Making a gun is easy. You can literally make a.22 "handgun" from a.22 shell, a radio antenna and a handfull of other pieces. Do a google for zip guns.
Hell, if you want a low tech firearm, look at a black powder pistol. You can make one with hand tools, and you don't even need a casing for the ammo. Plenty of power, and your ammo is a ball bearing.
which is that many sources believed to be liberal by those sufficiently conservative enough are actually fairly moderate (at worst) AND that that can have an impact on the quality of the stories.
Actually, I think that this simple test is applicable to either side of the political spectrum(someone care to run it on Rush or Coulter?).
I would assume that an unbiased source would either refrain from using biased labeling, or would use that labeling in roughly equal proportions. Couple that with polls which regularly show that mainstream media workers hold political views to the left of the average American, and I think that the case for a liberal media bias is fairly strong.
And you are missing the point entirely. We are talking specifically about measuring bias. The way you label something is an indicator of that bias. I see it as a fairly accurate measure. It works equally for the right or the left.
I don't pretend that this is in any way scientific, but after having to listen to NPR all the time(my boss liked it), I began seeing a serious bias in the wording of the news programs.
They seemed to label anything to the "right" as right-wing or conservative. Things to the "left" generally escaped the left-wing or liberal labels. It occured to me that people generally label things they are opposed to, and don't do so for things they agree with. So, to test whether or not I was right in my perception of NPRs labeling, I went to npr.org, and looked up "right wing" and "left wing." As of this morning, the first search found 9 pages of articles. The second found 4. And the "left wing" search included many articles about the shuttle disaster. Similarly, a search for conservative found 50 pages(which I think is the max returnable number of pages, so who knows how many it really could find), versus 42 pages for a search for liberal.
Try to interject a topic of dispute, such as abortion. A search on "conservative abortion" found 5 pages. A search on "liberal abortion" found 2. A search on "pro life" finds 3 pages. "Anti abortion" finds 7.
The problem is not that stories don't get reported(although that happens, too). It is that the issues are consistantly framed in favor of a more left leaning viewpoint.
And my point is, it is pathetic to have to assume that your machine will be compromised for running a user-space application. I routinely download patches for applications from the server they are going on. That requires firing up a web browser. The difference, perhaps, is that I do that from Mac OSX and Linux machines. Provided I am not doing something like running the browser as root, I do not fear a compromise. Call me lax, but I've never had a compromise in 10+ years.
I was working on a PC at a local business this summer. I spent 5 hours wiping out 1900+ spyware infection points. I had to wipe them out in chunks, because attempting to wipe the whole list locked up the computer. Apparently, this company was OK with the employees surfing porn on work computers. That was the worst machine, but most of the rest also had spyware and virus problems.
I have to agree completely. Most of my clients are moving to LCD on their own. I don't stock them(I mostly build gaming rigs), but I sure do set a lot of them up. The ONLY people I know of who purchase eMacs in this area(mid-Kansas) are people who only buy Mac anyway. Period. I haven't even seen eMacs in schools yet. Most of the Mac- centric schools I go to still use older iMacs. One problem I have seen is the stock memory in an eMac. More to the point, the lack thereof. The last eMac I worked on was a dog with the standard 128M. That brings the percentage of eMacs that I have seen that were nearly unusable with stock memory to 100%. We discovered quickly that FileMaker would kill an eMac with little effort. Run Classic and any other app, and you would think that you had a shiny 386 in that box.
Oh for pity's sake, what a Nazi.
Ahh, the perfect rebuttal. Call your opponent a Nazi.
By that logic, infertile heterosexual couples -- or horrors, infertile het couples with adoptive children! -- constitute an "artificial social structure" with no "compelling reason" for the state to recognize them.
That doesn't follow. Infertility is a biological defect, a disease. Gender, on the other hand, is not.
Do you libs even get what's going on here? Does German disapproval of "artificial means" of "maintaining the alien Jew" ring a fucking bell?
Again with the Nazi argument. Very intelligent. I even agree that some of the rights in question should be granted to anyone, but I am a Nazi regardless. And people wonder why there is a divide in this country, when some consider breathless hyperbole to be part of a debate.
Are you suggesting that you think most Americans oppose abortion?
If so then methinks it's you who is not consonant with most Americans.
That's why, whenever an abortion bill is put to the people, it fails? Read the polls. The majority of people want at least some restriction on abortion. For example, the latest Gallup poll on abortion(look it up on their website, free reg. required), which shows only 41% of people as labeling themselves pro-life, a full 75% were for at least some restrictions on abortion, and 61% were for restricting most abortions. That fits the definition of most to me. That is a far cry from the Democratic party line of unfettered access.
As for me, my philosophy does not emcompass accepting murder, so I am not willing to stop at just "some restrictions."
Every judge believes that is what they are doing, and every partisian says that is what their favorite judges does, and every partisian says that opposing judges are "activist judges" violating that.
Simple. If you can show a logical process of derivation from the actual Constitution, you're golden. If there are two equally logical results, then it should be thrown back to the legislature for clarification. And if you can't handle the task of proving a logical statement, then you shouldn't be a judge.
The constitution inherently requires interpretation. Sometimes one part comes into conflict with another part.
Indeed. That is one of the major points of having the judicial system, if it not? If there is an actual conflict, then it should be sent back to the legislature.
You can write entire books on the nuances of "Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of speech".
Wait, did I say you could write *a* book on Free Speech? Hell, you can write a dozen books merely on its conflicts with the copyright clause.
When did copyright come into this? I'd love to read those books, though, because I see no conflict between the two when neither is abused.
Is there a right to privacy? And if so, is it implied in the 4th or hidden in the 9th?
It certainly looks explicit in the 4th. However, you might notice that it is not an absolute right.
For my first step in answering, I'd like to ask you a question: Some years ago most Americans disagreed with interracial marriage. Would you suggest that it be forced on them?
Let's break it down, shall we? Let's have this pool:
A - white male
B - black male
C - white female
D - black female
Now, start with a monoracial heterosexual grouping: AC. AC can beget children, present a male and female role model, etc. Replace A with B. BC can do the same. From a functional point of view, AC, BC, AD and BD are equivalent.
AA, AB, BB, CC, CD and DD are not. They require an external element to achieve the functionality inherent in the biologically grounded unions. As such, they represent an artificial social structure. And I fail to see the compelling reason for the state to redefine marriage to include an artificial social structure.
Now, this brings up some interesting side points. One of the reasons brought up in favor of homosexual marriages is the lack of delegated benefits that a partner could have. For example, the distribution of property after death(not only property, but also life insurance benefits), or medical decisions. It seems to me that a person should always be able to delegate those decisions to any person they choose. I have seen it come into play with older people living with best friends, siblings, etc. So, I support that aspect of the issue.
Your response is proof that the country is irreparably split. You apparently follow an extreme right wing ideology that cannot be countered by what I would perceive as reasonable argument.
My post was largely flippant commentary. However, I concur with your feeling of a split. That's similar to how I feel when watching the Democratic party. They seem utterly bewildered today, as they watched a flood of grass root conservatives reject their platform. They haven't grasped the point that their view is not consonant with that of most Americans. Their staunch support for certain things(abortion, the proper place for government, etc) makes it purely impossible for me to seriously consider voting for Democrats, unless they buck their party line.
Social security- it's not enough to say it's a problem. What's your workable suggestion to fix it? It's easy to tear things down but it's difficult to build. The Republicans have proposed crap.
First, where in the Constitution is the mandate that the government should provide retirement benefits? Health care and even disability? Sure, we can discuss that.
I am 29. I know, KNOW, that I will receive jack squat from Social Security, because the numbers don't add up. SS can only work if the average worker dies before they pull out their share of the money. Well, guess what....
Now, I didn't know this was Nightline, but off the top of my head:
1) Take it out of the hands of the feds, and make it a state issue.
2) Make it opt in. Let those who are to accept personal fiscal responsibility set up their retirement as they see fit.
and, 3) Make it an extreme backup, for those who fall through the cracks. Let the average American work it out themselves.
Allies - much as you may want it, a country cannot stand alone in this world. Good relationships are important, and they don't require giving up sovereignty.
See, this is where that "pigeon-hole someone's political views based on 10 lines from/." thing breaks down. I don't think we should be in the Middle East in the first place. If we weren't, we would have no need of maintaining a bunch of allies. Trading partners? Sure. Allies? This isn't WWII. Invest in small scale nuclear reactors, wean ourselves from oil, and let the African continent deal with its own problems. Plus, that frees up resources that would go into the military.
Don't know about you, but I like to travel and see the world. There are many places in the world I will not go to due to safety concerns. The list of unsafe places is bound to increase. I don't want to live in a fortress America. I want to be free.
So do I. You misread my statement. It was meant cynically. I do not believe that we will see an increase in attacks on Americans in most countries. We might see an increase in the Middle East, but, as I explained above, we shouldn't be involved there anyway, and we will incur wrath no matter what policy we follow there. The only solutions are 1) magically changing human nature to make all the warring factions there play nice or 2) get the hell out and let them deal with their own issues.
Federal government - explain to me how this country would work without a Federal government? What about funding for armed forces? We're going to need them.
I should have written "riiiiiiiight", as in, I think that declaring that the Federal government is going to go broke is hyperbole. Now, a weakened Federal government, in the context of increased state rights? I would love to see that.
Now, the hot button topics that actually got me to bother typing this in have disappeared from the conversation, apparently. So let's revisit those, shall we?
Conservative Judges
In recent years, judges have tended to be judged by the political spectrum that benefits most from their decisions.
Forget liberal and conservative, then. Give me a judge who makes their decision based on the actual Constitution, and not their own ideology.
It's a pyramid scheme. Figure out something different.
* relationships with allies severed
Buh-bye.
* inability for Americans to safely travel overseas
So, the populations of various countries are going to start assinating US citizens?
* the imposition of fundamentalist christian morality on all citizens (prayer in school, no abortion, discrimination and violence against gays, teaching creationism, etc)
Prayer? Not likely. Abortion? I hope so. Discrimnation against gays? I assume you are talking about gay marriage mostly. The people are speaking. Or is it only democracy if they say what you want to hear? Creationism? The Federal government shouldn't be messing with education anyway.
* bankruptcy of the Federal government due to grandiose overspending and insufficient tax revenue
I bet dollars to doughnuts that if you were diagnosed with Parkinsons or if you suffered a spinal cord injury and the only hope you had was embryonic stem cell research, you wouldn't have a problem with it.
You're on. In my case, it's a family predisposition to diabetes. I fully recognize what my fate could be, and I have no qualms with saying that my stance on embryonic stem cell research would be exactly the same.
I find it extremely unethical that anyone would stand in the way of potentially finding cures for many diseases. That is, essentially, what you do when you stand in the way of embryonic stem cell research.
Use adult stem cells. No issue there. Heck, I'll even donate some of mine.
When your "ethics" put the value of cells doomed to die anyway above those that are living, I would call that egregiously unethical.
Last time I checked, we were all just a bunch of cells doomed to die anyway.
Actually, according to the Book of Lost Tales, Saruman did secretly wander around the Shire for a time. He was marking out routes for his operatives later, and gathering up sources of leaf. He had to hide his interest in that area to avoid being embarassed by Gandalf.
I'm glad you are consistent (it's amazing how many "pro-life" folks say IVF is OK, which is completely incomprehensible).
Thanks.
If the technology is developed to clone a baby from cells of an adult human, does that mean that not cloning yourself would violate your ethics? It is ensuring that viable life would fail to develop.
No. This would be equivalent to me considering it murder for failing to impregnate every woman I can. The absence of an action is not the same as actively doing something. For example, my failing to stop someone from falling from a building is in no way equivalent to me pushing them off.
If the technology were to develop to permit in vivo splitting of a blastocyst, so as to produce identical twins rather than one, would it be incumbent on the potential mother to do it? No other life is destroyed, and this increases the amount of life produced by the same set of cells.
The point is not to produce as much life as possible, but rather to protect life that is already there, so this is irrelevant.
If not, until the number of potential fetuses is determined, is it accurate to describe it as "an" organism rather than merely a cluster of human cells?
The number of individual organisms is irrelevant. If one fetus is worthy of protection in my eyes, why would two or more(whether they've finished dividing or not) change that?
A blanket protection of human cells, of course, requires all sex to be vaginal and unprotected (remember the Monty Python skit?) and that cancer could not be treated, among other bizarre things.
And is as unnecessary as it is bizarre. That's where Monty Python got it wrong. It wasn't the sperm, it was what one(or more, in rare cases) of the sperm joined with eggs to become.
Except, of course, that 70% of the time that "new organism" never develops past a blastocyst.
OK, so your logic is, since a certain percentage of organisms die at stage X of their life cycle, it is permissible to kill them at that cycle. It seems to me that your principle would make it permissible to kill anything, anytime.
(By the way, should in vitro fertilization be outlawed? A great majority of those embryos get destroyed, you know.)
it is not a single organism until it is no longer dependant on the host and can make a sentiant decision.
An axiom which I disagree with.
If you want everything to have the gift of life, then you can raise the children. All of them. Wait... thats not logicical.
That doesn't fly:
"If you want every murder victim to be saved, then you can provide for all of their needs henceforth."
or
"If you want to save every starving person in Africa, then you can be completely responsible for caring for all of them after that."
Heck, apply it to the extinction of species("you can give money to support every whale you want saved"). Are you willing to hold everyone else who fights against some injustice responsible to the same degree that you hold pro-lifers?
But, to answer your question, I do what I can to support those whose choose not to kill their children. A mother needs a place to stay? My door is open. Food? Clothing? I'll provide it, to the best of my ability. And I am not alone. Noone needs to be forced into an abortion when there are literally millions of people waiting to help them.
Kind of like forcing someone who was raped or had a condom break to keep and raise a child in a shitty enviroment.
Pull your head from whereever it is right now, and pop open your local newspaper. Look in the adoption section of the classifieds. Oh, wow, someone willing, no, begging, to be allowed to raise a child.
Not everyone live's in suburbia in a two story home that is kid-friendly. Some people KNOW that they are not ready for a child, and some people know that they dont WANT the child.
Therefore, they should engage in a behavior of which the biological POINT is to have a child.
And save your bullshit rhetoric about adoption, its a broken system that doesnt work and can leave children as ward's of the state
Yeah, because all of those kids in state custody would rather be dead. Oh, wait, no they don't. But we should ignore that, and rely on a system based on killing rather than fix a "broken system" that doesn't.
God didnt give you the right to tell people how to live their live's, he/she/it alone can judge people. You fucktards keep thinking that you have the right to control other people and their choices in life newsflash asshole: Your god supposedly gave us FREE will, according to your religion we are supposed to be able to make our own choices good or bad.
At what point did I bring God into it?
What you religious nutbags are doing is no different than what the nazi's were doing. Your just not doing it to the extreme they were. yet.
So, the Nazi's protested against an injustice? No, wait, they attempted genocide. I haven't managed to kill a single person, let alone a whole race. It's almost as if your post is complete bullshit.
but if the seperate organism is unable to sustain it's own life and requires a host for survival, isn't it really just a paracite?
Um, no, unless you believe that normal parts of the human life cycles are diseases. I suppose someone holding such an irrational view of human life could come to such a conclusion.
Boy, the US must be a dangerous place to live if you're constantly having to defend yourself from "unjust aggressors". Here in Canada, we don't need to live in fear of "unjust agressors". I know a few people who own guns here, but they are hunters and they always keeps their guns properly locked and unloaded. I can't say I've ever met a Canadian who owned a gun for self-defence because it's just not necessary.
Where did I claim that everyone must own a gun to be on constant defense? I was simply pointing the difference between the two statements that the parent saw as being in conflict. And I thank you for bringing up another point. I simply spoke from a self-defense point of view, but the hunting viewpoint also refutes the apparent conflict.
Note: I posted this originally as an anonymous coward by accident. Thus the apparent duplication.
Hint: The pro-life movement is not about limiting abortions after 6 months or some other deadline. The pro-life movement is about banning abortions in all cases.
Sure we are. That deadline happens to be conception, the point at which two pieces of two separate organisms fuse to become a single new organism.
I'm pro-gun and pro-life.
From a European perspective this looks like a really odd combination.
And from my point of view, your perspective is myopic if you can't differentiate between a general respect for innocent human life and a willingness to defend that life from an unjust aggressor.
Slashdot Mirror
Making a gun is easy. You can literally make a .22 "handgun" from a .22 shell, a radio antenna and a handfull of other pieces. Do a google for zip guns.
Hell, if you want a low tech firearm, look at a black powder pistol. You can make one with hand tools, and you don't even need a casing for the ammo. Plenty of power, and your ammo is a ball bearing.
Roland Deschain of Gilead, I believe.
which is that many sources believed to be liberal by those sufficiently conservative enough are actually fairly moderate (at worst) AND that that can have an impact on the quality of the stories.
Actually, I think that this simple test is applicable to either side of the political spectrum(someone care to run it on Rush or Coulter?).
I would assume that an unbiased source would either refrain from using biased labeling, or would use that labeling in roughly equal proportions. Couple that with polls which regularly show that mainstream media workers hold political views to the left of the average American, and I think that the case for a liberal media bias is fairly strong.
And you are missing the point entirely. We are talking specifically about measuring bias. The way you label something is an indicator of that bias. I see it as a fairly accurate measure. It works equally for the right or the left.
I don't pretend that this is in any way scientific, but after having to listen to NPR all the time(my boss liked it), I began seeing a serious bias in the wording of the news programs.
They seemed to label anything to the "right" as right-wing or conservative. Things to the "left" generally escaped the left-wing or liberal labels. It occured to me that people generally label things they are opposed to, and don't do so for things they agree with.
So, to test whether or not I was right in my perception of NPRs labeling, I went to npr.org, and looked up "right wing" and "left wing." As of this morning, the first search found 9 pages of articles. The second found 4. And the "left wing" search included many articles about the shuttle disaster. Similarly, a search for conservative found 50 pages(which I think is the max returnable number of pages, so who knows how many it really could find), versus 42 pages for a search for liberal.
Try to interject a topic of dispute, such as abortion. A search on "conservative abortion" found 5 pages. A search on "liberal abortion" found 2. A search on "pro life" finds 3 pages. "Anti abortion" finds 7.
The problem is not that stories don't get reported(although that happens, too). It is that the issues are consistantly framed in favor of a more left leaning viewpoint.
Well, you might check out some of the posts here: Scubaboard
Divers tend to be concerned with such things.
And my point is, it is pathetic to have to assume that your machine will be compromised for running a user-space application. I routinely download patches for applications from the server they are going on. That requires firing up a web browser. The difference, perhaps, is that I do that from Mac OSX and Linux machines. Provided I am not doing something like running the browser as root, I do not fear a compromise.
Call me lax, but I've never had a compromise in 10+ years.
If your doing web browsing on your server then you sould expect nothing but bad things to happen.
That is so screwed up, I can hardly understand it. Are you REALLY so conditioned to security holes that this is an expected outcome?
I was working on a PC at a local business this summer. I spent 5 hours wiping out 1900+ spyware infection points. I had to wipe them out in chunks, because attempting to wipe the whole list locked up the computer. Apparently, this company was OK with the employees surfing porn on work computers. That was the worst machine, but most of the rest also had spyware and virus problems.
I have to agree completely. Most of my clients are moving to LCD on their own. I don't stock them(I mostly build gaming rigs), but I sure do set a lot of them up.
The ONLY people I know of who purchase eMacs in this area(mid-Kansas) are people who only buy Mac anyway. Period. I haven't even seen eMacs in schools yet. Most of the Mac- centric schools I go to still use older iMacs.
One problem I have seen is the stock memory in an eMac. More to the point, the lack thereof. The last eMac I worked on was a dog with the standard 128M. That brings the percentage of eMacs that I have seen that were nearly unusable with stock memory to 100%. We discovered quickly that FileMaker would kill an eMac with little effort. Run Classic and any other app, and you would think that you had a shiny 386 in that box.
I wonder if they would mark any post in this thread as insightful.
Oh for pity's sake, what a Nazi.
Ahh, the perfect rebuttal. Call your opponent a Nazi.
By that logic, infertile heterosexual couples -- or horrors, infertile het couples with adoptive children! -- constitute an "artificial social structure" with no "compelling reason" for the state to recognize them.
That doesn't follow. Infertility is a biological defect, a disease. Gender, on the other hand, is not.
Do you libs even get what's going on here? Does German disapproval of "artificial means" of "maintaining the alien Jew" ring a fucking bell?
Again with the Nazi argument. Very intelligent. I even agree that some of the rights in question should be granted to anyone, but I am a Nazi regardless. And people wonder why there is a divide in this country, when some consider breathless hyperbole to be part of a debate.
Are you suggesting that you think most Americans oppose abortion? If so then methinks it's you who is not consonant with most Americans.
That's why, whenever an abortion bill is put to the people, it fails? Read the polls. The majority of people want at least some restriction on abortion. For example, the latest Gallup poll on abortion(look it up on their website, free reg. required), which shows only 41% of people as labeling themselves pro-life, a full 75% were for at least some restrictions on abortion, and 61% were for restricting most abortions. That fits the definition of most to me. That is a far cry from the Democratic party line of unfettered access.
As for me, my philosophy does not emcompass accepting murder, so I am not willing to stop at just "some restrictions."
Every judge believes that is what they are doing, and every partisian says that is what their favorite judges does, and every partisian says that opposing judges are "activist judges" violating that.
Simple. If you can show a logical process of derivation from the actual Constitution, you're golden. If there are two equally logical results, then it should be thrown back to the legislature for clarification. And if you can't handle the task of proving a logical statement, then you shouldn't be a judge.
The constitution inherently requires interpretation. Sometimes one part comes into conflict with another part.
Indeed. That is one of the major points of having the judicial system, if it not? If there is an actual conflict, then it should be sent back to the legislature.
You can write entire books on the nuances of "Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of speech". Wait, did I say you could write *a* book on Free Speech? Hell, you can write a dozen books merely on its conflicts with the copyright clause.
When did copyright come into this? I'd love to read those books, though, because I see no conflict between the two when neither is abused.
Is there a right to privacy? And if so, is it implied in the 4th or hidden in the 9th?
It certainly looks explicit in the 4th. However, you might notice that it is not an absolute right.
For my first step in answering, I'd like to ask you a question: Some years ago most Americans disagreed with interracial marriage. Would you suggest that it be forced on them?
Let's break it down, shall we? Let's have this pool:
A - white male
B - black male
C - white female
D - black female
Now, start with a monoracial heterosexual grouping: AC. AC can beget children, present a male and female role model, etc. Replace A with B. BC can do the same. From a functional point of view, AC, BC, AD and BD are equivalent.
AA, AB, BB, CC, CD and DD are not. They require an external element to achieve the functionality inherent in the biologically grounded unions. As such, they represent an artificial social structure. And I fail to see the compelling reason for the state to redefine marriage to include an artificial social structure.
Now, this brings up some interesting side points. One of the reasons brought up in favor of homosexual marriages is the lack of delegated benefits that a partner could have. For example, the distribution of property after death(not only property, but also life insurance benefits), or medical decisions. It seems to me that a person should always be able to delegate those decisions to any person they choose. I have seen it come into play with older people living with best friends, siblings, etc. So, I support that aspect of the issue.
Your response is proof that the country is irreparably split. You apparently follow an extreme right wing ideology that cannot be countered by what I would perceive as reasonable argument.
/." thing breaks down. I don't think we should be in the Middle East in the first place. If we weren't, we would have no need of maintaining a bunch of allies. Trading partners? Sure. Allies? This isn't WWII. Invest in small scale nuclear reactors, wean ourselves from oil, and let the African continent deal with its own problems. Plus, that frees up resources that would go into the military.
My post was largely flippant commentary. However, I concur with your feeling of a split. That's similar to how I feel when watching the Democratic party. They seem utterly bewildered today, as they watched a flood of grass root conservatives reject their platform. They haven't grasped the point that their view is not consonant with that of most Americans. Their staunch support for certain things(abortion, the proper place for government, etc) makes it purely impossible for me to seriously consider voting for Democrats, unless they buck their party line.
Social security- it's not enough to say it's a problem. What's your workable suggestion to fix it? It's easy to tear things down but it's difficult to build. The Republicans have proposed crap.
First, where in the Constitution is the mandate that the government should provide retirement benefits? Health care and even disability? Sure, we can discuss that.
I am 29. I know, KNOW, that I will receive jack squat from Social Security, because the numbers don't add up. SS can only work if the average worker dies before they pull out their share of the money. Well, guess what....
Now, I didn't know this was Nightline, but off the top of my head:
1) Take it out of the hands of the feds, and make it a state issue.
2) Make it opt in. Let those who are to accept personal fiscal responsibility set up their retirement as they see fit.
and, 3) Make it an extreme backup, for those who fall through the cracks. Let the average American work it out themselves.
Allies - much as you may want it, a country cannot stand alone in this world. Good relationships are important, and they don't require giving up sovereignty.
See, this is where that "pigeon-hole someone's political views based on 10 lines from
Don't know about you, but I like to travel and see the world. There are many places in the world I will not go to due to safety concerns. The list of unsafe places is bound to increase. I don't want to live in a fortress America. I want to be free.
So do I. You misread my statement. It was meant cynically. I do not believe that we will see an increase in attacks on Americans in most countries. We might see an increase in the Middle East, but, as I explained above, we shouldn't be involved there anyway, and we will incur wrath no matter what policy we follow there. The only solutions are 1) magically changing human nature to make all the warring factions there play nice or 2) get the hell out and let them deal with their own issues.
Federal government - explain to me how this country would work without a Federal government? What about funding for armed forces? We're going to need them.
I should have written "riiiiiiiight", as in, I think that declaring that the Federal government is going to go broke is hyperbole. Now, a weakened Federal government, in the context of increased state rights? I would love to see that.
Now, the hot button topics that actually got me to bother typing this in have disappeared from the conversation, apparently. So let's revisit those, shall we?
Conservative Judges
In recent years, judges have tended to be judged by the political spectrum that benefits most from their decisions.
Forget liberal and conservative, then. Give me a judge who makes their decision based on the actual Constitution, and not their own ideology.
* ultra conservative supreme court appointments
About damned time.
* ruining of Social Security
It's a pyramid scheme. Figure out something different.
* relationships with allies severed
Buh-bye.
* inability for Americans to safely travel overseas
So, the populations of various countries are going to start assinating US citizens?
* the imposition of fundamentalist christian morality on all citizens (prayer in school, no abortion, discrimination and violence against gays, teaching creationism, etc)
Prayer? Not likely. Abortion? I hope so. Discrimnation against gays? I assume you are talking about gay marriage mostly. The people are speaking. Or is it only democracy if they say what you want to hear? Creationism? The Federal government shouldn't be messing with education anyway.
* bankruptcy of the Federal government due to grandiose overspending and insufficient tax revenue
Right.
I bet dollars to doughnuts that if you were diagnosed with Parkinsons or if you suffered a spinal cord injury and the only hope you had was embryonic stem cell research, you wouldn't have a problem with it.
You're on. In my case, it's a family predisposition to diabetes. I fully recognize what my fate could be, and I have no qualms with saying that my stance on embryonic stem cell research would be exactly the same.
I find it extremely unethical that anyone would stand in the way of potentially finding cures for many diseases. That is, essentially, what you do when you stand in the way of embryonic stem cell research.
Use adult stem cells. No issue there. Heck, I'll even donate some of mine.
When your "ethics" put the value of cells doomed to die anyway above those that are living, I would call that egregiously unethical.
Last time I checked, we were all just a bunch of cells doomed to die anyway.
Actually, they are still making some pretty cool Z-80 related chips.
Actually, according to the Book of Lost Tales, Saruman did secretly wander around the Shire for a time. He was marking out routes for his operatives later, and gathering up sources of leaf. He had to hide his interest in that area to avoid being embarassed by Gandalf.
I'm glad you are consistent (it's amazing how many "pro-life" folks say IVF is OK, which is completely incomprehensible).
Thanks.
If the technology is developed to clone a baby from cells of an adult human, does that mean that not cloning yourself would violate your ethics? It is ensuring that viable life would fail to develop.
No. This would be equivalent to me considering it murder for failing to impregnate every woman I can. The absence of an action is not the same as actively doing something. For example, my failing to stop someone from falling from a building is in no way equivalent to me pushing them off.
If the technology were to develop to permit in vivo splitting of a blastocyst, so as to produce identical twins rather than one, would it be incumbent on the potential mother to do it? No other life is destroyed, and this increases the amount of life produced by the same set of cells.
The point is not to produce as much life as possible, but rather to protect life that is already there, so this is irrelevant.
If not, until the number of potential fetuses is determined, is it accurate to describe it as "an" organism rather than merely a cluster of human cells?
The number of individual organisms is irrelevant. If one fetus is worthy of protection in my eyes, why would two or more(whether they've finished dividing or not) change that?
A blanket protection of human cells, of course, requires all sex to be vaginal and unprotected (remember the Monty Python skit?) and that cancer could not be treated, among other bizarre things.
And is as unnecessary as it is bizarre. That's where Monty Python got it wrong. It wasn't the sperm, it was what one(or more, in rare cases) of the sperm joined with eggs to become.
Except, of course, that 70% of the time that "new organism" never develops past a blastocyst.
OK, so your logic is, since a certain percentage of organisms die at stage X of their life cycle, it is permissible to kill them at that cycle. It seems to me that your principle would make it permissible to kill anything, anytime.
(By the way, should in vitro fertilization be outlawed? A great majority of those embryos get destroyed, you know.)
Yes, that follows exactly.
it is not a single organism until it is no longer dependant on the host and can make a sentiant decision.
... thats not logicical.
An axiom which I disagree with.
If you want everything to have the gift of life, then you can raise the children. All of them. Wait
That doesn't fly:
"If you want every murder victim to be saved, then you can provide for all of their needs henceforth."
or
"If you want to save every starving person in Africa, then you can be completely responsible for caring for all of them after that."
Heck, apply it to the extinction of species("you can give money to support every whale you want saved"). Are you willing to hold everyone else who fights against some injustice responsible to the same degree that you hold pro-lifers?
But, to answer your question, I do what I can to support those whose choose not to kill their children. A mother needs a place to stay? My door is open. Food? Clothing? I'll provide it, to the best of my ability. And I am not alone. Noone needs to be forced into an abortion when there are literally millions of people waiting to help them.
Kind of like forcing someone who was raped or had a condom break to keep and raise a child in a shitty enviroment.
Pull your head from whereever it is right now, and pop open your local newspaper. Look in the adoption section of the classifieds. Oh, wow, someone willing, no, begging, to be allowed to raise a child.
Not everyone live's in suburbia in a two story home that is kid-friendly. Some people KNOW that they are not ready for a child, and some people know that they dont WANT the child.
Therefore, they should engage in a behavior of which the biological POINT is to have a child.
And save your bullshit rhetoric about adoption, its a broken system that doesnt work and can leave children as ward's of the state
Yeah, because all of those kids in state custody would rather be dead. Oh, wait, no they don't. But we should ignore that, and rely on a system based on killing rather than fix a "broken system" that doesn't.
God didnt give you the right to tell people how to live their live's, he/she/it alone can judge people. You fucktards keep thinking that you have the right to control other people and their choices in life newsflash asshole: Your god supposedly gave us FREE will, according to your religion we are supposed to be able to make our own choices good or bad.
At what point did I bring God into it?
What you religious nutbags are doing is no different than what the nazi's were doing. Your just not doing it to the extreme they were. yet.
So, the Nazi's protested against an injustice? No, wait, they attempted genocide. I haven't managed to kill a single person, let alone a whole race. It's almost as if your post is complete bullshit.
but if the seperate organism is unable to sustain it's own life and requires a host for survival, isn't it really just a paracite?
Um, no, unless you believe that normal parts of the human life cycles are diseases. I suppose someone holding such an irrational view of human life could come to such a conclusion.
Boy, the US must be a dangerous place to live if you're constantly having to defend yourself from "unjust aggressors". Here in Canada, we don't need to live in fear of "unjust agressors". I know a few people who own guns here, but they are hunters and they always keeps their guns properly locked and unloaded. I can't say I've ever met a Canadian who owned a gun for self-defence because it's just not necessary.
Where did I claim that everyone must own a gun to be on constant defense? I was simply pointing the difference between the two statements that the parent saw as being in conflict. And I thank you for bringing up another point. I simply spoke from a self-defense point of view, but the hunting viewpoint also refutes the apparent conflict.
Note: I posted this originally as an anonymous coward by accident. Thus the apparent duplication.
Hint: The pro-life movement is not about limiting abortions after 6 months or some other deadline. The pro-life movement is about banning abortions in all cases.
Sure we are. That deadline happens to be conception, the point at which two pieces of two separate organisms fuse to become a single new organism.
I'm pro-gun and pro-life. From a European perspective this looks like a really odd combination.
And from my point of view, your perspective is myopic if you can't differentiate between a general respect for innocent human life and a willingness to defend that life from an unjust aggressor.