"Fallacies (sic) logic and inaccurate claims"? Geekoid, I suggest you consider your own self-referential sig regarding the Dunning-Kruger effect, as once again it applies to your own posted content.
I hope that was sufficiently clear to get through your addled mind.
I can perceive why you might seek out others who are discussing matters logically, as observing those people may allow you to someday learn how to engage in logical discussion yourself.
having to use real names has made it far less trollish then other places.
Enjoy yourself over there with the other people like you. Personally, I don't perceive why you would be trolled when you can just make an insular group of associates and block everyone else.
FWIW, I don't think that having your identity known by others has influenced you to dial back your trolling on this site. Then again, given that it's you, I'm not surprised that you prefer a highly structured social construct with many regulations.
Just an FYI, all those stamps you buy from the APC kiosk at a Post Office have unique serial numbers printed on them and are linked to your credit card and photograph. Couple that with the Mail Covers program the USPS has been running for the government since the 70's, and they know exactly to whom you are mailing that stamped letter (you know, because they literally log every single one of them).
Just look at the QR code-looking eIndicia barcodes on the stamps. Postal documentation indicates they are unique, but each APC printed stamp is obviously different upon close visual inspection.
Oh, and try covering that black plastic window by the keypad when you're using the APC... it will give you a nonspecific error message when you try to complete the transaction if you do that. It wants your photo for the log.
Buy your stamps from the counter or the grocery store.
My wife bought me my dream watch: a Citizen solar powered watch with auto synch with the atomic clock service. I have wanted atomic time synch in a watch since 1996, but only recently found this one.
It's nice that it has a sapphire face, because I want this thing to last me for 20 years and my old watch's face got rather scratched.
My perspective is that if the primary reason one is excited about a possession is its features and capabilities, then it's not a status symbol. It may be a luxury, of course. If this watch is still working/synching in 20 years, I will probably be as happy with it as the day I got it. Happier, probably, because I like durable and reliable possessions.
You know, I have never discussed my watch with anyone in person. Perhaps others who have the same watch are treating it as a status symbol. Maybe it is to them.
Don't they have this right under the "Commerce Clause". [which is indeed known to have been abused, but still]
Your opinion, publicly stated, might negatively affect commerce, which could have ripple effects in the economy of another state. Ergo, your ability to state your opinion publicly is regulable under the commerce clause. Don't worry: you're free to express your ideas in your mind, so long as you do not communicate them to anyone else in any form.
This line of reasoning is consistent with the Supreme Court's ruling in Gonzalez v Raich, Wickard v Filburn, et al.
The Commerce Clause has been blatantly twisted into an unconstitutional interpretation. They baldly lie and say it means something it clearly does not (remember, those decisions I cited defined commerce as including "not commerce"). Once you assert B AND NOT B == TRUE, then you can apply this logical fault to reason to any conclusion you wish.
So, to answer your question: yes, they assert they have this power under the constitution (technically, it's improper to say the government has "rights").
It might even be one of those rare constitutional applications of federal enumerated powers if it were limited to interstate commerce, but we all know that's not the case.
Don't forget the RF shielded optical fiber interconnects, for true fidelity at high frequencies, and a mellow bass.
Old and busted. I don't know how you can tolerate listening to the harshness and small sound stage caused by RF shielded optical fiber interconnects that aren't impedance matched as well.
£10 surcharge is equivalent to the tax on £15.63 of fuel... somehow, I am guessing that 2400 L costs more than that.
Unless there is some sort of tax recapture reciprocity/equalization between the UK and the rest of Europe, that fee doesn't do much of anything to level your playing field.
... on completely missing the point. This project is about testing autonomous visual landing site selection and guidance, NOT proposing that quadcopters can fly on Mars. To be fair, the linked article isn't especially clear on that point either.
To be fair, the ESA's own site insinuates that this project is a quadcopter for Mars.
"The dramatic conclusion to ESA’s latest StarTiger project: a ‘dropship’ quadcopter steers itself to lower a rover gently onto a safe patch of the rocky martian surface."
every time someone tries to use that term they start claiming things like military spending, business expenses, etc.
Precisely. Don't simply accept their disingenuous talking points. The "subsidies" for fossil fuels are a lie. These people include things like "the cost of road congestion" when they are fabricating their claims.
They refuse to honestly report the direct subsidies to fossil fuels, because their imaginary number is close to $2 trillion per annum, whereas the actual amount is many orders of magnitude less.
I swear, I don't understand how people can miss the first sentence of a post and then draw conclusions that blatantly contradict that.
In case you missed the first sentence of the post (again): you fail reading comprehension.
You have an interesting set of definitions, though. If W changed none of his politics, but he officially joined the Democratic party and became a card-carrying Democrat (again, while retaining his well-loved-by-liberals neoconservative values), apparently you would allege No True Scotsman if I claimed he wasn't a Democrat.
Bloomberg was alleged to be a RINO (a term which people here claimed is a No True Scotsman fallacy). Turns out, he wasn't actually a Republican after all.
Oh, hey, in case you missed it before: you fail reading comprehension. I specifically said I wasn't debating Sotomayor's claim of being Catholic.
I see you agree with me, then. As I have stated before, the present national debate context (suppressing employer religious beliefs or employee self-determination wrt contraception) is a false dichotomy predicated on the retarded idea that people should obtain their insurance through their employer.
We have spent 50+ years shoring up this brain-damaged paradigm. I support this Supreme Court ruling while also supporting contraception choice... the real solution is that we need to terminate the employer insurance model with extreme prejudice.
If someone insinuated that people should be practically forced to obtain their housing or groceries via their employer, and in order to ensure people didn't starve or freeze we would pass myriad unconstitutional laws to keep the model even semi-viable, everyone would rightly mock the idea as absurd. The employer health insurance model is no more or less an absurdity.
What gets me is that fools believe that the only serious belief is a religious one. That is garbage. You don't need to be part of a religion to believe something, and nor is your belief any less true.
You have insinuated I believe something that I do not.
These exceptions are unfair, anti-freedom, and mean we don't have a true separation of church and state.
Your belief about the unexceptional nature of conscience is taken under advisement, and I'm sure you're well aware that your view is a minority position. Feel free to change the culture, then change the Constitution (it won't work any other way). Until then, you are "wrong" in practice: religious beliefs are—and have been—treated as special by our culture and laws; barring fundamental changes in the culture, the system will continue to operate that way, as it always has.
But in case you haven't noticed yet... you don't need to try to inform me about the current state of things, as that's exactly what I'm criticizing. Telling me about how things work right now is useless.
Fair enough. I'm glad you understand that you truly have your work cut out for you if you honestly wish to effect the change you advocate.
You've again missed the point by changing the goal posts. A Muslim businessman chooses to open a halal butcher, pigs never enter his shop.
No, it is you who has missed the point. If the Supreme Court asserts people and companies can be forced to provide health insurance as well as force people to buy broccoli, the government can indeed force a Muslim businessperson to purchase and provide bacon to their employees (whether they are a butcher or not, and whether their employees want it or not).
You cannot buy what is not sold.
Who said anything about buying? This idea of a "mandatory bacon benefit for employees" is no different logically than a "mandatory health insurance benefit for employees". Both concepts are equivalently absurd and are unconscionable if it violates religious liberty.
Repeat after me: there is no reason that health insurance should be obtained through one's employer. The present, specious debate is a false dichotomy: there is no inherent conflict between employer religious liberty and individual access to contraception. These considerations are only in tension in an absurd scenario where employers provide health insurance. I mean, the whole paradigm is as retarded as people getting all their groceries via their employer.
A jewish (or any buisness for that matter) can close any day of the week they please. You see the difference with these choices? They don't affect anyone else.
Ah, but those choices do affect others. Or have you never attempted to shop at a store that was closed? A store that is closed on certain days is also theoretically depriving employees of the potential to earn money while the store is closed. In a post Wickard v Filburn legal landscape, that is enough of a rationale to allow federal regulation of when businesses can and/or must be open.
This scenario, of course, is absurd (though I assert it is plausible under present legal doctrine), but so is the idea of forcing employers to provide mandatory health insurance benefits, especially against their conscience. Besides, the employees can go get insurance from the exchange, so by your logic they are unaffected.
My employers religion requires prayer 7 times a day, therefor all employees will stop work at designated times and join the prayer group.
Then perhaps you shouldn't work at that religious organization, where such regulations are very legal: Churches and religious organizations can discriminate on the basis of religion for all jobs. This includes and is not limited to secretaries, accountants, and janitors. The basis for permissible religious discrimination is the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of this in Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. Amos,483 U.S. 327 (1987).
It is unconscionable for them to be forced to provide benefits that are in opposition to their morals.
So Christian Scientists should be completely exempt?
Yes, because no employer should be providing health insurance as a "mandatory benefit". You are operating within the context of a false dichotomy that derives from the nonsensical idea that we should be obtaining health insurance through our employers.
I want universal health care, and I don't want employers involved in this at all. Just like I don't want to buy my house or groceries through my employer or myriad other aspects of life that have no fucking rational correlation with employment.
If you want to advocate for single payer (public/private, NHS-style), then I'm right there with you. I'm not going to be constrained to making a choice within a false dichotomy, though.
As I said, my analogies are equivalently as absurd as the present employer-provided healthcare insurance paradigm, and thus are perfectly cromulent and applicable in the context of this debate. I stand by them.
My point is that there is no intrinsic tension between employer religious rights and employee access to contraception. This entire national debate and Supreme Court case is the consequence of the absurdity of obtaining health care insurance from an employer.
Your proposed debate subject is irrelevant in this context if we just fix the underlying problem rather than repeatedly attempting to shore up a conceptually broken model via bizarre laws (COBRA, HIPAA portability, ACA, et al) and court decisions.
Furthermore - while you jump on the big g bandwagon with the useful idiots - we could have just expanded Medicare and raised federal income tax and be better off than with ACA.
Hey, genius, what do you think Medicare/Medicaid, etc are? All of the examples of socialized healthcare I gave are taxpayer-funded (do you really believe TriCare is self-funded? The DoD budget disagrees with you, if so, to the tune of 32 billion in FY2015).
Countries with universal healthcare pay less overall and per capita than we do. Of course, this being the US, no doubt we could come up with some ass backwards implementation that could fuck it up, but we would be the outlier if that happened.
In simple terms, that means you would save money on healthcare with universal coverage vs today. If you are dissatisfied with the publicly available "free" universal care paid for with taxes, you could avail yourself of the private healthcare system like you could in the UK. You could also buy private insurance that provides access to the private system if you really wanted to do that, and this is much less expensive than it is in the US.
I am very opposed to the ACA. Getting insurance the way we do is brain damaged.
Oh, and I never voted for Obama, not that it matters.
Then my position is that anyone should be able to do the same thing no matter their religion.
Well, my position is that Social Security is unconstitutional and should never have existed in the first place because it's not an enumerated power, and alleging that "support the general welfare" covers it isn't really an adequate fig leaf.
My perspective on the matter isn't shared by the Supremes, and neither is yours.
That is not "fair," and government thugs shouldn't be in the business of deciding what religions are real.
It's fair in the sense that they are opting out entirely rather than trying to receive benefits without paying in.
Interesting fact: the Prohibitionists were early advocates for the income tax. A very large portion of the federal government's revenue came from excise tax on alcohol (got to work in the shout out for the Whiskey Rebellion!), and they realized they could never pass a ban on alcohol consumption without replacing the revenue. So they pulled together to get 16th amendment passed. I mention this because income tax brought another moral hazard for people/entities to falsely claim religious beliefs to avoid taxes and thus government thugs started to make decisions about whether Scientology is real or a tax dodge.
Also, consider the case of conscientious objectors/pacifists during 20th century US wars. Exemption due to religious beliefs.
Which is also bullshit, by the way. Either everyone should be able to get the exception, or no one should.
Better idea: Make drafts unconstitutional, since they're an egregious violation of people's fundamental liberties, religion or no religion.
Well, given that we have used drafts repeatedly in our history whenever we face a major threat, your position doesn't work. The conscientious objectors (the real ones, not the cowards) are pacifists and would refuse to fight. It's a real drag on morale to watch some guy you forced to be on the front lines just stand there and let the enemy shoot him. Or, if you presume they would be charged with dereliction of duty, it's also a major drag to have soldiers execute a comrade simply because of his religious belief in pacifism.
Instead, what happened is that conscientious objectors were used in other ways during the war. Some of them, for example, volunteered to be test subjects for the effects of mustard gas (a very painful vesicant).
Granting accommodation for people's conscience is part of the foundation of this country. You'll need to pass a constitutional amendment to change that.
The analogies are no more or less absurd than this entire debate, because it is predicated on the absurd idea that it makes sense for people to get their health insurance from their employer. To reiterate: employer religious beliefs and individual access to contraception are not logically in tension.
Some posters in this thread (perhaps not you) didn't see my original post and are presuming incorrectly about what I advocate. I am against employer provided health insurance. I am in favor of ubiquitously available contraception.
I just don't believe we have to undermine the First Amendment by forcing government override of religious beliefs simply to attain this goal. Don't think inside the cliched box.
Allow me to illustrate for them. There is an application in OSX named Launchpad It looks remarkably like Metro. Big icons for the applications. Click on one, and it opens the program.
Holy fuck, I hate the Launchpad. It was designed by the same class of UX fucktards that made Windows 8 Metro, Unity, Gnome 3, etc.
The Mac OS Launchpad is "discoverable" in the same way a mine field is "discoverable".
The first time I interacted with it, I decided I didn't like the way it laid out the icons and that it was showing me too many apps (I really only wanted it to show me the top 10 apps I choose, for speed launching). I removed one of the icons from the Launchpad. What did it do? Weelll, friendly Mac OS "helped me out" by completely erasing the application from the hard drive, with no undo. Yep, that's *exactly* what I expected. Because, you know, when you drag an icon out of the Dock or out of a folder, Mac OS irrevocably obliterates that file from the disk with no option to undo the operation. Oh, wait...
That's how I learned about Apple's modern perspective on UI design. It's fine, I guess I didn't need Apple's shitty Excel knockoff anyway.
I can't wait until this UX lunacy that has cropped up in the last few years dies the horrible death it so richly deserves. Maybe in a decade we can all laugh at this Microsoft Bob era of UX. Right now, however, it makes me want to kill some UX designers' pets.
Here I thought what I was talking about was people of certain religions being given exceptions that the rest of us cannot get unless we're part of certain religions.
Okay, cf. Amish being exempt from Social Security tax (and being ineligible for any benefits, of course), which is well-established at this point. This is not available to you unless you are a member of one of these orders.
They honestly believe it is a sin, so First Amendment applies. This is fair, of course, because it's not just an attempt to weasel out of obligations while partaking of benefits. They simply do not participate in the system due to religious objections.
Also, consider the case of conscientious objectors/pacifists during 20th century US wars. Exemption due to religious beliefs.
No, you've made the same stupid leap the religious lobbisits want you to make.
Ah.
No doubt you would be fully in favor of laws to force Muslim employers to provide bacon to their employees as long as the majority votes that way. Or maybe a Supreme Court mandate in favor of forcing Jewish businesses to be open on Shabbat, or forcing Jewish restaurants to serve meat with dairy. I don't support any of these either, and those scenarios make just as much (non)sense as forcing employers to pay for employee contraception or abortion in violation of their conscience.
You have failed to establish a compelling rationale for why employers' beliefs need to be suppressed simply in order to provide birth control to people. Unlike many other aspects of politics, this is an artificial point of contention because these two positions are orthogonal in any rational scenario. In order for you to make a compelling argument in support of suppressing religious rights in this regard, you have to establish a rational basis for why these positions (i.e. availability of contraception and employer religious beliefs) are logically in tension.
You have fallen into the trap of believing that there are only two alternatives in this debate (suppressing religious beliefs or suppressing access to contraception). You are too blinded by your political agenda to realize you are defending the party line on a pointless wedge issue rather than advocating for a real solution: ending the employer-provided health insurance paradigm in this country.
While I am not debating the point specifically about Sotomayor, but I do believe that "No True Scotsman" is applied too broadly.
If I claim to be a Scotsman, but yet I am not a citizen of Scotland, I am not Scottish, I have no Scottish ancestry, and I have never even visited Scotland, and then someone claims I am not actually a Scotsman at all, inevitably someone would try to counter with a canned "lololol No True Scotsman fallacy!" retort.
There are some basic aspects of definitions that are non-negotiable. Some people truly are not Scottish.
put their religion before the constitution. Shocking.
Religious fuckers are destroying this country.
Meh. You are complaining about the symptom rather than the cause.
While I am not religious, I do respect the rights of religious people. It is unconscionable for them to be forced to provide benefits that are in opposition to their morals. However, I am in favor of ubiquitously available contraception (for everyone, not just women, I'm egalitarian that way...).
The real issue stems from the retarded decision back in the high income tax bracket era of the early 20th century that led to the IRS allowing health insurance premiums to be tax-deductible from payroll. That fucking brain damaged decision led to our current clusterfuck of employer-provided health care.
Fix the underlying cause, and this problem becomes a non-issue. I prefer the UK's approach, with public & private healthcare systems. Besides, do you really want to undermine the First Amendment simply to try to hack on yet another kludge for the collapsing employer-provided approach to health care in this country?
You can probably go a long way toward convincing the conservatives by pointing out that a large portion of our population is already on socialized healthcare programs that won't ever go away (Medicare, Medicaid, TriCare, the VA, all governmental employees, et al) unless we replace them with universal healthcare, and that countries with socialized health care pay *less* in health care costs/taxes than we do for our "free market" (but not really) solution.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess Nokia's platform really was burning after all. It's just that it was arson.
"Fallacies (sic) logic and inaccurate claims"? Geekoid, I suggest you consider your own self-referential sig regarding the Dunning-Kruger effect, as once again it applies to your own posted content.
I hope that was sufficiently clear to get through your addled mind.
I can perceive why you might seek out others who are discussing matters logically, as observing those people may allow you to someday learn how to engage in logical discussion yourself.
having to use real names has made it far less trollish then other places.
Enjoy yourself over there with the other people like you. Personally, I don't perceive why you would be trolled when you can just make an insular group of associates and block everyone else.
FWIW, I don't think that having your identity known by others has influenced you to dial back your trolling on this site. Then again, given that it's you, I'm not surprised that you prefer a highly structured social construct with many regulations.
Just an FYI, all those stamps you buy from the APC kiosk at a Post Office have unique serial numbers printed on them and are linked to your credit card and photograph. Couple that with the Mail Covers program the USPS has been running for the government since the 70's, and they know exactly to whom you are mailing that stamped letter (you know, because they literally log every single one of them).
Just look at the QR code-looking eIndicia barcodes on the stamps. Postal documentation indicates they are unique, but each APC printed stamp is obviously different upon close visual inspection.
Oh, and try covering that black plastic window by the keypad when you're using the APC... it will give you a nonspecific error message when you try to complete the transaction if you do that. It wants your photo for the log.
Buy your stamps from the counter or the grocery store.
My wife bought me my dream watch: a Citizen solar powered watch with auto synch with the atomic clock service. I have wanted atomic time synch in a watch since 1996, but only recently found this one.
It's nice that it has a sapphire face, because I want this thing to last me for 20 years and my old watch's face got rather scratched.
My perspective is that if the primary reason one is excited about a possession is its features and capabilities, then it's not a status symbol. It may be a luxury, of course. If this watch is still working/synching in 20 years, I will probably be as happy with it as the day I got it. Happier, probably, because I like durable and reliable possessions.
You know, I have never discussed my watch with anyone in person. Perhaps others who have the same watch are treating it as a status symbol. Maybe it is to them.
Don't they have this right under the "Commerce Clause". [which is indeed known to have been abused, but still]
Your opinion, publicly stated, might negatively affect commerce, which could have ripple effects in the economy of another state. Ergo, your ability to state your opinion publicly is regulable under the commerce clause. Don't worry: you're free to express your ideas in your mind, so long as you do not communicate them to anyone else in any form.
This line of reasoning is consistent with the Supreme Court's ruling in Gonzalez v Raich, Wickard v Filburn, et al.
The Commerce Clause has been blatantly twisted into an unconstitutional interpretation. They baldly lie and say it means something it clearly does not (remember, those decisions I cited defined commerce as including "not commerce"). Once you assert B AND NOT B == TRUE, then you can apply this logical fault to reason to any conclusion you wish.
So, to answer your question: yes, they assert they have this power under the constitution (technically, it's improper to say the government has "rights").
It might even be one of those rare constitutional applications of federal enumerated powers if it were limited to interstate commerce, but we all know that's not the case.
Don't forget the RF shielded optical fiber interconnects, for true fidelity at high frequencies, and a mellow bass.
Old and busted. I don't know how you can tolerate listening to the harshness and small sound stage caused by RF shielded optical fiber interconnects that aren't impedance matched as well.
£10 surcharge is equivalent to the tax on £15.63 of fuel... somehow, I am guessing that 2400 L costs more than that.
Unless there is some sort of tax recapture reciprocity/equalization between the UK and the rest of Europe, that fee doesn't do much of anything to level your playing field.
... on completely missing the point. This project is about testing autonomous visual landing site selection and guidance, NOT proposing that quadcopters can fly on Mars. To be fair, the linked article isn't especially clear on that point either.
To be fair, the ESA's own site insinuates that this project is a quadcopter for Mars.
"The dramatic conclusion to ESA’s latest StarTiger project: a ‘dropship’ quadcopter steers itself to lower a rover gently onto a safe patch of the rocky martian surface."
every time someone tries to use that term they start claiming things like military spending, business expenses, etc.
Precisely. Don't simply accept their disingenuous talking points. The "subsidies" for fossil fuels are a lie. These people include things like "the cost of road congestion" when they are fabricating their claims.
They refuse to honestly report the direct subsidies to fossil fuels, because their imaginary number is close to $2 trillion per annum, whereas the actual amount is many orders of magnitude less.
Read the IMF's "fossil fuel subsidies" definition and decide for yourself.
You fail reading comprehension.
I swear, I don't understand how people can miss the first sentence of a post and then draw conclusions that blatantly contradict that.
In case you missed the first sentence of the post (again): you fail reading comprehension.
You have an interesting set of definitions, though. If W changed none of his politics, but he officially joined the Democratic party and became a card-carrying Democrat (again, while retaining his well-loved-by-liberals neoconservative values), apparently you would allege No True Scotsman if I claimed he wasn't a Democrat.
Bloomberg was alleged to be a RINO (a term which people here claimed is a No True Scotsman fallacy). Turns out, he wasn't actually a Republican after all.
Oh, hey, in case you missed it before: you fail reading comprehension. I specifically said I wasn't debating Sotomayor's claim of being Catholic.
I see you agree with me, then. As I have stated before, the present national debate context (suppressing employer religious beliefs or employee self-determination wrt contraception) is a false dichotomy predicated on the retarded idea that people should obtain their insurance through their employer.
We have spent 50+ years shoring up this brain-damaged paradigm. I support this Supreme Court ruling while also supporting contraception choice... the real solution is that we need to terminate the employer insurance model with extreme prejudice.
If someone insinuated that people should be practically forced to obtain their housing or groceries via their employer, and in order to ensure people didn't starve or freeze we would pass myriad unconstitutional laws to keep the model even semi-viable, everyone would rightly mock the idea as absurd. The employer health insurance model is no more or less an absurdity.
It needs to end.
How much does the Discordian Society pay for you to post that?
What gets me is that fools believe that the only serious belief is a religious one. That is garbage. You don't need to be part of a religion to believe something, and nor is your belief any less true.
You have insinuated I believe something that I do not.
These exceptions are unfair, anti-freedom, and mean we don't have a true separation of church and state.
Your belief about the unexceptional nature of conscience is taken under advisement, and I'm sure you're well aware that your view is a minority position. Feel free to change the culture, then change the Constitution (it won't work any other way). Until then, you are "wrong" in practice: religious beliefs are—and have been—treated as special by our culture and laws; barring fundamental changes in the culture, the system will continue to operate that way, as it always has.
But in case you haven't noticed yet... you don't need to try to inform me about the current state of things, as that's exactly what I'm criticizing. Telling me about how things work right now is useless.
Fair enough. I'm glad you understand that you truly have your work cut out for you if you honestly wish to effect the change you advocate.
You've again missed the point by changing the goal posts. A Muslim businessman chooses to open a halal butcher, pigs never enter his shop.
No, it is you who has missed the point. If the Supreme Court asserts people and companies can be forced to provide health insurance as well as force people to buy broccoli, the government can indeed force a Muslim businessperson to purchase and provide bacon to their employees (whether they are a butcher or not, and whether their employees want it or not).
You cannot buy what is not sold.
Who said anything about buying? This idea of a "mandatory bacon benefit for employees" is no different logically than a "mandatory health insurance benefit for employees". Both concepts are equivalently absurd and are unconscionable if it violates religious liberty.
Repeat after me: there is no reason that health insurance should be obtained through one's employer. The present, specious debate is a false dichotomy: there is no inherent conflict between employer religious liberty and individual access to contraception. These considerations are only in tension in an absurd scenario where employers provide health insurance. I mean, the whole paradigm is as retarded as people getting all their groceries via their employer.
A jewish (or any buisness for that matter) can close any day of the week they please. You see the difference with these choices? They don't affect anyone else.
Ah, but those choices do affect others. Or have you never attempted to shop at a store that was closed? A store that is closed on certain days is also theoretically depriving employees of the potential to earn money while the store is closed. In a post Wickard v Filburn legal landscape, that is enough of a rationale to allow federal regulation of when businesses can and/or must be open.
This scenario, of course, is absurd (though I assert it is plausible under present legal doctrine), but so is the idea of forcing employers to provide mandatory health insurance benefits, especially against their conscience. Besides, the employees can go get insurance from the exchange, so by your logic they are unaffected.
My employers religion requires prayer 7 times a day, therefor all employees will stop work at designated times and join the prayer group.
Then perhaps you shouldn't work at that religious organization, where such regulations are very legal:
Churches and religious organizations can discriminate on the basis of religion for all jobs. This includes and is not limited to secretaries, accountants, and janitors. The basis for permissible religious discrimination is the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of this in Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. Amos,483 U.S. 327 (1987).
It is unconscionable for them to be forced to provide benefits that are in opposition to their morals.
So Christian Scientists should be completely exempt?
Yes, because no employer should be providing health insurance as a "mandatory benefit". You are operating within the context of a false dichotomy that derives from the nonsensical idea that we should be obtaining health insurance through our employers.
I want universal health care, and I don't want employers involved in this at all. Just like I don't want to buy my house or groceries through my employer or myriad other aspects of life that have no fucking rational correlation with employment.
If you want to advocate for single payer (public/private, NHS-style), then I'm right there with you. I'm not going to be constrained to making a choice within a false dichotomy, though.
As I said, my analogies are equivalently as absurd as the present employer-provided healthcare insurance paradigm, and thus are perfectly cromulent and applicable in the context of this debate. I stand by them.
My point is that there is no intrinsic tension between employer religious rights and employee access to contraception. This entire national debate and Supreme Court case is the consequence of the absurdity of obtaining health care insurance from an employer.
Your proposed debate subject is irrelevant in this context if we just fix the underlying problem rather than repeatedly attempting to shore up a conceptually broken model via bizarre laws (COBRA, HIPAA portability, ACA, et al) and court decisions.
Furthermore - while you jump on the big g bandwagon with the useful idiots - we could have just expanded Medicare and raised federal income tax and be better off than with ACA.
Hey, genius, what do you think Medicare/Medicaid, etc are? All of the examples of socialized healthcare I gave are taxpayer-funded (do you really believe TriCare is self-funded? The DoD budget disagrees with you, if so, to the tune of 32 billion in FY2015).
Countries with universal healthcare pay less overall and per capita than we do. Of course, this being the US, no doubt we could come up with some ass backwards implementation that could fuck it up, but we would be the outlier if that happened.
In simple terms, that means you would save money on healthcare with universal coverage vs today. If you are dissatisfied with the publicly available "free" universal care paid for with taxes, you could avail yourself of the private healthcare system like you could in the UK. You could also buy private insurance that provides access to the private system if you really wanted to do that, and this is much less expensive than it is in the US.
I am very opposed to the ACA. Getting insurance the way we do is brain damaged.
Oh, and I never voted for Obama, not that it matters.
Then my position is that anyone should be able to do the same thing no matter their religion.
Well, my position is that Social Security is unconstitutional and should never have existed in the first place because it's not an enumerated power, and alleging that "support the general welfare" covers it isn't really an adequate fig leaf.
My perspective on the matter isn't shared by the Supremes, and neither is yours.
That is not "fair," and government thugs shouldn't be in the business of deciding what religions are real.
It's fair in the sense that they are opting out entirely rather than trying to receive benefits without paying in.
Interesting fact: the Prohibitionists were early advocates for the income tax. A very large portion of the federal government's revenue came from excise tax on alcohol (got to work in the shout out for the Whiskey Rebellion!), and they realized they could never pass a ban on alcohol consumption without replacing the revenue. So they pulled together to get 16th amendment passed. I mention this because income tax brought another moral hazard for people/entities to falsely claim religious beliefs to avoid taxes and thus government thugs started to make decisions about whether Scientology is real or a tax dodge.
Also, consider the case of conscientious objectors/pacifists during 20th century US wars. Exemption due to religious beliefs.
Which is also bullshit, by the way. Either everyone should be able to get the exception, or no one should.
Better idea: Make drafts unconstitutional, since they're an egregious violation of people's fundamental liberties, religion or no religion.
Well, given that we have used drafts repeatedly in our history whenever we face a major threat, your position doesn't work. The conscientious objectors (the real ones, not the cowards) are pacifists and would refuse to fight. It's a real drag on morale to watch some guy you forced to be on the front lines just stand there and let the enemy shoot him. Or, if you presume they would be charged with dereliction of duty, it's also a major drag to have soldiers execute a comrade simply because of his religious belief in pacifism.
Instead, what happened is that conscientious objectors were used in other ways during the war. Some of them, for example, volunteered to be test subjects for the effects of mustard gas (a very painful vesicant).
Granting accommodation for people's conscience is part of the foundation of this country. You'll need to pass a constitutional amendment to change that.
The analogies are no more or less absurd than this entire debate, because it is predicated on the absurd idea that it makes sense for people to get their health insurance from their employer. To reiterate: employer religious beliefs and individual access to contraception are not logically in tension.
Some posters in this thread (perhaps not you) didn't see my original post and are presuming incorrectly about what I advocate. I am against employer provided health insurance. I am in favor of ubiquitously available contraception.
I just don't believe we have to undermine the First Amendment by forcing government override of religious beliefs simply to attain this goal. Don't think inside the cliched box.
Allow me to illustrate for them. There is an application in OSX named Launchpad It looks remarkably like Metro. Big icons for the applications. Click on one, and it opens the program.
Holy fuck, I hate the Launchpad. It was designed by the same class of UX fucktards that made Windows 8 Metro, Unity, Gnome 3, etc.
The Mac OS Launchpad is "discoverable" in the same way a mine field is "discoverable".
The first time I interacted with it, I decided I didn't like the way it laid out the icons and that it was showing me too many apps (I really only wanted it to show me the top 10 apps I choose, for speed launching). I removed one of the icons from the Launchpad. What did it do? Weelll, friendly Mac OS "helped me out" by completely erasing the application from the hard drive, with no undo. Yep, that's *exactly* what I expected. Because, you know, when you drag an icon out of the Dock or out of a folder, Mac OS irrevocably obliterates that file from the disk with no option to undo the operation. Oh, wait...
That's how I learned about Apple's modern perspective on UI design. It's fine, I guess I didn't need Apple's shitty Excel knockoff anyway.
I can't wait until this UX lunacy that has cropped up in the last few years dies the horrible death it so richly deserves. Maybe in a decade we can all laugh at this Microsoft Bob era of UX. Right now, however, it makes me want to kill some UX designers' pets.
Here I thought what I was talking about was people of certain religions being given exceptions that the rest of us cannot get unless we're part of certain religions.
Okay, cf. Amish being exempt from Social Security tax (and being ineligible for any benefits, of course), which is well-established at this point. This is not available to you unless you are a member of one of these orders.
They honestly believe it is a sin, so First Amendment applies. This is fair, of course, because it's not just an attempt to weasel out of obligations while partaking of benefits. They simply do not participate in the system due to religious objections.
Also, consider the case of conscientious objectors/pacifists during 20th century US wars. Exemption due to religious beliefs.
No, you've made the same stupid leap the religious lobbisits want you to make.
Ah.
No doubt you would be fully in favor of laws to force Muslim employers to provide bacon to their employees as long as the majority votes that way. Or maybe a Supreme Court mandate in favor of forcing Jewish businesses to be open on Shabbat, or forcing Jewish restaurants to serve meat with dairy. I don't support any of these either, and those scenarios make just as much (non)sense as forcing employers to pay for employee contraception or abortion in violation of their conscience.
You have failed to establish a compelling rationale for why employers' beliefs need to be suppressed simply in order to provide birth control to people. Unlike many other aspects of politics, this is an artificial point of contention because these two positions are orthogonal in any rational scenario. In order for you to make a compelling argument in support of suppressing religious rights in this regard, you have to establish a rational basis for why these positions (i.e. availability of contraception and employer religious beliefs) are logically in tension.
You have fallen into the trap of believing that there are only two alternatives in this debate (suppressing religious beliefs or suppressing access to contraception). You are too blinded by your political agenda to realize you are defending the party line on a pointless wedge issue rather than advocating for a real solution: ending the employer-provided health insurance paradigm in this country.
While I am not debating the point specifically about Sotomayor, but I do believe that "No True Scotsman" is applied too broadly.
If I claim to be a Scotsman, but yet I am not a citizen of Scotland, I am not Scottish, I have no Scottish ancestry, and I have never even visited Scotland, and then someone claims I am not actually a Scotsman at all, inevitably someone would try to counter with a canned "lololol No True Scotsman fallacy!" retort.
There are some basic aspects of definitions that are non-negotiable. Some people truly are not Scottish.
put their religion before the constitution. Shocking.
Religious fuckers are destroying this country.
Meh. You are complaining about the symptom rather than the cause.
While I am not religious, I do respect the rights of religious people. It is unconscionable for them to be forced to provide benefits that are in opposition to their morals. However, I am in favor of ubiquitously available contraception (for everyone, not just women, I'm egalitarian that way...).
The real issue stems from the retarded decision back in the high income tax bracket era of the early 20th century that led to the IRS allowing health insurance premiums to be tax-deductible from payroll. That fucking brain damaged decision led to our current clusterfuck of employer-provided health care.
Fix the underlying cause, and this problem becomes a non-issue. I prefer the UK's approach, with public & private healthcare systems. Besides, do you really want to undermine the First Amendment simply to try to hack on yet another kludge for the collapsing employer-provided approach to health care in this country?
You can probably go a long way toward convincing the conservatives by pointing out that a large portion of our population is already on socialized healthcare programs that won't ever go away (Medicare, Medicaid, TriCare, the VA, all governmental employees, et al) unless we replace them with universal healthcare, and that countries with socialized health care pay *less* in health care costs/taxes than we do for our "free market" (but not really) solution.