If voting only took 5 minutes, you'd have a point. Instead it takes gas money, wear and tear on your car, and a lot more than 5 minutes (sometimes hours). Making voting easier is a must, and is probably more useful than offering a cash prize to one voter.
In Oregon, even before vote-by-mail, we had this interesting thing called Permanent Absentee Registration- you could choose to vote by mail and have 3 weeks to find 5 minutes to vote and drop your ballot in the mail.
When more than 70% of the registered voters were using it and the polling places were essentially empty anyway, they did away with the polling places (sort of- on election day all the old poling places have drive-up drop off boxes, for those who didn't get their ballots in three days early).
$200/month=$2400/year. And union contracts are only availabe for ~8% of the jobs in the United States these days- most corporations fight like hell against unions.
Yep- and he was right to some extent. It took me years to break the spaghetti coding habit (even if it was 6502 Assembly that enforced that habit far more than Basic- when all you have is a miniassembler that pokes the values directly into memory, inserting lines in a program is damned hard without a jump out and a jump back. I'd put 3 NOPs in between each line so that I'd be able to code a JSR if needed).
Hmm, 4-8 million children per year. Out of 280 million people.
Actually 350 million people- you forgot the illegal immigrants and the fact that they're coming in at a much faster rate than they're dying off. They're the real bottom rung anyway.
Interesting, when you consider that overall deathrate for the entire US population is only 0.88%, which translates to total deaths at any age as only 2-3 million, much less children who die, much less children who die of malnutrition. Somehow, I think those numbers of your's are slightly exaggerated. ANd if you got it from the place I last looked for starvation numbers worldwide, you should read a bit more closely. The definition of "hunger" they use would include me, since I skipped lunch today.
And the definition of malnutrition they use includes vitamin deficiencies as well. Agreed.
With the obvious exception of property taxes, you pretty much can do so now. My grandmother grew almost everything she ate in her back yard. And she'd have grown all of it if she had been willing to give up on her Coca Cola....
That's a pretty large exception in my state thanks to No Child Left Behind being underfunded. I pay $200 a month in property taxes alone- and that's after the 30% other taxes that I have to pay to earn the $200.
Hmm, similar prices for similar models. Given similar costs for labour and materials (which makes sense, given that they are similar cars), it makes sense that they would cost about the same. Especially given that if one of them charged much more than the other's, the cheap one would take all the business from the other makers.
And yet- the price keeps going up and the costs of building the cars keep going down....
My first car cost 2700 dollars new in 1972. The last new car I bought cost $12,000 in 1985 (I decided to give up new cars for Lent after 1985). After adjusting for inflation, in 1972 dollars, the last car cost about $4600. A bit more, but not out to lunch, especially considering the difference between the two (the turbocharged engine, for one), not unreasonable. When I adjust for inflation, I notice that modern cars are about the same cost as they were 40 years ago, even ignoring the goodies you couldn't get in your car back then....
Inflation=free money to the bankers. Shouldn't be allowed at all- but that's the price we pay for having fictional money.
P-Code Card for the TI-99/4A! Though I learned TI-Basic, Applesoft Basic, TMS9900 Assembly, Motorola 6502 Assembly, Sinclair Basic, Commodore Basic, Microsoft Basic and Atari Basic all before Pascal.
Cutting this down somewhat- because you did have some good points on why the system failed before.
Just curious. Why is disease prevention included?
Purely for keeping knowledge around- as a lesson learned from the Black Plague on what happens to technical ability when you lose a third of your population.
Hmm, know anyone who has starved to death in the USA this year? I don't. I believe I've read about such happening, as a result of criminal acts (locking some woman in the basement, for instance).
Actually, according to Unicef, 12 million children will die of malnourishment in the United States this year. Not real starvation for most of them; just a lack of the basic sustenance needed to survive. Even during the Clinton Administration, when the DOW was hitting 10,000 regularly, we were losing someplace between 4-8 million children a year to malnourishment IN THE UNITED STATES. My state in particular seems quite hard hit- our hunger rate is the highest in the nation.
Just curious. Do you donate all your income to charity/government but the minimum to meet your needs? If so, where does the computer you were using to answer me come from? Because it surely doesn't meet any definition of "need" I ever heard of
Actually, donate is a relative term- I broke the 26 months of unemployment by going to work for government. My life is owned by the government now- I barely interface at all with private industry.
What a horrible future you have pictured for humanity! So, everyone should be a subsistence farmer? Let's move back to well beyond the Dark Ages, shall we?
Or rather, we use technology to move to a point where we no longer need an economy- your choice, it's your life after all.
Odd that price controls have never actually worked that well. If they had, we'd be using them to make ourselves rich, wouldn't we?
Large numbers of people are- that's how the stock market and oligopolies work. You and I aren't getting rich- but there are plenty of people manipulating prices to get rich. You didn't really think the cost of pumping oil took a 40% leap overnight, did you?
I'll believe in the nanofactory when they go on the market. You are aware those things (if and when they exist) will use energy? You do have a plan to secure the unlimited energy required for unlimited material wealth, right?
Several- mainly with using the environment around all of us and internal to our own property to generate electricity, such as with PV panels, nuclear batteries, windmills, and microhydropower turbines that can even work in a downspout from a gutter. There's plenty of energy to be found all around us, it's just a matter of using it properly.
It is not true that the LLC has the power to coerce people into paying their price. Unless, of course, you're talking about a Monopoly.
Or an oligopoly- much like the Medieval Guild, an oligopoly sets prices- why do you think cars cost the same for similar models? Certainly not COST of building the car, which has been going down for quite some time now.
Wouldn't be surprised one way or the other. And yet, if you believe strongly in universal equality, why do you use the Internet, since it is inherently unequal? After all, not everyone has it, and noone will have it once we reach the point of "I have the skills I need to survive, and don't need anyone else".
Forced to to survive in a capitalistic society. If the damn government would leave me alone to run my own property as I wished, that would change quickly.
Not to be off topic, but certification courses teach you just that -- How to pass a certification. That means you've learned how to pass a test, not how to understand the fundamental concepts of the subjects revelant to the field.
Not off topic at all- and a very good point! This is one of the major reasons why the inflated salaries used in advertisements for these certification courses rarely come true.
He didn't say encourage loan amounts, simply what you can use loans for. And yes I agree that there is some overcharging, but ultimatly if people would wise up and understand they have to pay these loans back eventually prices would go down. Or maybe the people taking these classes think the classes will pay for themselves in extra earnings, therefor the price isn't inflated.
In my area- New Horizons does everything they can, including false advertising, to lead people to that last conclusion. Just last week they had an advert in the Oregonian that a person with an A+ certification, an MCSE, and Cisco certification, could be earning $74,000/year with NO EXPERIENCE. If you believe that, there's a bridge in Canby, OR I'd like to sell you.
You have a peculiarly myopic view of the Dark Ages. The Guild Economy was just another form of Monopoly (granted by the Crown).
So is the Welfare State. So is Capitalism to a large extent (there's no real difference between the Church/Crown and the Oligarchial Dictatorship).
Noblesse Oblige was more spoken of than actually practiced.
And yet, one could get excommunicated for not doing it.
And, as I recall from the history books, Banking was handled by the simple technique of Rulers borrowing from the Jews, then inciting a pogrom when said Jews insisted on repayment.
Which was also against the teachings of the Church and could get a ruler hauled before the Inquisition.
*Laughs* You really must read more history. The Roman economy wasn't as slave-based as the Spartan economy, but it was probably a close second. It wasn't "honest labor" that resulted in slave-run farms driving the family farmers out of business.
And where were the slaves in the Christian Era?
The Catholic Church's ideas about a welfare state included "fast on Friday". Read some history, and you find that that particular idea was instituted as a way of stretching the food supply. As if eating only six days a week reduces your caloric requirements...as idiotic an idea as banning crossbows as "too terrible to allow in warfare". Which they also did. Note that neither of these ideas were particularly successful.
Actually- I think you mean "Fish on Friday" as a support for the fishing industry- and it was so successfull that even today during Lent firshermen in Catholic nations get a higher price for their fish.
Whatever makes you think that? I think spending three months walking the Oregon Trail would be a wonderful way to spend my time. Or sailing the Atlantic in a replica of the Pelican. My preferred hobbies, whether YOU consider them creative or not, all take more than a couple days straight to do, thus are impractical with a 40 hour workweek. And most of them would be impractical with a one-hour workweek. But, given enough free money by the Government, I coulc indulge myself, instead of working to allow someone else to indulge himself.
Why should the Government give you enough free money to indulge yourself, when the basic requirements can be met supplying ONLY basic needs and no more?
umm, no. Most heart attacks aren't life-threatening, actually. Many are, and the ones that are are the ones we hear about. That said, so why are diseases not part of a "natural life"? And where do you get off deciding for the rest of us what is acceptable healthcare?
Disease prevention is- disease treatment isn't neccessarly within the confines of NEED. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is what this is based on- not wants and not luxuries.
So if I offer NO healthcare to anyone, that is superior to offering whatever healthcare each person can afford? Hmm, looks like I have a future role as a Saint, then! Herewith: ALL HEALTHCARE IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL! ANY healthcare you get is wrong, wrong, wrong! That's equal for everyone, right? And so it's not a matter of letting economic cost prevent the defense of life?
At least if you provide no healthcare- you're not providing abortions or euthanasia or stem cell research either.
Frankly, that answer of your's was idiotic. If I ration everyone to one loaf of bread per month, that's NOT letting economic costs prevent the defense of life, but if I let everyone work enough to buy all the bread they want, it is?
And how are you going to let everyone work enough to buy all the bread they want? Private industry has shown itself to be spectacularily bad at providing full universal employment, let alone even employment enough for everybody to fullfill their basic needs.
If you take the UDHR to mean that we should divide up the pot so that everyone gets just barely enough to eat, and has the standard of living of your a
A changing workforce requires us to modernize our financial aid programs. I will make loans available to help workers pay for short-term training that leads to an industry-recognized credential or certificate. We must also revise outdated loan restrictions to expand access to competency-based programs, allow students and workers to take courses throughout the year, and eliminate current restrictions to promote distance education.
All this will do is raise the cost on competency-based programs. Already New Horizons charges $17,500 for their suite of certification courses- NOT because this is what it costs, but because this is what can be gotten from a student loan.
It's a representative Democracy which means that people who understand what's best for everyone vote for those who don't. That's the basic idea anyway.
Too bad the basic idea falls flat- and really means that people who understand what is best for themselves and how to get it out of everybody else votes for the everybody else.
Just as my copy of Open Office still reads DOS format text files just fine, my hardware solid state music player that I buy in 2050 will still play MP3. Unlike 8-track and Beta (hardware formats), there's no barrier to force old software formats out of the market.
Problem is this is nothing new. Windows AutoPC, aka CE AutoPC, aka Windows CE running on an AutoPC, aka Windows Automotive has now been out for several years and runs on an insane number of dashboard radio/CD/DVD/GPS units.
*laughs* We were wealthier during the Great Depression than 99.9% of humanity had ever been at any time in history. In the Dark Ages, do you really think we could have supported a welfare state?
In the Dark Ages (which I call the Catholic Ages) we did support a Welfare State in the form of the Guild Economy, with a Just Wage for a Fair Price, and a baning of the evils of the banking industry, and feudal lords who followed the concept of Noblese Oblige (the obligation of the wealthy to take care of the poor). Anybody who supports a welfare state should look to what you call the "Dark Ages" as a 1000 year experiment in how to accomplish it.
The Roman Empire tried it. Only for people who lived in Rome, and they had to enslave much of Europe and North Africa to do it, but they tried it. Wasn't "universal" by any means.
After the fall of the Empire, the Holy Roman Catholic Church also tried it and succeeded. Funny how you call honest labor "enslavement" though. But that's just your myoptic lens of a capitalist society.
Alright. Come up with an incentie that'll work. Tell me why *I* should work, if I don't have to.
Better yet- why don't you tell me how not to work. Even during 26 months of technical unemployment, I still got up at 5:30 every day, and put in an 8 hour day of filling out resumes, typing up cover letters, taking care of my son to save money on child care, and programming on open source projects. I put out 2600 resumes and applications, three open source projects, one closed source project, was primary home sysadmin for a network of 5 computers, did virus detection and elimination jobs and cleaned spyware for 46 customers, and still managed to take care of an infant. I did this because if I didn't I would have had to kill myself for being a lazy slob.
I'm reasonable, sometimes, but I doubt seriously you could come up with something that would motivate me to get up at 5:30 every morning (as I do now). Especially since I can think of so many better ways of spending my days.
All of my better ways of spending my days are also work- why is your life so incredibly empty of ability that you can't find a *creative* way to spend your time?
So, what is a "natural" death? Is that when you have a heart attack? I Know people who did that before the age of 45. And survived quite nicely, thanks to our horribly flawed healthcare system.
Only due to artificial heroic life support- which is not a requirment in the Catholic Seamless Garment of Life. Disease prevention is- but that's relatively simple to do with very few doctors.
Face it, any level of healthcare short of the best we know how to provide (not the level we can afford, but what we know how to do) is "rationed", if the Government decides how much everyone gets. WHich is to say, we're letting economic cost prefent the defense of life.
And all I'm saying is, equal rationing is not letting economic cost prevent the defense of life. Unequal rationing is.
And yet, those countries I named were among the poorest in the world today. It's not "the rich" preventing adoption of your UDHR. It's the governments that would have to pay for it. The fact that the UDHR requires universal compliance at an international level to be completely fulfilled doesn't make it any easier. And that it requires that nations turn over part of their sovereignty to an international body they have no reason to trust has their interests at heart makes it even tougher.
Most poor countries have their upper class that is more interested in their own well being than having a rich country. The United States is also a poor country in this regard.
Nonsense! Gold standard isn't required to determine the value of a dollar. Try using the price of 1 pound (or Kg, if you like metric) of bread as an index.
Since it doesn't stay the same from day to day or even location to location, it's a worthless index.
You're making a generic anti-CEO argument where it doesn't apply.
I'm also making a statement about engineers who move beyond engineering into managment.
Bill Joy is absolutely a superior engineer and programmer. Just read his biography; he got where he is by writing software better than the alternatives. If you want to attack some highly paid executive for abusing his subordinates' creativity, you need a better target. Mr Joy wasn't even an executive!
So? He was when he retired, AND still has stock in Sun (my comment doesn't just cover C-level executives, it also covers investors).
Furthermore, you are additionally wrong by writing in the present tense. Bill Joy is retired, and no longer part of any corp payment.
His retirement fund is invested in stocks, isn't it?
You are aware that this whole social security/socialism concept only got going big when civilization became wealthy enough to afford it, right
Actually- it got going at a time when civilization was relatively poor, during the Great Depression, when Western Civilization was in the middle of a MAJOR economic collapse worldwide.
Face it, if 99% of everyone is working their butts off just to avoid famine more often than every ten years or so, "universal health care" and "environmental protection" aren't even on the radar.
Actually, universal health care is (it's one of the basic Maslow needs) but I'd agree that environmental protection isn't. What does environmental protection have to do with preventing abortion?
The USA is a $12 trillion economy. That translates into ~$2000 per person, worldwide. American Poverty Level doesn't meet those standards, so it's safe to assume that $10,000 per person would be insufficient. $15,000 might be closer. So you'd need to suck up 8 times the USA economy every year just to support the UDHR. I'm not sure, but it seems to me I remember that the USA economy is more than 15% of the world economy. Which would make the minimal requirements for implementation of the UDHR at rather more than the entire world economy.
Dollars mean nothing- at all. That measurement of production is completely mythological- hasn't had any real value since we left the gold standard behind. Sure- it would mean we'd need a different economy. So what? The economy is just an invention of mankind, an artifact.
And bet on it - if there is no profit to be had from working hard, then noone will work hard. Sort of like the Soviet Union ("They pretend to pay us, so we pretend to work"). So you'd probably need an economy at least twice as big as the minimum to support UDHR, just to insert enough profit motive to get people to do the work needed. Again, WAY more than the world's economy today.
Profit is just one way to motivate people- using Maslow's hierarchy of needs is another- Platonic Wage Scales is a third. Mankind is inventive- we'd come up with something to replace crass profit for incentives.
Having said that, yes, I agree you need incentives of SOME FORM to work.
Really? So the government should guarantee immortality for every citizen? Or failing that, that the level of medical care for everyone should be the same as for the President?
Or rather, the President shouldn't have better medical care than the people in the first place- that way leads to class warfare.
Interesting, since that would require that EACH person have two or three personal physicians dedicated only to keeping him/her/it healthy.
There ARE other ways to do it- only the rich think universal medical care should be that level of guarantee.
So, for 6 billion people, we'd need 15 billion doctors. hmm, I see a problem here. Or should we just ration healthcare? Which is just another way of letting economic cost prevent the defense of life.
How about this- we define a minimal level of medical care and let NATURAL DEATH take care of the rest? There's a reason why the seamless garment of life is from CONCEPTION to NATURAL DEATH.
Face it, like it or not, wealth is what will make this whole UDHR possible. And not just a little wealth - great, heaping gobs of it. Mountains of money. If we choke our economy trying to implement it now, we'll never get to where we can afford it.
You mean kind of like the Social Security System couldn't possibly have been implemented in 1936 because there wasn't enough wealth in the country to do it?
If I was a betting man, I'd guesstimate 50 years, given no major changes in resource availability, 100+ years given the current outlook for fossil fuel depletion. And that's assuming that the political situation changes to allow UDHR. Won't work until every sovereign nation agrees to it, and I don't see, for instance, North Korea going along with it, or Sudan, or Libya, or...not for a very long time, anyway.
Only due to a total lack of morality on the part of the rich.
Really? So, if the next generation's Hitler were to invade Belgium, UDHR advocates wouldn't shoot back? I find that extremely unlikely. "These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations." looks like a pretty big caveat to cover any, shall we say, abrogation of those Rights...
I'd agree with that- shooting back at Hitler is in support of those rights, even for the rude unspeakable word. (obref- Life, The Universe, and Everything book and radio play).
Has the UN ever figured out just how much it would cost to implement this particular piece of rhetoric? Just curious....
You know- that's the thing that gets to me. We say we're for the right to life- but NO conservative is willing to give up even a single dollar of profit to support it. To me, what does it matter if we ruin the entire economy, as long as everybody has the right to life (and support of that life in the form of food, clothing, shelter, water, and medical care)? But NO- we can't actually give up our worship of mammon to support a universal right to life. At that point, I say if you're not willing to give up all hope of ever being rich in return for a society where the right to life is supported, you shouldn't be able to call yourself pro-life. Economic cost should NEVER be an issue preventing the defense of life.
His hypothetical "make it cost as much as having a baby" in his Health Care reform won't survive the first legal challenge. One thing you have to give the pro-abortion people credit for is understanding the "slippery slope" idea. They oppose EVERYTHING that affects the availability of abortion even the tiniest amount. Because they know that if we reach the point where abortion is illegal in any way, however slight, the line between illegal and legal will continue moving back the other way.
Not entirely true- NARAL has supported legislation that has helped women become mothers in the past, such as the WIC program, pregnancy coverage in Medicare, and so on. You see, that's the problem- the true pro-abortionists don't have much power, and most of the other side is merely pro-choice, and that includes choosing life. Anything that supports a woman's RIGHT TO CHOOSE they'll support- it's just a matter of using the correct terminology.
Fact is, abortion is going to continue exactly as is until a new Supreme Court rules that some form(s) of abortion are regulatable.
Note, by the way, that my duaghter required my written permission to get her ears pierced. An abortion she could have done without even letting me know she was missing school that day.
That IS regulation- it's a HIPPA issue. And actually, under that relatively new law, if she chooses to disallow you from visiting her in the hospital as a minor when she's undergoing heart surgery, that's her right. (I know- we used HIPPA to keep my father-in-law out of the birthing room during the birth of my son at my wife's request).
You're using the word PEOPLE to mean what I used the word HUMAN to mean.
Where I use the word HUMAN in a much more broad, genetically based species, sense. From that point of view- there's a real problem with American law in that we treat some HUMANS as PEOPLE, and not others.
Prior to the Civil War, Negros weren't "people". Though, as I learned in a historical tour of N'Awlins a few years back, they were considered more "people" than the Irish - once upon a time, when a project required some really hazardous labour, the slaveowners refused to use slaves for the work (since they were valuable property), so Irishmen were brought into the country to do it. THEY were considered expendable enough....
For that matter, in the original form of the Constitution before Ammendments- only 18 year old landowning males were considered people. EVERYBODY else was expendable.
It is very like the situation just pre-Civil War - half the people think they ARE people, half don't.
I'm one of the ones who thing they SHOULD be people- but acknowledge that the current law has yet to catch up with the scientific definition of HUMAN. I use that scientific defintion when interpreting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights- Article 2 clearly states that discriminating against people based on BIRTH is as evil as RACISM, Article 3 states that everyBODY has a right to life, and Article 25 states that we need to provide special economic circumstances for women to have the right to reproduce and become mothers. The fact that these rights are currently missing from the Constitution is a scandal to us all.
And yes, killing people isn't universally wrong. It's not universally wrong ANYWHERE. But, we have an overwhelming majority who agree, more or less, on when it is acceptable
Actually, in the UDHR, killing people is indeed UNIVERSALLY wrong. It's just that the rest of international and individual country law has yet to catch up to what the UN passed in 1948.
I know you mentioned it, but I don't recall the basis you used for claim the Constitution cannot grant citizenship to the unborn. This is not the argument they used for throwing about abortion laws (although it would have actually made far more sense...). I would assume that given the lack of a definitive statement, it falls the states, which is how it was treated before 1973.
It's considered to be implied in a single phrase regarding who can be President (natural born citizens)- all of our federal citizenship law is tied in some way to that phrase, and similar phrases in who can be elected to House and Senate seats. http://bensguide.gpo.gov/3-5/citizenship/
The Majority Opinion for Roe V. Wade states, in part "IT IS THUS APPARENT THAT AT COMMON LAW, AT THE TIME OF THE ADOPTION OF
OUR CONSTITUTION, AND THROUGHOUT THE MAJOR PORTION OF THE 19TH CENTURY,
ABORTION WAS VIEWED WITH LESS DISFAVOR THAN UNDER MOST AMERICAN STATUTES
CURRENTLY IN EFFECT. PHRASING IT ANOTHER WAY, A WOMAN ENJOYED A
SUBSTANTIALLY BROADER RIGHT TO TERMINATE A PREGNANCY THAN SHE DOES IN
MOST STATES TODAY. AT LEAST WITH RESPECT TO THE EARLY STAGE OF
PREGNANCY, AND VERY POSSIBLY WITHOUT SUCH A LIMITATION, THE OPPORTUNITY
TO MAKE THIS CHOICE WAS PRESENT IN THIS COUNTRY WELL INTO THE 19TH
CENTURY. EVEN LATER, THE LAW CONTINUED FOR SOME TIME TO TREAT LESS
PUNITIVELY AN ABORTION PROCURED IN EARLY PREGNANCY. " http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/roe.wade/deci sion/index4.html- and it's in reference to the English Common Law that citizenship and personhood comes into play.
See that's the thing... Kerry talks the talk when it suits him, but he seems far too willing to adjust his position as the situation dictate.
See, that's one thing I like about Kerry- I see it as a sign of intelligence and reason to change one's plans based on outside influences. It's also something I dislike about the President and Vice President, for as you say:
The President and especially the Vice President have spun their pre-war rhetoric retroactively, (essentially because they dumbed down their arguments for war for mass consumption and overplayed their hand), but they haven't materially changed their position. Everything they are saying today they HAD said before the war, just not as much as the smoking gun issues they were trying to produce. I still have to say that if the U.N. were worth the parking tickets it gathers in New York, this whole Iraq thing would have never happened.
I agree with that for sure- had the UN been worth anything at all there would have been a UN invasion of Iraq and a general destruction of all arms long ago. It would have taken a massive increase to UN forces to do so- American generals estimate 740,000 troops and more- but it could have been done.
It's also funny how Clinton didn't get U.N. approval (as I understand it) to go to Kosovo, but no one criticizes him for it. Maybe because it wasn't expensive enough in money and lives.
Actually, I remember it differently- that one of the big complaints about Clinton's little trip to Kosovo was indeed that it was under UN control- to the point of American troops wearing blue helmets and getting their orders from a German general (thus disrupting the standard chain of command). Of course, I was in Klamath Falls at the time- home of surivalists, libertarians, and conspiracy theorists galore- so I got plenty of "This is proof of George Bush's "New World Order" coming true- look out for the Black Helicopters!" rhetoric at the time. I didn't understand then what I now know- that neoliberals and neoconservatives are basically the same stripe- and their marching orders are to turn the governance of the entire world over to the multinational corporations. From that standpoint, it won't matter if Kerry wins or Bush wins- they're both getting their REAL marching
No, he isn't. While the Constitution may very well imply that someone becomes a Citizen at birth, it nowhere implies that someone becomes HUMAN at birth.
Being HUMAN has almost nothing to do with your right for your life to be protected under American Law. A great example is how slaves were treated before the Constitution was ammended to give them personhood. Nobody doubted that a Negro was HUMAN, but since they weren't PEOPLE it was allowable that they be killed. The unborn are in a similar situation, from a legal standpoint.
Of course, the issue never really came up till we acquired the ability to maintain life outside the womb prior to "birth". The ability to do so gave us the necessity of deciding when humanity begins (since killing humans is wrong, but killing other things isn't necessarily wrong, we're pretty much forced to decide what is human and what is not-human, and live with the result). So far, we haven't settled on one universally accepted definition. Thus, the abortion debate.
Within American Law, killing humans isn't universally wrong. Never has been, never will be unless we ammend the Constitution to include a right to life. Which, BTW, I do support- I support ammending our constitution to include all of the rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Lucky you- my grandfather's infamous tolerance level disappeared at 35- I met him when I was 3 but he died that year of a massive heart attack after being a 12-beer-an-hour drunk for 22 years.
However, that's not the main reason I doubt Bush's conversion- I doubt his conversion because he has been known to drink at public functions, and because his mood swings have become quite famous (mood swings of this nature are often an indicator of cocaine addiction). In addition to that, I don't buy into the Once Saved Always Saved mythos- change takes time, you don't become "saved" merely by praying a 30-second prayer.
Slashdot Mirror
If voting only took 5 minutes, you'd have a point. Instead it takes gas money, wear and tear on your car, and a lot more than 5 minutes (sometimes hours). Making voting easier is a must, and is probably more useful than offering a cash prize to one voter.
In Oregon, even before vote-by-mail, we had this interesting thing called Permanent Absentee Registration- you could choose to vote by mail and have 3 weeks to find 5 minutes to vote and drop your ballot in the mail.
When more than 70% of the registered voters were using it and the polling places were essentially empty anyway, they did away with the polling places (sort of- on election day all the old poling places have drive-up drop off boxes, for those who didn't get their ballots in three days early).
$200/month=$2400/year. And union contracts are only availabe for ~8% of the jobs in the United States these days- most corporations fight like hell against unions.
Yep- and he was right to some extent. It took me years to break the spaghetti coding habit (even if it was 6502 Assembly that enforced that habit far more than Basic- when all you have is a miniassembler that pokes the values directly into memory, inserting lines in a program is damned hard without a jump out and a jump back. I'd put 3 NOPs in between each line so that I'd be able to code a JSR if needed).
Hmm, 4-8 million children per year. Out of 280 million people.
Actually 350 million people- you forgot the illegal immigrants and the fact that they're coming in at a much faster rate than they're dying off. They're the real bottom rung anyway.
Interesting, when you consider that overall deathrate for the entire US population is only 0.88%, which translates to total deaths at any age as only 2-3 million, much less children who die, much less children who die of malnutrition. Somehow, I think those numbers of your's are slightly exaggerated. ANd if you got it from the place I last looked for starvation numbers worldwide, you should read a bit more closely. The definition of "hunger" they use would include me, since I skipped lunch today.
And the definition of malnutrition they use includes vitamin deficiencies as well. Agreed.
With the obvious exception of property taxes, you pretty much can do so now. My grandmother grew almost everything she ate in her back yard. And she'd have grown all of it if she had been willing to give up on her Coca Cola....
That's a pretty large exception in my state thanks to No Child Left Behind being underfunded. I pay $200 a month in property taxes alone- and that's after the 30% other taxes that I have to pay to earn the $200.
Hmm, similar prices for similar models. Given similar costs for labour and materials (which makes sense, given that they are similar cars), it makes sense that they would cost about the same. Especially given that if one of them charged much more than the other's, the cheap one would take all the business from the other makers.
And yet- the price keeps going up and the costs of building the cars keep going down....
My first car cost 2700 dollars new in 1972. The last new car I bought cost $12,000 in 1985 (I decided to give up new cars for Lent after 1985). After adjusting for inflation, in 1972 dollars, the last car cost about $4600. A bit more, but not out to lunch, especially considering the difference between the two (the turbocharged engine, for one), not unreasonable. When I adjust for inflation, I notice that modern cars are about the same cost as they were 40 years ago, even ignoring the goodies you couldn't get in your car back then....
Inflation=free money to the bankers. Shouldn't be allowed at all- but that's the price we pay for having fictional money.
P-Code Card for the TI-99/4A! Though I learned TI-Basic, Applesoft Basic, TMS9900 Assembly, Motorola 6502 Assembly, Sinclair Basic, Commodore Basic, Microsoft Basic and Atari Basic all before Pascal.
Procedural is just object oriented monolithic in a single class.
Cutting this down somewhat- because you did have some good points on why the system failed before.
Just curious. Why is disease prevention included?
Purely for keeping knowledge around- as a lesson learned from the Black Plague on what happens to technical ability when you lose a third of your population.
Hmm, know anyone who has starved to death in the USA this year? I don't. I believe I've read about such happening, as a result of criminal acts (locking some woman in the basement, for instance).
Actually, according to Unicef, 12 million children will die of malnourishment in the United States this year. Not real starvation for most of them; just a lack of the basic sustenance needed to survive. Even during the Clinton Administration, when the DOW was hitting 10,000 regularly, we were losing someplace between 4-8 million children a year to malnourishment IN THE UNITED STATES. My state in particular seems quite hard hit- our hunger rate is the highest in the nation.
Just curious. Do you donate all your income to charity/government but the minimum to meet your needs? If so, where does the computer you were using to answer me come from? Because it surely doesn't meet any definition of "need" I ever heard of
Actually, donate is a relative term- I broke the 26 months of unemployment by going to work for government. My life is owned by the government now- I barely interface at all with private industry.
What a horrible future you have pictured for humanity! So, everyone should be a subsistence farmer? Let's move back to well beyond the Dark Ages, shall we?
Or rather, we use technology to move to a point where we no longer need an economy- your choice, it's your life after all.
Odd that price controls have never actually worked that well. If they had, we'd be using them to make ourselves rich, wouldn't we?
Large numbers of people are- that's how the stock market and oligopolies work. You and I aren't getting rich- but there are plenty of people manipulating prices to get rich. You didn't really think the cost of pumping oil took a 40% leap overnight, did you?
I'll believe in the nanofactory when they go on the market. You are aware those things (if and when they exist) will use energy? You do have a plan to secure the unlimited energy required for unlimited material wealth, right?
Several- mainly with using the environment around all of us and internal to our own property to generate electricity, such as with PV panels, nuclear batteries, windmills, and microhydropower turbines that can even work in a downspout from a gutter. There's plenty of energy to be found all around us, it's just a matter of using it properly.
It is not true that the LLC has the power to coerce people into paying their price. Unless, of course, you're talking about a Monopoly.
Or an oligopoly- much like the Medieval Guild, an oligopoly sets prices- why do you think cars cost the same for similar models? Certainly not COST of building the car, which has been going down for quite some time now.
Wouldn't be surprised one way or the other. And yet, if you believe strongly in universal equality, why do you use the Internet, since it is inherently unequal? After all, not everyone has it, and noone will have it once we reach the point of "I have the skills I need to survive, and don't need anyone else".
Forced to to survive in a capitalistic society. If the damn government would leave me alone to run my own property as I wished, that would change quickly.
Not to be off topic, but certification courses teach you just that -- How to pass a certification. That means you've learned how to pass a test, not how to understand the fundamental concepts of the subjects revelant to the field.
Not off topic at all- and a very good point! This is one of the major reasons why the inflated salaries used in advertisements for these certification courses rarely come true.
He didn't say encourage loan amounts, simply what you can use loans for. And yes I agree that there is some overcharging, but ultimatly if people would wise up and understand they have to pay these loans back eventually prices would go down. Or maybe the people taking these classes think the classes will pay for themselves in extra earnings, therefor the price isn't inflated.
In my area- New Horizons does everything they can, including false advertising, to lead people to that last conclusion. Just last week they had an advert in the Oregonian that a person with an A+ certification, an MCSE, and Cisco certification, could be earning $74,000/year with NO EXPERIENCE. If you believe that, there's a bridge in Canby, OR I'd like to sell you.
I think you mean Republicrats and Demonicans....:-)
You have a peculiarly myopic view of the Dark Ages. The Guild Economy was just another form of Monopoly (granted by the Crown).
So is the Welfare State. So is Capitalism to a large extent (there's no real difference between the Church/Crown and the Oligarchial Dictatorship).
Noblesse Oblige was more spoken of than actually practiced.
And yet, one could get excommunicated for not doing it.
And, as I recall from the history books, Banking was handled by the simple technique of Rulers borrowing from the Jews, then inciting a pogrom when said Jews insisted on repayment.
Which was also against the teachings of the Church and could get a ruler hauled before the Inquisition.
*Laughs* You really must read more history. The Roman economy wasn't as slave-based as the Spartan economy, but it was probably a close second. It wasn't "honest labor" that resulted in slave-run farms driving the family farmers out of business.
And where were the slaves in the Christian Era?
The Catholic Church's ideas about a welfare state included "fast on Friday". Read some history, and you find that that particular idea was instituted as a way of stretching the food supply. As if eating only six days a week reduces your caloric requirements...as idiotic an idea as banning crossbows as "too terrible to allow in warfare". Which they also did. Note that neither of these ideas were particularly successful.
Actually- I think you mean "Fish on Friday" as a support for the fishing industry- and it was so successfull that even today during Lent firshermen in Catholic nations get a higher price for their fish.
Whatever makes you think that? I think spending three months walking the Oregon Trail would be a wonderful way to spend my time. Or sailing the Atlantic in a replica of the Pelican. My preferred hobbies, whether YOU consider them creative or not, all take more than a couple days straight to do, thus are impractical with a 40 hour workweek. And most of them would be impractical with a one-hour workweek. But, given enough free money by the Government, I coulc indulge myself, instead of working to allow someone else to indulge himself.
Why should the Government give you enough free money to indulge yourself, when the basic requirements can be met supplying ONLY basic needs and no more?
umm, no. Most heart attacks aren't life-threatening, actually. Many are, and the ones that are are the ones we hear about. That said, so why are diseases not part of a "natural life"? And where do you get off deciding for the rest of us what is acceptable healthcare?
Disease prevention is- disease treatment isn't neccessarly within the confines of NEED. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is what this is based on- not wants and not luxuries.
So if I offer NO healthcare to anyone, that is superior to offering whatever healthcare each person can afford? Hmm, looks like I have a future role as a Saint, then! Herewith: ALL HEALTHCARE IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL! ANY healthcare you get is wrong, wrong, wrong! That's equal for everyone, right? And so it's not a matter of letting economic cost prevent the defense of life?
At least if you provide no healthcare- you're not providing abortions or euthanasia or stem cell research either.
Frankly, that answer of your's was idiotic. If I ration everyone to one loaf of bread per month, that's NOT letting economic costs prevent the defense of life, but if I let everyone work enough to buy all the bread they want, it is?
And how are you going to let everyone work enough to buy all the bread they want? Private industry has shown itself to be spectacularily bad at providing full universal employment, let alone even employment enough for everybody to fullfill their basic needs.
If you take the UDHR to mean that we should divide up the pot so that everyone gets just barely enough to eat, and has the standard of living of your a
A changing workforce requires us to modernize our financial aid programs. I will make loans available to help workers pay for short-term training that leads to an industry-recognized credential or certificate. We must also revise outdated loan restrictions to expand access to competency-based programs, allow students and workers to take courses throughout the year, and eliminate current restrictions to promote distance education.
All this will do is raise the cost on competency-based programs. Already New Horizons charges $17,500 for their suite of certification courses- NOT because this is what it costs, but because this is what can be gotten from a student loan.
It's a representative Democracy which means that people who understand what's best for everyone vote for those who don't. That's the basic idea anyway.
Too bad the basic idea falls flat- and really means that people who understand what is best for themselves and how to get it out of everybody else votes for the everybody else.
I want it to accelerate- so that we get to the actual collapse and give my generation a chance to rule before we retire.
Just as my copy of Open Office still reads DOS format text files just fine, my hardware solid state music player that I buy in 2050 will still play MP3. Unlike 8-track and Beta (hardware formats), there's no barrier to force old software formats out of the market.
Problem is this is nothing new. Windows AutoPC, aka CE AutoPC, aka Windows CE running on an AutoPC, aka Windows Automotive has now been out for several years and runs on an insane number of dashboard radio/CD/DVD/GPS units.
*laughs* We were wealthier during the Great Depression than 99.9% of humanity had ever been at any time in history. In the Dark Ages, do you really think we could have supported a welfare state?
In the Dark Ages (which I call the Catholic Ages) we did support a Welfare State in the form of the Guild Economy, with a Just Wage for a Fair Price, and a baning of the evils of the banking industry, and feudal lords who followed the concept of Noblese Oblige (the obligation of the wealthy to take care of the poor). Anybody who supports a welfare state should look to what you call the "Dark Ages" as a 1000 year experiment in how to accomplish it.
The Roman Empire tried it. Only for people who lived in Rome, and they had to enslave much of Europe and North Africa to do it, but they tried it. Wasn't "universal" by any means.
After the fall of the Empire, the Holy Roman Catholic Church also tried it and succeeded. Funny how you call honest labor "enslavement" though. But that's just your myoptic lens of a capitalist society.
Alright. Come up with an incentie that'll work. Tell me why *I* should work, if I don't have to.
Better yet- why don't you tell me how not to work. Even during 26 months of technical unemployment, I still got up at 5:30 every day, and put in an 8 hour day of filling out resumes, typing up cover letters, taking care of my son to save money on child care, and programming on open source projects. I put out 2600 resumes and applications, three open source projects, one closed source project, was primary home sysadmin for a network of 5 computers, did virus detection and elimination jobs and cleaned spyware for 46 customers, and still managed to take care of an infant. I did this because if I didn't I would have had to kill myself for being a lazy slob.
I'm reasonable, sometimes, but I doubt seriously you could come up with something that would motivate me to get up at 5:30 every morning (as I do now). Especially since I can think of so many better ways of spending my days.
All of my better ways of spending my days are also work- why is your life so incredibly empty of ability that you can't find a *creative* way to spend your time?
So, what is a "natural" death? Is that when you have a heart attack? I Know people who did that before the age of 45. And survived quite nicely, thanks to our horribly flawed healthcare system.
Only due to artificial heroic life support- which is not a requirment in the Catholic Seamless Garment of Life. Disease prevention is- but that's relatively simple to do with very few doctors.
Face it, any level of healthcare short of the best we know how to provide (not the level we can afford, but what we know how to do) is "rationed", if the Government decides how much everyone gets. WHich is to say, we're letting economic cost prefent the defense of life.
And all I'm saying is, equal rationing is not letting economic cost prevent the defense of life. Unequal rationing is.
And yet, those countries I named were among the poorest in the world today. It's not "the rich" preventing adoption of your UDHR. It's the governments that would have to pay for it. The fact that the UDHR requires universal compliance at an international level to be completely fulfilled doesn't make it any easier. And that it requires that nations turn over part of their sovereignty to an international body they have no reason to trust has their interests at heart makes it even tougher.
Most poor countries have their upper class that is more interested in their own well being than having a rich country. The United States is also a poor country in this regard.
Nonsense! Gold standard isn't required to determine the value of a dollar. Try using the price of 1 pound (or Kg, if you like metric) of bread as an index.
Since it doesn't stay the same from day to day or even location to location, it's a worthless index.
$
You're making a generic anti-CEO argument where it doesn't apply.
I'm also making a statement about engineers who move beyond engineering into managment.
Bill Joy is absolutely a superior engineer and programmer. Just read his biography; he got where he is by writing software better than the alternatives. If you want to attack some highly paid executive for abusing his subordinates' creativity, you need a better target. Mr Joy wasn't even an executive!
So? He was when he retired, AND still has stock in Sun (my comment doesn't just cover C-level executives, it also covers investors).
Furthermore, you are additionally wrong by writing in the present tense. Bill Joy is retired, and no longer part of any corp payment.
His retirement fund is invested in stocks, isn't it?
You are aware that this whole social security/socialism concept only got going big when civilization became wealthy enough to afford it, right
Actually- it got going at a time when civilization was relatively poor, during the Great Depression, when Western Civilization was in the middle of a MAJOR economic collapse worldwide.
Face it, if 99% of everyone is working their butts off just to avoid famine more often than every ten years or so, "universal health care" and "environmental protection" aren't even on the radar.
Actually, universal health care is (it's one of the basic Maslow needs) but I'd agree that environmental protection isn't. What does environmental protection have to do with preventing abortion?
The USA is a $12 trillion economy. That translates into ~$2000 per person, worldwide. American Poverty Level doesn't meet those standards, so it's safe to assume that $10,000 per person would be insufficient. $15,000 might be closer. So you'd need to suck up 8 times the USA economy every year just to support the UDHR. I'm not sure, but it seems to me I remember that the USA economy is more than 15% of the world economy. Which would make the minimal requirements for implementation of the UDHR at rather more than the entire world economy.
Dollars mean nothing- at all. That measurement of production is completely mythological- hasn't had any real value since we left the gold standard behind. Sure- it would mean we'd need a different economy. So what? The economy is just an invention of mankind, an artifact.
And bet on it - if there is no profit to be had from working hard, then noone will work hard. Sort of like the Soviet Union ("They pretend to pay us, so we pretend to work"). So you'd probably need an economy at least twice as big as the minimum to support UDHR, just to insert enough profit motive to get people to do the work needed. Again, WAY more than the world's economy today.
Profit is just one way to motivate people- using Maslow's hierarchy of needs is another- Platonic Wage Scales is a third. Mankind is inventive- we'd come up with something to replace crass profit for incentives.
Having said that, yes, I agree you need incentives of SOME FORM to work.
Really? So the government should guarantee immortality for every citizen? Or failing that, that the level of medical care for everyone should be the same as for the President?
Or rather, the President shouldn't have better medical care than the people in the first place- that way leads to class warfare.
Interesting, since that would require that EACH person have two or three personal physicians dedicated only to keeping him/her/it healthy.
There ARE other ways to do it- only the rich think universal medical care should be that level of guarantee.
So, for 6 billion people, we'd need 15 billion doctors. hmm, I see a problem here. Or should we just ration healthcare? Which is just another way of letting economic cost prevent the defense of life.
How about this- we define a minimal level of medical care and let NATURAL DEATH take care of the rest? There's a reason why the seamless garment of life is from CONCEPTION to NATURAL DEATH.
Face it, like it or not, wealth is what will make this whole UDHR possible. And not just a little wealth - great, heaping gobs of it. Mountains of money. If we choke our economy trying to implement it now, we'll never get to where we can afford it.
You mean kind of like the Social Security System couldn't possibly have been implemented in 1936 because there wasn't enough wealth in the country to do it?
If I was a betting man, I'd guesstimate 50 years, given no major changes in resource availability, 100+ years given the current outlook for fossil fuel depletion. And that's assuming that the political situation changes to allow UDHR. Won't work until every sovereign nation agrees to it, and I don't see, for instance, North Korea going along with it, or Sudan, or Libya, or...not for a very long time, anyway.
Only due to a total lack of morality on the part of the rich.
Really? So, if the next generation's Hitler were to invade Belgium, UDHR advocates wouldn't shoot back? I find that extremely unlikely. "These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations." looks like a pretty big caveat to cover any, shall we say, abrogation of those Rights...
I'd agree with that- shooting back at Hitler is in support of those rights, even for the rude unspeakable word. (obref- Life, The Universe, and Everything book and radio play).
Has the UN ever figured out just how much it would cost to implement this particular piece of rhetoric? Just curious....
You know- that's the thing that gets to me. We say we're for the right to life- but NO conservative is willing to give up even a single dollar of profit to support it. To me, what does it matter if we ruin the entire economy, as long as everybody has the right to life (and support of that life in the form of food, clothing, shelter, water, and medical care)? But NO- we can't actually give up our worship of mammon to support a universal right to life. At that point, I say if you're not willing to give up all hope of ever being rich in return for a society where the right to life is supported, you shouldn't be able to call yourself pro-life. Economic cost should NEVER be an issue preventing the defense of life.
An idiot. Kerry won't do any more to reduce abortion than Bush will.
i sion/, even the original Roe V. Wade ruled that some form(s) of abortion are regulatable.
Legality isn't the only way to attack abortion. It's proveable that Clinton had the lowest number of abortions per year in 24 years, and he was pro-choice.
His hypothetical "make it cost as much as having a baby" in his Health Care reform won't survive the first legal challenge. One thing you have to give the pro-abortion people credit for is understanding the "slippery slope" idea. They oppose EVERYTHING that affects the availability of abortion even the tiniest amount. Because they know that if we reach the point where abortion is illegal in any way, however slight, the line between illegal and legal will continue moving back the other way.
Not entirely true- NARAL has supported legislation that has helped women become mothers in the past, such as the WIC program, pregnancy coverage in Medicare, and so on. You see, that's the problem- the true pro-abortionists don't have much power, and most of the other side is merely pro-choice, and that includes choosing life. Anything that supports a woman's RIGHT TO CHOOSE they'll support- it's just a matter of using the correct terminology.
Fact is, abortion is going to continue exactly as is until a new Supreme Court rules that some form(s) of abortion are regulatable.
Read http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/roe.wade/dec
Note, by the way, that my duaghter required my written permission to get her ears pierced. An abortion she could have done without even letting me know she was missing school that day.
That IS regulation- it's a HIPPA issue. And actually, under that relatively new law, if she chooses to disallow you from visiting her in the hospital as a minor when she's undergoing heart surgery, that's her right. (I know- we used HIPPA to keep my father-in-law out of the birthing room during the birth of my son at my wife's request).
You're using the word PEOPLE to mean what I used the word HUMAN to mean.
Where I use the word HUMAN in a much more broad, genetically based species, sense. From that point of view- there's a real problem with American law in that we treat some HUMANS as PEOPLE, and not others.
Prior to the Civil War, Negros weren't "people". Though, as I learned in a historical tour of N'Awlins a few years back, they were considered more "people" than the Irish - once upon a time, when a project required some really hazardous labour, the slaveowners refused to use slaves for the work (since they were valuable property), so Irishmen were brought into the country to do it. THEY were considered expendable enough....
For that matter, in the original form of the Constitution before Ammendments- only 18 year old landowning males were considered people. EVERYBODY else was expendable.
It is very like the situation just pre-Civil War - half the people think they ARE people, half don't.
I'm one of the ones who thing they SHOULD be people- but acknowledge that the current law has yet to catch up with the scientific definition of HUMAN. I use that scientific defintion when interpreting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights- Article 2 clearly states that discriminating against people based on BIRTH is as evil as RACISM, Article 3 states that everyBODY has a right to life, and Article 25 states that we need to provide special economic circumstances for women to have the right to reproduce and become mothers. The fact that these rights are currently missing from the Constitution is a scandal to us all.
And yes, killing people isn't universally wrong. It's not universally wrong ANYWHERE. But, we have an overwhelming majority who agree, more or less, on when it is acceptable
Actually, in the UDHR, killing people is indeed UNIVERSALLY wrong. It's just that the rest of international and individual country law has yet to catch up to what the UN passed in 1948.
I know you mentioned it, but I don't recall the basis you used for claim the Constitution cannot grant citizenship to the unborn. This is not the argument they used for throwing about abortion laws (although it would have actually made far more sense...). I would assume that given the lack of a definitive statement, it falls the states, which is how it was treated before 1973.
It's considered to be implied in a single phrase regarding who can be President (natural born citizens)- all of our federal citizenship law is tied in some way to that phrase, and similar phrases in who can be elected to House and Senate seats. http://bensguide.gpo.gov/3-5/citizenship/
The Majority Opinion for Roe V. Wade states, in part "IT IS THUS APPARENT THAT AT COMMON LAW, AT THE TIME OF THE ADOPTION OF OUR CONSTITUTION, AND THROUGHOUT THE MAJOR PORTION OF THE 19TH CENTURY, ABORTION WAS VIEWED WITH LESS DISFAVOR THAN UNDER MOST AMERICAN STATUTES CURRENTLY IN EFFECT. PHRASING IT ANOTHER WAY, A WOMAN ENJOYED A SUBSTANTIALLY BROADER RIGHT TO TERMINATE A PREGNANCY THAN SHE DOES IN MOST STATES TODAY. AT LEAST WITH RESPECT TO THE EARLY STAGE OF PREGNANCY, AND VERY POSSIBLY WITHOUT SUCH A LIMITATION, THE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE THIS CHOICE WAS PRESENT IN THIS COUNTRY WELL INTO THE 19TH CENTURY. EVEN LATER, THE LAW CONTINUED FOR SOME TIME TO TREAT LESS PUNITIVELY AN ABORTION PROCURED IN EARLY PREGNANCY. " http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/roe.wade/deci sion/index4.html- and it's in reference to the English Common Law that citizenship and personhood comes into play.
See that's the thing... Kerry talks the talk when it suits him, but he seems far too willing to adjust his position as the situation dictate.
See, that's one thing I like about Kerry- I see it as a sign of intelligence and reason to change one's plans based on outside influences. It's also something I dislike about the President and Vice President, for as you say:
The President and especially the Vice President have spun their pre-war rhetoric retroactively, (essentially because they dumbed down their arguments for war for mass consumption and overplayed their hand), but they haven't materially changed their position. Everything they are saying today they HAD said before the war, just not as much as the smoking gun issues they were trying to produce. I still have to say that if the U.N. were worth the parking tickets it gathers in New York, this whole Iraq thing would have never happened.
I agree with that for sure- had the UN been worth anything at all there would have been a UN invasion of Iraq and a general destruction of all arms long ago. It would have taken a massive increase to UN forces to do so- American generals estimate 740,000 troops and more- but it could have been done.
It's also funny how Clinton didn't get U.N. approval (as I understand it) to go to Kosovo, but no one criticizes him for it. Maybe because it wasn't expensive enough in money and lives.
Actually, I remember it differently- that one of the big complaints about Clinton's little trip to Kosovo was indeed that it was under UN control- to the point of American troops wearing blue helmets and getting their orders from a German general (thus disrupting the standard chain of command). Of course, I was in Klamath Falls at the time- home of surivalists, libertarians, and conspiracy theorists galore- so I got plenty of "This is proof of George Bush's "New World Order" coming true- look out for the Black Helicopters!" rhetoric at the time. I didn't understand then what I now know- that neoliberals and neoconservatives are basically the same stripe- and their marching orders are to turn the governance of the entire world over to the multinational corporations. From that standpoint, it won't matter if Kerry wins or Bush wins- they're both getting their REAL marching
No, he isn't. While the Constitution may very well imply that someone becomes a Citizen at birth, it nowhere implies that someone becomes HUMAN at birth.
Being HUMAN has almost nothing to do with your right for your life to be protected under American Law. A great example is how slaves were treated before the Constitution was ammended to give them personhood. Nobody doubted that a Negro was HUMAN, but since they weren't PEOPLE it was allowable that they be killed. The unborn are in a similar situation, from a legal standpoint.
Of course, the issue never really came up till we acquired the ability to maintain life outside the womb prior to "birth". The ability to do so gave us the necessity of deciding when humanity begins (since killing humans is wrong, but killing other things isn't necessarily wrong, we're pretty much forced to decide what is human and what is not-human, and live with the result). So far, we haven't settled on one universally accepted definition. Thus, the abortion debate.
Within American Law, killing humans isn't universally wrong. Never has been, never will be unless we ammend the Constitution to include a right to life. Which, BTW, I do support- I support ammending our constitution to include all of the rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Lucky you- my grandfather's infamous tolerance level disappeared at 35- I met him when I was 3 but he died that year of a massive heart attack after being a 12-beer-an-hour drunk for 22 years.
However, that's not the main reason I doubt Bush's conversion- I doubt his conversion because he has been known to drink at public functions, and because his mood swings have become quite famous (mood swings of this nature are often an indicator of cocaine addiction). In addition to that, I don't buy into the Once Saved Always Saved mythos- change takes time, you don't become "saved" merely by praying a 30-second prayer.