So, you believe we should have rights because we are intelligent?
Yes.
Anything else?
The ability to feel pain.
How/why did you choose that?
Common sense. Saying a blob of a thousand cells is a human being worth of protection every bit as reasonable as saying an abortion of choice 1 minute before birth is A-OK "because it hasn't been born yet". In other words, neither extreme is reasonable, both are asinine and indefensible positions.
So, at what point are you comfortable with having the state tell a woman she has to carry that embryo to term? The second trimester? When it's the size of a grape? When it's a fertilized egg, a single cell? Are you as protective of lifeforms equally advanced to such blobs, like flies and earthworms? Do you support taxes and social spending on things like public education and public health care for kids, or are you one of those Republicans who holds an embryo of sacrosanct importance but it's sink and swim time for junior once he's actually born?
For example, the only proper, justifiable role for the government is to support and uphold individual rights.
Says who? Why are you against better healthcare for less money? And even the most selfish self-centered elitist on the planet should want taxes and government spending, as that increases the size and affluence of the middle class. Which make for more customers and more educated workers for whatever business you are in or are invested in. You have more actually freedom and yes, money, because of government regulation and taxes than you would without.
Interesting, I didn't know you were able to to use a computer as a multicellular blob with less brainpower than a fly, which the point at which most abortions occur. He does, however, think you are entitled to basic decency and social services, as opposed to Republicans, who only protect the unborn. But once Johnny Fetus becomes Johnny Infant, he's free to go fuck himself.
So long as you really are interpreting it strictly, and not just selectively. Like how wingnuts bitch about the unconstitutionality of Social Security but not the Air Force.
there is a small problem with that.... justices need to be approved by congress.
Sure sure, but there are enough conservative/stupid/cowardly Dems to get the Bush adenda passed most of the time. The Iraq war, telecom immunity, Mukasey, too many crappy Dems have caved instead of holding strong.
Because smaller government for the sake of smaller government is as asinine as larger government for the sake of larger government, as Katrina, the stock market collapse and socialized medicine providing better care for less money keep proving.
As opposed to McCain who stopped showing up for Senate votes in April and didn't come back until six months later? Consistency: the Kryptonite for wingnuts.
In 8 years, none of that is going to change regardless of who's president.
Have you looked at the Supreme Court lately? Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas. If McCain get's to pick so much as a single Supreme Court justice Roe v. Wade could be overturned.
please provide a link for the 'charging women to get rape exams' - you imply McCain does so
No, he didn't. It wasn't McCain, try the other one.
picking a running mate on tits and ovaries
Because it's one of her main qualifications.
And before you disagree, please let me know how many other first-term senators not named Kennedy are fast-tracked for high political office from day one (in fact, from the opening speech of the LAST presidential campaign's DNC convention), if not simply for his skin color?
George W. Bush. His only public service consisted of serving as the 2nd most powerful executive in Texas (Lt gov has more power than gov) and the few months of his Air Guard service that he bothered to show up for. The rest of his resume consisting of drinking and running companies into the ground. As opposed to Obama, who did 3 years of community organizing followed by 8 years in the Illinois legislature and 4 years as the U.S. Senator from Illinois. You were saying?
Personally, I don't think BHO is a terrorist. He merely works closely with them, socializes with them, launches his political career using their radical contacts and friends, from their living room, and then disingenuously asserts they were merely 'a guy in the neighborhood'. You can bet if McCain was having political parties at the homes of admitted and unrepentant abortion-clinic bombers, that might make the news?
Abortion clinic bombers no, but McCain attends political parties hosted by G. Gordon Liddy, who merely tried to subvert our democracy in the 70's and is a convicted felon. Oh, and he advised people to shoot federal law enforcement officials in the head, because they might be wearing body armor. Oh, and after he attacked Obama for another association with a former Fanny Mae exec, it turned out that his campaign manager collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from FM/FM. Oh, and his transition manager used to lobby for Saddam Hussien. Playing the "associations game" is for morons, because every person on the planet can be "associated" with an unsavory person in one or two steps.
I don't really like McCain too much, but I like Obama far, far less. He's an archetypal left-wing, intellectualist, relativist, everything-about-the-US-sucks, political-correctness-espousing liberal that I personally find tiresome. (And yes, I include a goodly proportion of/. readers as probably in that same demographic.)
You should really go see a nice doctor in North Korea about that anal obstruction of yours. Once he's done removing your head from your ass, you can take a look around and see what "left-wing" actually looks like.
you're right, he prefers that KINDERGARTNERS take sex-ed.
Wow, I suppose you are also one of those incredibly intelligent individuals who believes that Obama is a Muslim and has a radical Christian preacher. In that case, I have some great stock to sell you, it's in this company called Enron...
The problem is his association with Bill Ayers a unapoligetic terrorist.
And the head of McCain's transition team used to lobby for Saddam Hussien. Playing the "associations" game is asinine, because there isn't a person on this planet that can't be connected to an unsavory person in one or two steps.
The factors at work in the analogy really aren't though, and you may not agree with the conclusion but to say that no analogy at all is possible is misleading and dishonest.
And where did I say anything remotely of the kind? Ass, meet hat.
Perhaps though that's why i like Palin's bio as a cleaner of Alaska's Republican Augean stables and am frustrated by the one-sided coverage of her.
That's your problem. You have this image of her as a corruption fighter, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Like I said, she's just like Gingrich - she didn't take on corrupt figures because she wanted to clean out the system, but because she's a ladder climber who was looking to make a name for herself:
She fully supported the bridge to nowhere until Congress said it would have to be paid for with state money, yet took the federal funds anyway. Now she's lying by saying "I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on that bridge to nowhere."
I am SAYING that these are facts, and that reporting them is (of course) fair. My complaint is the failure to report other pertinent facts.
Like those Fox News talking heads that wished that the rest of the media would stop talking about all the bad things happening in Iraq - like bombings that would kill a hundred people at a time, roadside bombs killing our troops, and ethnic cleansing between Shiites and Sunnis - and focus on the positive things like construction of a new clinic inside the Green Zone. I'm sure the women of Iraq who would wear mourning robes for years at a time - another family member would be killed before it was time to take them off - would concur.
With all due respect there's a pretty big difference between being endorsed by a pastor and having someone BE your pastor for over 20 years.
With all due respect you're rationalizing a racist smear. If you watch more than "Goddamn America" soundbyte played on the media, he's speaking about how the United States kept slaves "in perpetuity", the "separate but equal" Dred Scott decision, Jim Crow, forced American Indians onto reservations, interned Japanese Americans during WWII, and the Tuskegee experiments on black men with syphilis. Funny how the media never mentioned that this Angry Black Man hated the United States sooo much he voluntarily gave up his student deferment and served two terms of duty as a Marine in Vietnam, and then re-enlisted as a medical corpsman and was so good he was the valedictorian of his class and was on LBJ's surgical team in 1966.
It is at least conceivable that McCain wasn't fully aware of
Yet who will hire those people to FILL the demand? The people who have the money to PAY for it.
And the people who pay for it are customers, not the rich. And what's going to make for the highest number of customers with the most disposable income? The middle class.
Who would have thought it!!! wow im shocked SHOCKED i tell you that it takes money to buy things. Red herring, blah blah blah blah
You just contradicted yourself.
Not in the slightest.
If you do not think tax cuts 'dont work'
Because tax cuts for the rich don't work. Wingnuts like to argue that tax receipts went up after the Reagan and Bush tax cuts, but that's because the population increases, which makes for a larger tax base.
Go ahead raise taxes on the bad boogie men rich. Watch what happens MARK MY WORDS here 'There will be a larger unemployment rate that we have not seen since the 70s.' It *WILL* happen that is a basic macro economics 101 course problem.
And when did the largest expansion in our history happen? During the post-war boom. When marginal tax rates were 91%.
I am not saying paying down the debt is a bad thing. It can help in many ways. But there is a downside to doing so. It is in higher unemployment.
Crack is whack, man.
Also if you think MORE money for the goverment is going to fix the 'current' problem you are gravely mistaken.
Fixing this "crisis" would be easy. Bring back the 91% marginal tax rates. Slash taxes on the middle and lower class while providing universal health care. Take that $700 billion giveaway to Wall Street and spend it on education, infrastructure and research. Transition to a needs-based military instead of a fight-a-soviet-country-that-hasn't-existed-for-twenty-years military. We'd have the national debt paid off in 10 years.
Almost all of the coverage of Palin has been negative
Well, that's what happens when you report the facts on Republicans. Otherwise you end up with "balanced" coverage, like how the Washington Post calls states with a 13.8% Obama lead a "battleground state" yet a state where McCain has a 2.2% lead "leans Republican".
most coverage of Obama has been positive
This talking point was debunked months ago. Obama received fawning media coverage, yes - ask anyone who supported Edwards in the primaries - but only until he passed Hillary Clinton. Since then the media coverage of Obama has been constantly negative, because the media loves a horse race and loves trashing Democrats.
The facts are NOT unfair in themselves (there's plenty of legitimate complaints to make of her) it's that there's been no other reporting at all.
Fixed that up a bit for you.
What hypothetical question did she pose to the head librarian in Wasilla?
You don't ask about banning books three times if you don't want to ban books. That fact thing again.
What job did Palin hold between being mayor of Wasilla and becoming governor, and why did she quit? I would bet that the majority of average news consumers can answer the first question, while not one in 10 can answer the second
And how many voters know that Obama was head of the Harvard Law review vs how many know who Rev. Wright is?
despite the fact that the answer to the second question is the most significant political story about Palin explaining the foundation of her popularity and subsequent political success in Alaska, and that it is at least as revealing of her character and motivations as the first.
That she was a rat fleeing a sinking ship? Her record as mayor and governor proves that far from being a corruption fighter, she epitomizes corruption. She's just like Newt Gengrich, who forced Jim Wright to resign as Speaker of the House over Wright's book deal, only to have his own shady book deal when he was speaker, plus a bushel of other ethics violations.
Reporting on an opponents criticisms, and making criticisms yourself are somewhat different things.
Reporting on an opponents criticisms, and making criticisms yourself are somewhat different things.
No, it's called blatant double standards. Like how the media obsessed over Rev. Wright for two months, yet ignored John "the Catholic Church is the Great Whore" Hagee until he said that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to Israel. Just imagine the response if one of Obama's daughters was 17, unmarried and pregnant.
On those occasions where reporting negative stories about Obama has become unavoidable they've largely been written in the form of an apologia. Witness the NYtimes story on his associations with Ayers. Somehow I doubt Palin would have gotten the same "inconsequential crossed paths" treatment if an abortion clinic bomber had hosted a fundraiser for her and served with her on a charitable board.
Because they should be, because this "associations" game is crap, and the Republicans who play it are firing howitzers in a big glass house:
"My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand."
This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week.
Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that's the very same secessionist party that her husband, To
In liberal-leaning forums I tend to see people think only Republicans do wrong, especially this president. I like to remind liberals their heroes are just as bad, or worse.
Do they point out that you're delusional and comparing mountain ranges to molehills?
Do you really think the majority of americans can see past the other side's sugar-coated lies either?
Which ones, exactly.
Biden's a plagiarist
Wow, you have anything newer than something that happened 20 years ago? And even then, it was plagarism through negligence rather than intent - he'd quoted the passage in question before with citations and then got sloppy.
Obama's a huckster with ties to the very problem we're in now (google is your friend)
You mean the right wing smears? And you were complaining about lies...
Yes, everyone knows Biden has a large disconnect between his brain and his mouth, but that's not remotely in the same league as Palin, who's brain doesn't have anything to pass to her mouth in the first place.
Yeah, and the crash of the dot com bubble had absolutely nothing to do with that.
Mountains to molehills. The bubble bursting was a recession. The Bush tax cuts plus his Iraq adventure is what doubled our national debt, not the dot com crash.
Slashdot Mirror
So, you believe we should have rights because we are intelligent?
Yes.
Anything else?
The ability to feel pain.
How/why did you choose that?
Common sense. Saying a blob of a thousand cells is a human being worth of protection every bit as reasonable as saying an abortion of choice 1 minute before birth is A-OK "because it hasn't been born yet". In other words, neither extreme is reasonable, both are asinine and indefensible positions.
So, at what point are you comfortable with having the state tell a woman she has to carry that embryo to term? The second trimester? When it's the size of a grape? When it's a fertilized egg, a single cell? Are you as protective of lifeforms equally advanced to such blobs, like flies and earthworms? Do you support taxes and social spending on things like public education and public health care for kids, or are you one of those Republicans who holds an embryo of sacrosanct importance but it's sink and swim time for junior once he's actually born?
For example, the only proper, justifiable role for the government is to support and uphold individual rights.
Says who? Why are you against better healthcare for less money? And even the most selfish self-centered elitist on the planet should want taxes and government spending, as that increases the size and affluence of the middle class. Which make for more customers and more educated workers for whatever business you are in or are invested in. You have more actually freedom and yes, money, because of government regulation and taxes than you would without.
Interesting, I didn't know you were able to to use a computer as a multicellular blob with less brainpower than a fly, which the point at which most abortions occur. He does, however, think you are entitled to basic decency and social services, as opposed to Republicans, who only protect the unborn. But once Johnny Fetus becomes Johnny Infant, he's free to go fuck himself.
So long as you really are interpreting it strictly, and not just selectively. Like how wingnuts bitch about the unconstitutionality of Social Security but not the Air Force.
there is a small problem with that.... justices need to be approved by congress.
Sure sure, but there are enough conservative/stupid/cowardly Dems to get the Bush adenda passed most of the time. The Iraq war, telecom immunity, Mukasey, too many crappy Dems have caved instead of holding strong.
classic how your version of compassion only applies to certain situations.
A classic case of false equivalency.
What possible reason could there be for making rape the single exception to that rule?
That the rape kits included emergency contraception.
Because smaller government for the sake of smaller government is as asinine as larger government for the sake of larger government, as Katrina, the stock market collapse and socialized medicine providing better care for less money keep proving.
As opposed to McCain who stopped showing up for Senate votes in April and didn't come back until six months later? Consistency: the Kryptonite for wingnuts.
In 8 years, none of that is going to change regardless of who's president.
Have you looked at the Supreme Court lately? Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas. If McCain get's to pick so much as a single Supreme Court justice Roe v. Wade could be overturned.
please provide a link for the 'charging women to get rape exams' - you imply McCain does so
No, he didn't. It wasn't McCain, try the other one.
picking a running mate on tits and ovaries
Because it's one of her main qualifications.
And before you disagree, please let me know how many other first-term senators not named Kennedy are fast-tracked for high political office from day one (in fact, from the opening speech of the LAST presidential campaign's DNC convention), if not simply for his skin color?
George W. Bush. His only public service consisted of serving as the 2nd most powerful executive in Texas (Lt gov has more power than gov) and the few months of his Air Guard service that he bothered to show up for. The rest of his resume consisting of drinking and running companies into the ground. As opposed to Obama, who did 3 years of community organizing followed by 8 years in the Illinois legislature and 4 years as the U.S. Senator from Illinois. You were saying?
Personally, I don't think BHO is a terrorist. He merely works closely with them, socializes with them, launches his political career using their radical contacts and friends, from their living room, and then disingenuously asserts they were merely 'a guy in the neighborhood'. You can bet if McCain was having political parties at the homes of admitted and unrepentant abortion-clinic bombers, that might make the news?
Abortion clinic bombers no, but McCain attends political parties hosted by G. Gordon Liddy, who merely tried to subvert our democracy in the 70's and is a convicted felon. Oh, and he advised people to shoot federal law enforcement officials in the head, because they might be wearing body armor. Oh, and after he attacked Obama for another association with a former Fanny Mae exec, it turned out that his campaign manager collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from FM/FM. Oh, and his transition manager used to lobby for Saddam Hussien. Playing the "associations game" is for morons, because every person on the planet can be "associated" with an unsavory person in one or two steps.
I don't really like McCain too much, but I like Obama far, far less. He's an archetypal left-wing, intellectualist, relativist, everything-about-the-US-sucks, political-correctness-espousing liberal that I personally find tiresome. (And yes, I include a goodly proportion of /. readers as probably in that same demographic.)
You should really go see a nice doctor in North Korea about that anal obstruction of yours. Once he's done removing your head from your ass, you can take a look around and see what "left-wing" actually looks like.
you're right, he prefers that KINDERGARTNERS take sex-ed.
Wow, I suppose you are also one of those incredibly intelligent individuals who believes that Obama is a Muslim and has a radical Christian preacher. In that case, I have some great stock to sell you, it's in this company called Enron...
The problem is his association with Bill Ayers a unapoligetic terrorist.
And the head of McCain's transition team used to lobby for Saddam Hussien. Playing the "associations" game is asinine, because there isn't a person on this planet that can't be connected to an unsavory person in one or two steps.
Strawman.
That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
The factors at work in the analogy really aren't though, and you may not agree with the conclusion but to say that no analogy at all is possible is misleading and dishonest.
And where did I say anything remotely of the kind? Ass, meet hat.
Perhaps though that's why i like Palin's bio as a cleaner of Alaska's Republican Augean stables and am frustrated by the one-sided coverage of her.
That's your problem. You have this image of her as a corruption fighter, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Like I said, she's just like Gingrich - she didn't take on corrupt figures because she wanted to clean out the system, but because she's a ladder climber who was looking to make a name for herself:
I am SAYING that these are facts, and that reporting them is (of course) fair. My complaint is the failure to report other pertinent facts.
Like those Fox News talking heads that wished that the rest of the media would stop talking about all the bad things happening in Iraq - like bombings that would kill a hundred people at a time, roadside bombs killing our troops, and ethnic cleansing between Shiites and Sunnis - and focus on the positive things like construction of a new clinic inside the Green Zone. I'm sure the women of Iraq who would wear mourning robes for years at a time - another family member would be killed before it was time to take them off - would concur.
With all due respect there's a pretty big difference between being endorsed by a pastor and having someone BE your pastor for over 20 years.
With all due respect you're rationalizing a racist smear. If you watch more than "Goddamn America" soundbyte played on the media, he's speaking about how the United States kept slaves "in perpetuity", the "separate but equal" Dred Scott decision, Jim Crow, forced American Indians onto reservations, interned Japanese Americans during WWII, and the Tuskegee experiments on black men with syphilis. Funny how the media never mentioned that this Angry Black Man hated the United States sooo much he voluntarily gave up his student deferment and served two terms of duty as a Marine in Vietnam, and then re-enlisted as a medical corpsman and was so good he was the valedictorian of his class and was on LBJ's surgical team in 1966.
It is at least conceivable that McCain wasn't fully aware of
Yet who will hire those people to FILL the demand? The people who have the money to PAY for it.
And the people who pay for it are customers, not the rich. And what's going to make for the highest number of customers with the most disposable income? The middle class.
Who would have thought it!!! wow im shocked SHOCKED i tell you that it takes money to buy things. Red herring, blah blah blah blah
You just contradicted yourself.
Not in the slightest.
If you do not think tax cuts 'dont work'
Because tax cuts for the rich don't work. Wingnuts like to argue that tax receipts went up after the Reagan and Bush tax cuts, but that's because the population increases, which makes for a larger tax base.
Go ahead raise taxes on the bad boogie men rich. Watch what happens MARK MY WORDS here 'There will be a larger unemployment rate that we have not seen since the 70s.' It *WILL* happen that is a basic macro economics 101 course problem.
And when did the largest expansion in our history happen? During the post-war boom. When marginal tax rates were 91%.
I am not saying paying down the debt is a bad thing. It can help in many ways. But there is a downside to doing so. It is in higher unemployment.
Crack is whack, man.
Also if you think MORE money for the goverment is going to fix the 'current' problem you are gravely mistaken.
Fixing this "crisis" would be easy. Bring back the 91% marginal tax rates. Slash taxes on the middle and lower class while providing universal health care. Take that $700 billion giveaway to Wall Street and spend it on education, infrastructure and research. Transition to a needs-based military instead of a fight-a-soviet-country-that-hasn't-existed-for-twenty-years military. We'd have the national debt paid off in 10 years.
Reality has a liberal bias. Deal with it.
Almost all of the coverage of Palin has been negative
Well, that's what happens when you report the facts on Republicans. Otherwise you end up with "balanced" coverage, like how the Washington Post calls states with a 13.8% Obama lead a "battleground state" yet a state where McCain has a 2.2% lead "leans Republican".
most coverage of Obama has been positive
This talking point was debunked months ago. Obama received fawning media coverage, yes - ask anyone who supported Edwards in the primaries - but only until he passed Hillary Clinton. Since then the media coverage of Obama has been constantly negative, because the media loves a horse race and loves trashing Democrats.
The facts are NOT unfair in themselves (there's plenty of legitimate complaints to make of her) it's that there's been no other reporting at all.
Fixed that up a bit for you.
What hypothetical question did she pose to the head librarian in Wasilla?
You don't ask about banning books three times if you don't want to ban books. That fact thing again.
What job did Palin hold between being mayor of Wasilla and becoming governor, and why did she quit? I would bet that the majority of average news consumers can answer the first question, while not one in 10 can answer the second
And how many voters know that Obama was head of the Harvard Law review vs how many know who Rev. Wright is?
despite the fact that the answer to the second question is the most significant political story about Palin explaining the foundation of her popularity and subsequent political success in Alaska, and that it is at least as revealing of her character and motivations as the first.
That she was a rat fleeing a sinking ship? Her record as mayor and governor proves that far from being a corruption fighter, she epitomizes corruption. She's just like Newt Gengrich, who forced Jim Wright to resign as Speaker of the House over Wright's book deal, only to have his own shady book deal when he was speaker, plus a bushel of other ethics violations.
Reporting on an opponents criticisms, and making criticisms yourself are somewhat different things.
No, it's called blatant double standards. Like how the media obsessed over Rev. Wright for two months, yet ignored John "the Catholic Church is the Great Whore" Hagee until he said that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to Israel. Just imagine the response if one of Obama's daughters was 17, unmarried and pregnant.
On those occasions where reporting negative stories about Obama has become unavoidable they've largely been written in the form of an apologia. Witness the NYtimes story on his associations with Ayers. Somehow I doubt Palin would have gotten the same "inconsequential crossed paths" treatment if an abortion clinic bomber had hosted a fundraiser for her and served with her on a charitable board.
Because they should be, because this "associations" game is crap, and the Republicans who play it are firing howitzers in a big glass house:
In liberal-leaning forums I tend to see people think only Republicans do wrong, especially this president. I like to remind liberals their heroes are just as bad, or worse.
Do they point out that you're delusional and comparing mountain ranges to molehills?
IOKIYAR
Fixed that for you. Now just what part of "private accounts are not to be used for public business" do you not understand?
Do you really think the majority of americans can see past the other side's sugar-coated lies either?
Which ones, exactly.
Biden's a plagiarist
Wow, you have anything newer than something that happened 20 years ago? And even then, it was plagarism through negligence rather than intent - he'd quoted the passage in question before with citations and then got sloppy.
Obama's a huckster with ties to the very problem we're in now (google is your friend)
You mean the right wing smears? And you were complaining about lies...
Yes, everyone knows Biden has a large disconnect between his brain and his mouth, but that's not remotely in the same league as Palin, who's brain doesn't have anything to pass to her mouth in the first place.
The nasty, nonstop personal attacks on her ever since she was announced as McCain's running mate have numbed me to it all.
Which ones, exactly? And are you as Concerned about her nonstop personal attacks on Obama?
That's still not as bad as people who brake when coming up to GREEN lights.
Just because Bush claims to be a conservative doesn't mean he actually is one!
And just because he's unpopular now doesn't mean he's not. He was plenty conservative for conservatives to back him to the hilt in 2000 and 2004.
Analogy's are a way to start educating the lay person in a manner that their brain can process and understand.
If the analogy is accurate, sure. But false or misleading analogies are dishonest.
Yeah, and the crash of the dot com bubble had absolutely nothing to do with that.
Mountains to molehills. The bubble bursting was a recession. The Bush tax cuts plus his Iraq adventure is what doubled our national debt, not the dot com crash.