad hominem" for you?
Um. Except the fact that one is human and one is a cow.
Now you're being purposefully evasive. What determines what something is? What characteristics make it human? Don't tell me that it will grow into a human and that thus is it human, that's circular and invalid.
I guess the answer to my question above is "a whole lot of ignorance."
See previous terse reply about ad hominem attacks. Shouting "you're ignorant" a lot does not make your opponent ignorant nor does it make you terribly bright.
You are ignorant of the subject under discussion. Embryonic stem cells are not recovered from aborted babies.
And yet later on you tell me that killing babies to get stem cells is wrong. Of course they're not harvested from aborted fetuses. There's no technical reason why they couldn't be, but at the moment they're not. Just because it's not being done, doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss the possibility that it will be.
They're harvested from babies that are created in vitro, sometimes specifically for the purpose of producing stem cells and sometimes as part of an unethical mass-production in-vitro fertilization technique.
Yes, of course they're harveested from in vitro zygotes. Of course, I said that earlier and you didn't read it then either. I'd challenge you to produce one shread of documentation indicating that anyone has been producing zygotes specificly for the purpose of harvesting stem cells. I won't hold my breath.
Again with the straw-man argument. Have you not been paying attention, or are you just trying to discredit me? I have zero objections to stem-cell research.
First off you seem to have little or no understanding of what a straw man argument is. My first post, which you attacked as a straw man made some assumptions about you because you provided few details. A straw man argument, in contrast, it an intentionaly distorted version of your opponent's argument. I mention that you seem to have moral objections to stem cell research (I should have said embryonic stem cell research). This isn't a straw man argument either! It's an over generalization (to be sure) and one which I'm correcting now. You on the other hand seem to be overutilizing the very argument that you're rejecting. By calling my argument a straw man when it clearly is not, you mischaracterize it and then discredit it based on your own definition of the phrase. In fact, lets just drop the rhetorical jargon. If I mischaracterize you, correct me. Don't assume malice where a simple mistake will suffice.
I have massive objections to killing babies to get to their stem cells. And you should, too.
Please cite sources. Name one baby (your words, not mine) killed to get stem cells.
It is wrong to create a baby only for the purpose of killing it later
In vitro fertilization does not grow any zygotes with the purpose of killing that specific zygote later. However, only the most viable zygotes are implanted. Were we to do things your way, the zygotes would be fertilized one at a time and disguarded until a viable one is generated. Would these disguarded zygotes be an acceptable source for embryonic stem cells? Is any form of in vitro, either in the present incarnation or under your somewhat more financialy whimsical system ethical in your world view?
Very well, I made no attempt to construct a staw man argument but simply advanced a few points based on statistical figures on abortion and the pro-life movement.
Ok, we'll do this without involving religion.
Your first assertion: an embryo is obviously alive.
Allright, so it's alive. So was my salad last night. Being alive isn't any terribly convincing reason not to kill something. It's kind of a moot point. You can't exactly kill something that's not alive now can you?
Your second assertion: An embryo is also obviously a human being
This you're going to encounter some resistance on. If an embryo is a human being allready, what does it grow in to? Moreover, this distinguishing characteristics between a human and cow embryo are pretty minimal, particularly at the early stage that we're talking about. Sure, the human embryo will grow into a human and the cow embryo into a cow (assuming all goes well) but we're not talking about what will be (or rather might be) we're talking about what IS.
Your third point: I mean, it's not going to grow up to be a salmon or a hummingbird or a hydrangea bush.
Well that's a given. But it's not necessarily going to grow up to be a human either. Given that the abortion has allready occured, or more likely that the fertilization procedure is over and the remaining cells are ready to be disposed of, they're not going to grow up to be anything.
So lets set this up. Clearly you have moral objections to stem cell research. Ok, fine. Lets take this out of context. Stem Cell research has a lot to do with in vitro fertilization. Is this procedure also objectionable?
I'm going to assume that you object on religious grounds as there is a 90+ % corolary between objections to abortion/stem cell research and strong Christian religious tendencies.
It's assumed that an embryo will grow to be a human being, that killing the embryo somehow counter acts the divine will of God and that by doing so we end what was to be human life.
How arrogant is that... really? Humans can take action that preempts the divine will of God? What audacity it must take to belive that our actions could even begin to have any impact on the will of an all powerfull all knowing God.
From the Christian point of view, this is a God who has parted seas, flooded the world, turned some chick into a pillar of salt, destroyed cities, impregnated a virgin... not like that, cured the sick, healed the lame, raised the dead, turned water into wine, and fed the hungry with some kid's sack lunch.
And against that will and power you honestly think that a doctor utilizing 19th century technology is going to prevail? Sure.
Abortion/stem cell protest aren't about concern over people's lives or the will of God. IF they were we would hear a lot more about other sins, Gulttony, Adultary, and Averice to name a few. No, this is about controling people.
I'm gonna go donate to planned parenthood now.
Cows don't have a heart beat and can't breathe? Hmmmm.... in that case my grandfather's cattle may require medical attention.
1.) The purpose of the federal government is fairly fluid, but it's good that you've been able to resolve this very complex constitutional issue for us. "Congress shall make all laws necessary and proper..." Lots fits under that, it's complicated. Don't insult us all by making dogmatic statements because you can't be bothered to investigate details.
2.) California passes a law that costs a lot of money but might save a lot of people and it's derided as partisan politics by Bill Gates and Barbara Streisand. The US Congress and President puts tax cuts into place that cost the US billions upon billions of dollars and it's what? Good economic policy?
3.) Private grants are few and far between. Most high end research gets done on the government's dollar. I wonder how far the Manhattan Project would have gone on private grants.
4.) The Clinton administration certainly allowed and funded stem cell research. In fact here is an article from what would appear to be a rabbidly right wing site decrying that the Bush administration didn't do enough to GET RID of stem cell funding programs enacted under Clinton.
Sounds like while I've been drinking the Kool-Aid you've been doing lines with W. Democrats have historicaly applauded advances in science and medicine as they help people. It would seem that Democrats are for that... helping people as it were.
So you in no way benefit from:
- Interstate Highways
- Air Traffic Control
- Regulations keeping your buisness honest and your job secure (SEC)
- Upward Mobility in the Workforce (Social Security)
- An Educated Populace
- Inexpensive Food
- Safeguards on Foods and Drugs
.
.
.
and therefore shouldn't have to pay for them? Double Taxation is simply a way for the government to collect the funds it needs with a minimum of bitching and complianing from the reactionaries who disapprove of the idea of taxation in the first place.
Sure, we could do away with a lot of it and just jack up the few taxes that would remain, but then you'd scream about that too.
There exists a demographic who doesn't think the government needs "their money," but still needs and benefits from the services provided by that money. There's a word for that. Starts with "hip" ends with "ocracy"
What? It's unconstitutional for me to give money to my church if they're going to use it for proselytizing? You're crazy.
Yea, if that's what I'd meant I would be crazy. Sorry it didn't come across as I intended.
More clearly that should read: There are constitutional problems with the government giving your tax dollars to a church if they're going to use it for proselytizing. Cut the government out of the loop and it's no bodies buisness but your own.
As to the government regulating your basic instincts, we're hardly the most intelegent people to debate that topic. Locke, Hobbes, and countless others philosophical heavy weights have slogged though that one.
Ultimately, government does serve to shelter the many from the few. Sure, most of us are bright enough to wear a helmet. Those that don't can't be left to die, so we spend millions trying to patch their head together. If they can't pay for it, you and I are stuck holding the check. So we step in and make laws about wearing head gear.
In doing so, we also protect the few from either circumstance, or their own stupidity.
I think we can argue because we have different goals. You want people to be better and to have the opportunity to express the better angels of their nature.
I think people are inherently evil. I think unless otherwise compelled, either by financial incentive, or personal experiance, they will not sacrifice meaningfully for their fellow man.
It seems a logical outgrowth of these ideals that you would suggest less government intervention (thus removing bloat and inefficency) while I would suggest more governmental influence, as without it I don't belive we see much get done.
Or donate time, money, and services to small charities that don't suffer the bloat and incompetance associated with so many of the large ones you encounter on a day to day basis.
I work with a group called Special Love which provides services to children with cancer. I donate money to them (which I don't deduct from my taxes) and I volunteer several weeks of my time over the course of the year.
If you're looking for a charity to give to that won't waste all your money on lawyers this is a great one. We help hundreds of children each year and there are literaly two people on the payroll.
I know you meant the above in a "shut up and leave me alone" way, but hey.... maybe you really are upset with how charities are run. If so, this group is the real deal.
Sales tax you're right about. It's very regressive.
Income tax, not so much. Now yes, it's prone to cheating, but that's because we've made it so complicated.
If the IRS sat down and worked out a cost of living value for every zipcode in the US for a single individual and then for each additional individual in the house we could begin to implement a cheat-free system.
Take income, subtract cost of living, multiply by tax rate, pay.
Calculate the tax rate with a simple function (I know it's an important detail but I don't have a function immediately in mind) -- boom... done.
We've screwed up the income tax system in this country by adding loopholes for every special interest that comes along. Back to basics is good, but it needs to be a progressive move back to basics.
I don't think we need to worry about penalizing education and advancement. The market rewards that well enough. It's not like you pay a tax to have PhD after your name.
Ah, so it's better to be forced to be socially responsible than to do it voluntarily.
Yes. Like helmet laws, seat belt laws, and speed limits there are certain rules that should be in place to better society as a whole.
People are inherently selfish creatures (it's part of our baser instincts). Sometimes you have to force them to suffer minor inconvenience for the mass betterment of the world they live in.
The article I read stated that combined government social programs and private giving in the US outstrips combined social programs and private giving in any other nation on Earth.
Probably true, but then again more than 2/5 of the world's population lives on $2 a day, so it's not a terribly meaningfull statistic. Of the top 50 economies in the world, something like 40 are private corporations based in the United States. We have an assload of money. It tends to skew statistics. Base that on %GNP and then you might have a good statistic.
Is it bad that people give money to churches instead of "secular charity"? Most churches have excellent community outreach programs, and many have a policy of not proselytizing to the people who use those services.
And, even if you DO have to listen to a sermon to get a meal, beggars can't be choosers, can they?
No, that's not bad. I have a personal objection to holding someone at gunpoint to make them listen to a sermon (I prefer more willing converts to my religion) but whatever your God prefers.
That said, constitutionaly there's a problem giving funds to religious organizations if they use it for proselytizing.
I should take care of myself. Right....
The Great Depression - 30%+ unemployment. Good luck finding a job.
That's to say nothing of the possibility of debilitating injury which can prevent you from being able to work.
Oh, and lets not forget medical expenses. With for profit corporations handeling health care more and more Americans are uninsured. My personal medical bills have topped out over $2.5 Million (I'm a cancer survivor). I was lucky enough to have really great health insurance. Not everyone is so lucky.
I suppose you're going to argue that we should cap malpractice suits to bring that down, but what about the idea of personal responcibility (raised by another respondent further down)? Why should we be giving the doctors a break when they do something boneheaded and kill some 8 year old? Why not solve the same problem by taxing us a few extra bucks a year to pay for universal health care?
You're lumping something that's really pretty flawed between two ideals which exist imperfectly if at all in the United States.
Personal Accountability: A great idea in theory, but I'm not talking about social programs to help you buy a new car. I'm talking about social programs that educate the masses, that provide housing to the homeless, food to the hungry. Your way of life, your personal wealth, indeed the very idea of your so called personal accountability is built upon the foundation of a stable society. If people are not taken care of by the system and not taken care of by the government they will take care of themselves, often by any means necessary.
Social Programs reduce crime, they care for those who are unable to care for themselves (children, the very sick, the very old).
What happens when you can't work anymore and the money runs out? Should the government simply let you starve to death? Is that protecting you from all threats "foreign and domestic?" There are some threats that a person can not guard against and can not prepare for. Should our government abandon us to these if it has the means to alleviate them?
How about capitalism? Unrestrained, capitalism is a really ugly system. Read up on the early 1900s and the American Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s. Capitalism is responsible for the greater part of the human misery on the planet.
Sure, the market may be more efficient, but it also rewards guile and deceit. The perfect example of a capitalist transaction remains a mugging. You exchange currency (your wallet and its contents) for a service (not being killed). Government regulations in the market place (and thus the perversion of capitalism) make this transaction illegal? Good? Bad? You be the judge.
Democracy? Plato once said that if you allow the people to choose their leaders they will elect "fools and naives." The United States is not a democracy, never has been. At best it's a republic, at worst an Oligarchy.
Communism (which is not what I strive for, Democratic Socialism is more my cup of tea... observe Europe) has never been tried, at least not in the Marxian sense. What we've seen tried is Bolshevism and Maoism, both of which are poor imitations of Marxes vision. Read a history book.
I do not believe in double taxation. I think its a bunch of bull.
I think the entire concept of "double taxation" is a meaningless distinction tossed around by people who think they're entitled to freebies.
Would you be happier if, rather than taxing you 10 times at 5% your government taxed you 1 time at 50%? I'll assume the answer to that question is no. Perhaps it might be a better use of funds and streamline the taxation process, but taxes are broken down and doubled up because Americans have the bizarre notion that taxes are money wasted.
Taxes are not money wasted. They are the dues you pay to live in a civilized society. Education, Defense, Crime Prevention, Transportation, Infrastructure, these are all programs and benefits funded by your tax dollar.
This is exactly what the founders of this nation were against - all these freaking taxes!
It's good to know that you didn't pay attention in American History or Civics. The founders of the United States were, at least in word, against the concept of governance without representation. They were irritated that a bunch of people who didn't represent them were making laws about how they should live their lives and taking their money to do things that they never benefited from.
They weren't against taxes. Even the Articles of Confederation, the document most against the concept of taxation in the legal history of the United States allows the Congress "to ascertain the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United States, and to appropriate and apply the same for defraying the public expenses."
The government can tax you on whatever it needs to tax you on. It's your government. You get to vote and decide what needs to be done. At least, that was the plan. There is a whole mess about campaign finance reform, but we'll touch on that later.
Fundamentally, it is a meaningless distinction as to how the government gets your money. Taxing your car or taxing your income, it's all the same thing. About the only difference is how taxes impact different portions of the population, but you seem unconcerned about that.
I suspect that your key issue is not how the government gets your money, but that it gets it at all. I suspect you are of the opinion that you shouldn't have to pay taxes because you don't like social programs like Welfare, Medicaid, etc.
Personally, I don't benefit from any of those social programs. I hope I never have to. That said, things might not always be a rosy for me as they are right now. Things can get bad, really bad really fast. I want those government programs in place so that, should catastrophe strike, my family and myself are taken care of.
I think it's a crime that in the leading agricultural producing nation on earth, children are hungry.
I think it's a crime that, in the richest nation on earth, families can't afford to send their children to college.
I think it's a crime that the US spends more money on porn than foreign aid. That we spend more money per capita on coffee than the per capita income of more than 2 Billion people.
The United States has taken a culture of independence and turned it into a culture of materialistic consumerism. We've gone from "I don't need your help" to "You can't have my help."
I can understand not liking income tax forms, not liking to fill out all the paperwork, not liking to deal with the red tape that comes from doing business with the government. That said, taxes are necessary to create government and, well, you get what you pay for. No taxes means no government.
As Thomas Hobbes once famously wrote, Without government, "the life of man [is] solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short".
Clearly you and I are interested in different kinds of pr0n...
I for one am sick of corps trying to preserve dieing business models by abusing existing power structures.
It will be interesting to see what will become of information infrastructure in this country in the next few years. IBM v Microsoft of the early 21st century is going to be Cable v. Telephone. Where it goes depends on the rules of the game. This decision firmly establishes that network transparency won't be sacrificed in the fray.
Bad example, but your point is well taken. A better way to say it might be that the candidate still has to RUN for office in the US. So even if they spam from an offshore account, the FEC can still hold them accountable.
That said, I have a problem with this. First off, SPAM is known to generate ill will. When you're doing it for commercial gain it's a viable (if evil) strategem. When you're trying to get people to like you it's something alltogether.
SPAM isn't a problem here. Personaly I'd like candidates not to call me at home, but that's a different issue.
The FEC's role is to make sure elections are fair. To that end they regulate campaign finance contributions etc. Applying these rules to the itnernet seems rather shortsighted. The internet allows a grass roots mobilization on a grand scale (which is what the FEC should b encouraging). There is almost no marginal cost associated with internet campaigning and as a consequence, the internet promises to eliminate much of the money driven corruption in politics.
This move strikes me as suspect. The FEC has an inherent bias against small groups and third parties. Internet campaigning as shown itself to be a powerfull tool in the hands of non-central ideologies and third parties. This seems to be yet another way to protect the two party system. This, along with the administration of presidential debates, is a symptom of the decline of democracy in the United States.
I'm building a straw man to refute a straw point. If the argument is that an armed populace is a deterant to the military oppression of a city I'll run with that. That's a good argument.
Sorry, I come from a rural corner of Virginia where people seem to honestly belive that the South's gonna rise again and that Ted Kennedy is going to show up on their doorstep to personaly take their guns.