Stanek Sunday funnies 8-5-12
My top five seven (couldn’t cut any of these) favorite political cartoons this week…
by Glenn McCoy at Townhall.com…
by Mike Luckovich at GoComics.com…
by (note: liberal) Nick Anderson at GoComics.com…
twofer by Lisa Benson at GoComics.com…
by Chip Bok at GoComics.com…
by TobyToons.com, referring to pro-abortion New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ironic decision to lock up baby formula in hospitals and interrogate mothers who request it rather than breastfeed…
Aug.05, 2012 11:14 am |
Cartoons |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Gay relationships can’t lead to abortions. Who can respect a relationship that can lead to intimacy and pleasure but not an unplanned pregnancy and fetus torn to bits?
So is maor Bloomberg just being an idiot on purpose now?
A couple of thoughts:
– Ken the Birther (and all birthers) should love Harry Reid – throw out a crazy idea and force the other person to prove that the lie is actually a lie. Beautiful.
– Chic-Fil-A – we don’t have them in my area of Wisconsin. I’ve eaten their once in my life – seemed like normal fast food. Sure, the owner has the right to say whatever he’d like, and people have the right to react however they’d like. 100 years ago, the message would have been that he doesn’t want people of other races marrying. 100 years from now, we’ll have a different debate.
– Romney – I know people will vote for him because they don’t like Obama, but will he actually get any votes (besides the ones from his close family) from people saying they actually like him? Just wondering.
*mayor Bloomberg.
Re Mayor ”Chicago values” Emmanuel it is becoming like a broken record….yet another democrat coming out for uninhibited, state sanctioned sodomy. How does it feel, you democrats, to be a member of the party of death, higher taxes, class warfare, and sodomy?
And now we can add mockery to the list of things the dems stand for. Mockery of religious freedom, self-reliance, and traditional values. The list of things the democrats stand against today are such that their forebears in the party would not recognize it today. The democrats are truly a ship with neither a sail nor a rudder and if we let them rule another four years we will go over the ciff with them.
Mayor Bloomy is a bloomin idiot, a crackpot who thinks his every thought is pure genius. He has totally lost it. Maybe being a one percenter is bad for one’s mental health.
I made a point to find the closest Chick-Fil-A in my area and eat there. The food was great. And I am always comfortable in a place with other people who have humility towards God.
Jerry -
It feels quite fine to be a Democrat.
The only mockery we have in play is how you are mocking the facts and dancing around them like we are at a concert.
Party of death? I’m sure the GOP is the party of life then, other than all the wars, working to get people off of health insurance, and now working to decreasing feeding the poor.
Higher taxes? The GOP’s newest plan, if you’d read an analysis of it, raises taxes on a large chunk of people making $80K and below. Yikes!
Class warfare? Been to Wisconsin lately where the budget was balanced via sacrifice of the lower and middle class? Seen the GOP budget that doesn’t tough taxes for the rich, but raises it for the poor and middle class? Seen how even the mere mention of tax increases for the rich back to the Reagan era is some socialist movement?
Mockery of religious freedom? What, because a lot of people don’t want to sit by quietly against a movement to make a chunk of AMERICANS second class citizens, not worthy of the rights of others because of who they love?
Mockery of self-reliance? We finally get a bill to reform health care, and the GOP is fighting to tell people to ignore preventative care, skip insurance, and if they get super sick, those who are insured will simply pick up the bill for those who found it more convenient to skip paying for insurance.
Traditional Values? What are those these days? No longer slavery I suppose – are traditional values abortion and the right for only men and women to go through no fault divorces and drive through weddings? Would it help if, like highlighted in yesterday’s post, if the Democrats passed bills with much fanfare and zero follow-up litigation in the next decade?
Come on Jerry – open your eyes. Reagan wouldn’t even be welcome in the current GOP. And the majority of people voting for the GOP are voting to end their medicare and social security, or raise there taxes so that we can keep taxes historically low for the super rich.
And you support that?
So is mayor Bloomberg just being an idiot on purpose now?
You mean he wasn’t before?
“I know people will vote for him because they don’t like Obama”
No argument there. There is soooo much to dislike. His rabid support of the abortion industry; his “you didn’t build that” view of business; his narcissism and willingness to throw anybody under the bus; his disdain for Christian expression in public places; his wreckless deficit spending; his war on energy; his incompetence in foreign affairs…..It is true that part of my reason for voting this election will be to get rid of the disaster that now occupies the White House. I like Romney but I would have voted for anybody but Obama.
“Traditional Values? What are those these days? No longer slavery I suppose – are traditional values abortion”
Ex-RINO, . In the past you yourself have admitted that abortion is murder. You have also expressed that you have humility towards God and that God would be against abortion. And now you are asking Jerry if “traditional values now include abortion?” You have completely lost your mind.
truth -
Hope all is well with you and your family – continuing to skip reading your posts (unless I see an apology right away) – but just wanted to wish you and yours the best.
truthseeker says:
August 5, 2012 at 2:20 pm
I made a point to find the closest Chick-Fil-A in my area and eat there. The food was great. And I am always comfortable in a place with other people who have humility towards God.
(Denise) A same-sex relationship can’t lead to pregnancy. It can’t lead to abortion. Homosexuality and lesbianism are completely detached from fetuses being ripped to pieces or poisoned and burned with saline solution.
Thus, it makes sense to compensate heterosexual unions. Their special relationship with life creation means they have a special relationship to ordeals and horrors. Only a relationship between a male and female can lead to a rubble of tiny body parts in an abortionist’s clinic table. Why should same-sex unions be treated identically to unions that lead to that which is so hideous?
Denise, Have you ever heard of supposedly “lesbian” women who spend years in marriage to men and then “come out”? It wouldn’t make their abortion any less hideous just cause they were lesbians when they committed abortion. People need to take responsibility for the children they conceive regardless of their sexual orientation. The creation of a baby is beautiful not hideous. And I agree that it makes sense for society to treat heterosexual couples differently then homosexual couples because of; as you put it; their “special relationship with life creation”
Mr. Romney has two choices, but can make only one:
Choice 1: Release his tax returns and prove Harry Reid a “dirty liar.”
Choice 2: Refuse to release his returns and risk losing the election.
If Romney has nothing to hide, the correct choice seems obvious.
truthseeker says:
August 5, 2012 at 4:10 pm
Denise, Have you ever heard of supposedly “lesbian” women who spend years in marriage to men and then “come out”. It wouldn’t make their abortion any less hideous just cause they were lesbians when they committed abortion. People need to take responsibility for the children they conceive regardless of their sexual orientation. The creation of a baby is beautiful not hideous. And I agree that it makes sense for society to treat heterosexual couples differently then homosexual couples because of; as you put it; their “special relationship with life creation”
(Denise) My point is this: a woman engaging in lesbianism takes no chance of getting pregnant. She will not panic if her menstrual period is late. She will not have an abortion as a result of same-sex lovemaking. She will not place a child for adoption as a result of it. Babies found in dumpsters and toilets are never the result of lesbian love.
This doesn’t mean lesbianism is risk-free: such relationships have extremely high rates of domestic violence. They can lead to murder.
But they do not lead to abortion. Only a male-female relationship can lead to abortion. Thus, same-sex relations don’t have the same risks and costs as opposite sex relations and society may choose to compensate opposite-sex relations due to their special risks and horrors.
While getting pregnant may be experienced as something beautiful, it is not so experienced when it leads to abortion.
Oh, I am so frustrated. Have you ever typed away for half an hour only to have your computer somehow send it into the ether? ;(
Ex-GOP, you have riled me up almost as much as you do truthseeker.
– Wherever our president was born (I suspect Mars) it is not crazy to question his background. Romney has or will soon release both of his last two tax returns, which until recently, no one was expected to do. He’s covering up “not paying taxes”? Give me a break! At worst, he’s taken advantage of every loophole so he gave at least as much to his church as to his irresponsible Uncle Sam.
– We’ve recently learned Obama claimed to be African in his bio. Perhaps he’s covering up an illegal loophole of receiving a scholarship or acceptance as an exchange student, like the well-known Native American running for the Senate in Massachusetts.
– The Chik-Fil-A hysteria reminds me of the Teletubby hysteria. There was a blurb in Jerry Falwell-s tiny church newspaper that merely picked up on a Reuters story that claimed one of said ‘tubbys was gay. Falwell didn’t thunder it from his pulpit.
Here we have a man stating his beliefs on a Baptis radio program and he is pilloried for it. How long till they burst into your church’s door, Ex-GOP?
– Oh yeah, Romney’s so unlikable, being rich and all. Phtoopi! Oh wait, Obama’s rich too, thanks tto two self-indulgant biographies of a young man. And oh yeah, does he come across as imperious as our prez? I think not.
Those Mormons! Who would be friends with them? Why, the Osmonds were the bane of show business! Then again, there is Mr. Poindexter. I mean Harry Reid.
Truthseeker, every single one of ex-GOP’s comments in this thread has at least one snide, sarcastic remark in it intended to mock and ridicule conservative Christians. It’s clear that he has absolutely no interest in doing anything other than sowing anger and hatred here.
mp, there’s also choice 3 – Pretend that Reid is somehow being “racist” as Obama did when people asked to see his birth certificate. Remember when Obama implied that he didn’t have time to release his birth certificate? At least he didn’t have time until Donald Trump forced his hand.
mp;
this is kind of off topic but I thought of you when I read this article. Remember the big stink you made about Rush Limbaugh losing sponsors when he called that woman a whore for demanding that other people buy her contraceptives for her.
http://tinyurl.com/bwk38fo
ex:
The Democrat party is now considering enshrining the fiction of boys “marrying” boys by inserting it into their platform. I suggest you open your eyes. How far will they have to go before you and the other fine people who think they support the democrats to finally wake up? They are already of the party of 55 million dead babies, and now they want to be the party of sodomy.
People are fond of saying there is no difference between the parties. Actually, there has never been more of a difference between the parties then there is now, except perhaps when the Democrats were the party of slavery and a Republican president sought to free the U.S. from that scourge.
I refuse to believe any clear thinking person would want to bequeath a baby killing and sodomy supporting country to their children.
And by the way, I have been to Wisconsin and was never so proud of your fellow citizens as when they stood with Walker. Governor Walker saved thousands of public sector jobs by common sense reforms. Had the benefits gravy train been allowed to roll on unimpeded the only way the state could have afforded to continue paying for them would have been to lay off junior employees.
Obama has released every one of his tax returns since 2000. Biden has released every tax return since 1998.
Why is Mr. Romney so shy?
Doesn’t he want to prove Harry Reid is a “dirty liar?”
Don’t you want Romney to prove Harry Reid is a “dirty liar?”
I do.
mp, Trying to hold a loon like Reid accountable for telling lies is like trying to hold a child accountable for the stories in their imagination.
“How does it feel, you democrats, to be a member of the party of death?”
“I’m sure the GOP is the party of life then, other than all the wars…”
Spotlighted for truth content.
“mp, Trying to hold a loon like Reid accountable for telling lies is like trying to hold a child accountable for the stories in their imagination.”
Can you hold your nose until the election is over? Sure, you can.
But, a lot of others can’t.
Jerry, I was proud of the way we were able to withstand the unionista thuggery and stand with Walker. And we actually had a DECREASE in property taxes last year to boot. And the school districts that implemented Walker’s budget reforms last year now have budget surpluses for the first time in decades.
I had to moderate my own comment a half hour late, in case anyone is only reading the most recent comments. Nothin offensive, that I could see. :)
“Can you hold your nose until the election is over?”
What choice do we have? The White House is gonna continue to stink well into next January regardless of what we do?
Hans -
Glad I got your blood pressure pumping!
– My point is, in both cases, people took a position with little evidence at all, declared it as fact and put the burden of proof on the OTHER party to prove that it wasn’t a lie. It was a guilty until proven innocent. Reid is an idiot, as are birthers.
– The Chic-Fil-A guy hasn’t been arrested, shot at, assaulted, or anything else. What kind of point are you trying to make? It has been free speech all around.
- All I asked is, is anybody voting FOR Romney, or are people just voting AGAINST Obama. Your rant back was against Obama…further proving my point.
John –
I don’t believe there are conservative Christians. There are Christians and there are non-Christians. Some Christians tend to be conservatives, some are not.
I’ve made snide remarks towards conservatives.
Not making snide remarks towards Christians.
They are not the same thing. Conservative doesn’t equal Christian.
truthseeker says:
And we actually had a DECREASE in property taxes last year to boot.
OMGosh! I think I just had a heart attack. That is something that will likely never happen here in Crook County, Illinois. In the 12 years we have owned this house, the property taxes have more than doubled. I fully expect there will come a day we will have to move due to the property taxes. :(
Jerry
– Post a link on your first claim.
– The GOP had the Presidency 20 of 28 years before Obama. So do they get 70%+ of those 55 million?
– The last few years, there is very little difference between the parties at a federal level other than rhetoric. Do any bills actually get passed these days?
– On Wisconsin – we’ll see what happens. So far, Walkers changes have been a trainwreck – sucking that much money out of the pockets of the middle class has led to the worst job creation in the country. Heck, Walker had to make up new numbers just to make them look good. Very creative!
Lrning,
come to Wisconsin please. Our southeastern border is being infiltrated by the same liberal idiots that destroyed Illinois and now they want to try and suck Wisconsin dry if they can.
Lrning -
Property taxes rose in my part of Wisconsin, though in part because we passed a school referendum so that we didn’t have dozens of layoffs and program cuts.
Because the city didn’t raise taxes as well, they are now charging fees to launch a boat, have a parade, park downtown, and a host of other “fees” on residents in the area.
They get their money somewhere.
Under Pawlenty, when I lived in Minnesota, they didn’t raise taxes at the state level, so almost every school system had to pass referendums. Living in a small town was a constant cycle of police cuts, cuts to other services…finally had to flee the small town to give our kids a better opportunity.
John L – in the interest in honesty and integrity, can you point out where in my comment at 1:12, I had at “least one snide, sarcastic remark in it intended to mock and ridicule conservative Christians.”
Which comment was it?
Also, my 3:26 comment.
I had three comments before you posted that – two of which I’ve highlighted here. I look forward to your response.
Ex-GOP says: Because the city didn’t raise taxes as well, they are now charging fees to launch a boat, have a parade, park downtown, and a host of other “fees” on residents in the area.
I fully support keeping taxes down by charging fees for things like that. Why should elderly people on fixed incomes pay more in taxes so others can launch their boats for free?
********So far, Walkers changes have been a trainwreck – sucking that much money out of the pockets of the middle class has led to the worst job creation in the country.*********
BS Alert!!!!!! the above statement came from the mind of a person who has lost consciousness. In Wisconsin our property taxes went down and our budget is balanced and our school districts that implemented Walkers reforms have budget surpluses.
EGOP,
(I like that acronym, so I use it from time to time.) My bp would really be up if I tackled your second comment, so we’ll wait on all that till closer to the election.
I don’t care near as much about where Obama was born as the fact that he doesn’t care if someone is born and cared for when they are born after a murder attempt.
You have to admit how poorly vetted he was. We knew more about Kim Kardashian than him. Where’s this genius’ college records? We made fun of Bush for having a slightly better record than Gore!
I said Mr. Cathy was being pilloried. No, not in the town square, but in the Leftist swamp that you trudge around in. Not for free speech, but for his freedom of religion. It is 1984 at our doorstep.
I’m voting for the best choice we have, which is all we can do. How anyone can vote for the most blatant example of a failed presidency in our lifetime (including Carter), I can’t understand.
Now I have to watch Chris Wallace, Mike Huckabee, and a post-apocalyptic show called Falling Skies which reminds me of what waits in store if you get your way this fall.
“I don’t believe there are conservative Christians. There are Christians and there are non-Christians. Some Christians tend to be conservatives, some are not.”
All I can say to that is LOL. Let me try and wrap my mind around this splendidly foolish distinction that Ex-RINO has drawn for us all. There are Christians who are conservative but there is no such thing as conservative Christians. Now that’s as fine an example of a clear and concise distinction that has ever been made in the liberal mind. Is it any wonder that this same mind that is unable to discern the existence of a conservative Christian is also unable to discern any difference between a conservative and a Democrat?
Lrning -
Well, you could argue that – but then somebody my age could certainly ask why I’m spending a much larger percentage of my income on social security and medicare.
I’m not saying that the fees are wrong – I’m just saying that it isn’t a huge victory if a person saves $200 a year on their property taxes but now pays $360 a year to park to go to work.
Hans -
First off, no need to get all riled up. Neither of us are elected officials – we don’t make policy – we just debate and while we hold different viewpoints on things, I’m sure that you are a nice person and meeting face to face, we’d get along great. Some of my best friends are conservatives. I speak slowly and use small words in their presence, but I’d jump in front of a bus for them.
On Obama and where he was born and Reid. I stand by my point that in both sides, there was a “guilty until proven innocent” stance.
On Chic-Fil-A – thankfully, this is America. Nobody has had their house bombed or were killed for their beliefs. Quite naturally, some people disagree strongly, and they have that right. My guess is that if an American corporation came out and said Christians shouldn’t be allowed to marry, and many people came and bought from them to support this stance, you wouldn’t see it as a little “freedom of speech” issue and would see it as oppression. That is just my thought – I wouldn’t be quiet about it, and I don’t expect those supporting same-sex marriage to simply laugh it off.
On Romney – I’ve still failed to find anybody who says why they like him or would vote for him without using the word “Obama”. Romney’s got a John Kerry size problem though right now – he has support of those who don’t like Obama, but he’s tanking in regards to likability with the undecided. He needs to figure out quickly how to keep the far right energized while appealing to the middle – or else we can stick a fork in him. I’m not saying he can’t do it – but he isn’t going to win on simply not being Obama. The numbers have proven that.
I apologize for some misinformation I gave earlier.
I stated that Wisconsin was dead last in job creation in the country.
We are actually 48th – we are beating Mississippi and Rhode Island:
http://wpcarey.asu.edu/bluechip/jobgrowth/jgu_states.cfm
Did not mean to mislead people – I believe Wisconsin was last until just a month or two back.
“I said Mr. Cathy was being pilloried. No, not in the town square, but in the Leftist swamp that you trudge around in. Not for free speech, but for his freedom of religion. It is 1984 at our doorstep.”
Pilloried? 1984? Get a grip. Yes, many people disagree with him, and publicly so. That’s still legal, right?
I sure hope that poor, defenseless billionaire is weathering the horrible Orwellian storm of people daring to criticize his beliefs.
“I’m not saying he can’t do it – but he isn’t going to win on simply not being Obama. The numbers have proven that.”
And still Romney is leading or statistically tied in every head -to-head poll against Obama. The only exception is the illegitimate ones that poll a majority of Democrats. I can hardly believe I am agreeing with Ex-RINO again. The only explanation is that even a mind like Ex-RINO’s that lives in fiction still gets it right sometimes. And he is correct that one reason Romney is polling so well is because so many people agree that Obama sucks really bad and we agree that the presidential election is Romney’s for the taking.
In Wisconsin our property taxes went down and our budget is balanced and our school districts that implemented Walkers reforms have budget surpluses.
True that. I love Governor Walker and I am employed by a school district. I don’t know who EGOP thinks he can fool here.
I speak slowly and use small words in their presence, but I’d jump in front of a bus for them.
Well, we can keep hoping that maybe he’s telling the truth here. Maybe it will be a big Truth Truck that hits him upside the head.
Prax -
My comment on Wisconsin was job creation. I posted a link to back that up. If you have different job creation numbers, feel free to post.
truth -
I’m bending my rule because your last post was so false that I believe you owe anybody who has read it an apology.
Head to head polls – http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html
State level –
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
Again, while it is foolish to say for sure who is going to win, if the election were held today, there would be a clear winner and Obama would be in for four more years.
BS ALERT!!!!!
Ex-RINO said “Did not mean to mislead people – I believe Wisconsin was last until just a month or two back. ”
Notice the statistics Ex-RINO points to are for non-farm job growth. The real statistics for the state which include farm jobs and other self-employed people say that Wisconsin had job growth of about 20,000 jobs the past year which place us 41st on the list of states. Here is a link to an article on this from the liberal Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that p;aces Wicsonsin at 41st.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/state-job-growth-lower-than-most-states-us-figures-show-i25ufs2-160677825.html
Question: How much misinformation and how many corrections does a liberal have top give before you get the truth?
Answer: There is no telling how many corrections it takes because the truth only comes out of a liberals mouth randomly on spontaneous occasions when they are caught off-guard.
Ex-GOP, do you think that Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, or Jimmy Carter would be embraced by the modern Democratic Party? Is it really such a big deal that political parties change over time?
And if you really think both parties are functionally identical at the federal level (a claim that I’ve previously objected to), how can you justify voting for any federal politician? A rational person would forego the opportunity cost by not wasting those few minutes at the ballot box. You could instead work for pay, find a (better) job, spend time with your friends or family, do leisure activities, volunteer for a cause, etc.
” – The Chic-Fil-A guy hasn’t been arrested, shot at, assaulted, or anything else. What kind of point are you trying to make? It has been free speech all around. ”
Ex-RINO, What if the CEO of a particular fast food chain says he thinks we should change the definition of marriage to include homosexual unions. And then the next day the mayor of Milwaukee came out and said he wouldn’t allow that particular fast food chain to open a business in Milwaukee. Would you be saying no harm no foul there too?
I’m bending my rule
Like any of us are surprised. I never believed you stopped reading his posts in the first place. You need to Get Real. Start with yourself.
Dear King of Dishonesty,
You said:
Post 1 – “ 100 years ago, the message would have been that he doesn’t want people of other races marrying. ”
Translation – Christian opposition to gay “marriage” has nothing to do with the natural law. It’s just mindless bigotry, and if Chick-fil-A wasn’t mindlessly bigoted against gays they would be mindlessly bigoted against black people.
Post 2 – “Traditional Values? What are those these days? No longer slavery I suppose”
Translation – Support for slavery is equivalent to opposition to gay marriage and opposition to abortion.
Post 3 – “truth -Hope all is well with you and your family – continuing to skip reading your posts (unless I see an apology right away) – but just wanted to wish you and yours the best.”
Translation – Hey truth. I know I just intentionally insulted you to your core with evil, hateful comments. And you’re obviously mad about it. So I’m going to pretend I didn’t make any hateful remarks and also pretend to be concerned about your family so I can look like a nice guy. Because that’s how I roll.
“ John L – in the interest in honesty and integrity”
Words you don’t know the meaning of.
Prax –
My 3:26 post said I read the beginning of each one to look for an apology. It was pretty easy to see the “BS” part. If somebody is stating flat out wrong information, I feel compelled to post refuting information.
Navi – I have bypassed voting for a serious candidate at the federal level before, and will in the future. Not every time, but for instance, this election will come down to just a handful of states. Most of our votes, at least at the presidential level, don’t really count.
I don’t remember a federal election though that didn’t come with state and local elections as well – so if a person is in doing those votes, might as well choose the federal ones. Otherwise, I’d agree with your things that would be a better way to spend time.
John -
If you rewrite everything I say and read way more into it, then I suppose you can make any claim that you want.
On the first quote, I just said it is the same argument we’ve had for years, who can and can’t get married – and said we’ll probably have a new set of circumstances in 100 years. You read WAY too much into it.
Post two – I admit I was snarky towards conservatives.
Post three – You are lame. That’s about the nicest way I can put it.
General comment.
It is amazing how threatened people get on this board when somebody doesn’t agree with them 100%.
If you disagree with something, make a thoughtful counterargument.
There’s no need to belittle, name call, and smear the name of somebody just because you don’t agree with them.
I’d expect that of 10 year olds, but you folks are supposed to be adults, able to influence the world and win people to your side of an argument.
From the “King of Dishonesty” to Prax and the “Get Real” - I think some of you should just skip over my posts and move to the like minded statements that you can read without getting angry and violent.
Notice the statistics Ex-RINO points to are for non-farm job growth.
The article is talking about several different surveys. You and ExGOP are talking about different surveys. They’re supposed to be analysed in relation to each other. I’ve explained this previously, but to no avail.
So, go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website and read about them for yourself; you’re looking rather foolish here to anyone having the slightest acquaintance with these numbers, and that’s being charitable.
Thanks MP.
Praxedes,
I’ve trademarked “EGOP”. My lawyers will be contacting you shortly. ;)
mp, two different statistics all right. Mine are the ones used by the federal government to track jobs added or lost. That makes Wisconsin the 41st in the nation for job creation during the past year NOT 48th. And we will be moving much faster toward prosperity when we help to throw Obama and several more Wisconsin Democrats out of their jobs as state and local representatives in Wisconsin this November. This past year the Democrats voted as a block against building a mine in Northwestern Wisconsin. The mine would have brought thousands of jobs to our state including the manufacturing of the mining equipment.
I think some of you should just skip over my posts and move to the like minded statements that you can read without getting angry and violent.
Lucky it’s not all about what you think there, eh? I often get more laughs out of the ensuing comments than I do about the Stanek Sunday Funnies so thanks for that.
Maybe I should just say I’m going to skip reading over your posts, demand an apology, read your posts anyway, get pissy about something you write that I can’t hold back from replying to, state I’m gonna break my own rules and then whine even more. Because that’s what adults like yourself do.
My lawyers will be contacting you shortly.
Get in line. (:
EGOP,
I’m really not all that riled up. I’m sure we would get along well face to face. I can’t see going to Wisconsin any time soon, though I am a fan of cheese. :) You see, most conservatives see liberals as terribly misguided. I’m afraid many liberals see conservatives as just bad people.
Obama’s birth? It’s just that it’s so odd how little we know about Obama. Mostly that period between his drug-addled youth and his political career – his schooling.
You really have stooped to the typical liberal spiel comparing “gay marriage” to inter-racial marriage or giving women the vote. Those were natural “progressive” outcomes from societies that didn’t allow these things because they hadn’t been done before. Not necessarily out of hate and willful subjugation.
Redefining marriage from the uniting of the two genders to any old partnership / relationship is a completely different thing. It’s like changing laws and customs to support “neighbor parenthood” or that honorary degrees should have the same weight on a resume as an earned one.
Romney was the governor of a state, a successful businessman, and ran the Olympics. Last I checked, Massachusetts didn’t fall into the Atlantic, he created many jobs and “spread his wealth around”, and made the Winter Olympics solvent.
I will not mention he who shall not be named, per your request. Compare and contrast.
“The mine would have brought thousands of jobs to our state including the manufacturing of the mining equipment.”
According to Gogebic Taconite LLC, the applicants, they’re promising 600 direct jobs. Their economic analysis suggests another 1800 indirect jobs. I guess the voters of Wisconsin will decide whether a community that advertises itself as “Wilderness, Waterfalls and Wildlife!” should have such a mine.
As to the employment data, you owe ExGOP an apology in my opinion. You basically accused him of being a liar, which he is not.
MP – A couple other things on the mine – the bill would have passed, but a GOP legislator swung to the other side with the Democrats because of the desire of those pushing for the bill to set aside clean water standards.
Hans -
Thanks for the post – it was very well written.
I only used the comparison on gay marriage because in all those cases, well meaning Christians used the Bible to support their causes for a long time, and as Biblical interpretation advanced and society changed, those things became less of a bad thing.
After reading Peter Gomes, I’m conflicted on homosexuality. Thankfully, it isn’t something I’ve ever struggled with, so bottom line, my opinion of it as being in a sin in somebody else’s life doesn’t matter a whole.
The bottom line for me is, the institution of marriage as viewed by the government is different than the church. The government views it in regards to property rights, hospital visitation, and employee benefits. I have no issue then extending out these protections to others as I don’t think “marriage” is the term that should even be used for these partnerships (by the government).
Just my two cents on it.
EG: “if the election were held today, there would be a clear winner and Obama would be in for four more years.”
e-gad what a nation of stupids.
As to the employment data, you owe ExGOP an apology in my opinion. You basically accused him of being a liar, which he is not.
mp, He retracted the first statement himself and went from last to 48th. And apologized profusely for being inaccurate about the data. I think I did you and everybody else a favor by pointing out how “wrong” he was. And at this point I would say that Ex-GOP is no more capable of lying them Harry Reid is.
Ex-GOP,
I’ll see your two cents and raise you a nickel.
Call it a partnership, allow legal doings that concern no one else, but don’t call it marriage. I’m sure Gomes is a pleasant fellow. (Despite being from Harvard). I saw him interviewed by Imus a few times. But I don’t want society turned upside down just because I enjoy the contributions of homosexuals in show business.
Government does have a vested interest in some regulation of marriage, as it does in parenthood (biological or adoptive).
My nickel won’t get us far in an Obama economy. Oooh. I couldn’t resist.
MP – A couple other things on the mine – the bill would have passed, but a GOP legislator swung to the other side with the Democrats because of the desire of those pushing for the bill to set aside clean water standards.
I know, I saw it in the data stream.
ALEC at work.
“You see, most conservatives see liberals as terribly misguided. I’m afraid many liberals see conservatives as just bad people.”
You articulate my frustration perfectly. This is why I no longer talk politics with my in-laws.
Equating disagreement with hate (and less tax dollars with neglect and ultimately, hate again) is the lie behind the productive anti-conservative rhetoric. Don’t be fooled. And if someone wants me to agree with everything they do, they are asking me to love them less.
“But I don’t want society turned upside down just because I enjoy the contributions of homosexuals in show business.”
Several states and Washington DC have gay marriage. The beautiful Commonwealth of Massachusetts has had gay marriage since the 90’s. They are the most educated and least divorced state.
So how, specifically, does gay marriage “turn society upside down?” What adverse effects have been experienced in states and countries that allow gay marriage. If you’re married, how is gay marriage impacting on your marriage? If anything, given the high rate of divorce, heterosexual marriage is contributing to the demise of straight marriage which, BTW, is a civil compact and only religious if a couple desires to be married in a church. The idea that it is “sacred” is ludicrous.
“e-gad what a nation of stupids”
The average polling data for the presidential race (Real Clear Politics) shows Obama ahead in the most important electoral college races. Ohio is looking bluer and bluer every day. So, yeah, if the election were held now, Obama wins the electoral college and is re-elected.
“You really have stooped to the typical liberal spiel comparing “gay marriage” to inter-racial marriage or giving women the vote. Those were natural “progressive” outcomes from societies that didn’t allow these things because they hadn’t been done before. Not necessarily out of hate and willful subjugation.”
Seriously? You’re kidding? Interracial marriage prohibition stemmed from the fear and loathing that the white ruling class had for blacks. That’s why the South was the only section of the country, in the early sixties, that still prohibited it. One of the issues for the white, southern ruling class, was that “mulattoes” would eventually overpower (in numbers and physical power) the white, ruling class. Another belief was that blacks were basically animals who lived to violated white women. Prohibition against interracial marriage was just part of a whole spectrum of discriminatory practices that stemmed from hate and willful subjugation called Jim Crow. It took the Civil Rights movement to remedy that.
Women were denied the vote for some of the same reasons that inter-racial marriage was prohibited. Men feared their power. Additionally, there was a belief that women weren’t as smart as men and would make poor voting decisions. The prohibitions against birth control stemmed from the same mind set. Hate and willful subjugation? You betcha!
And BTW, how many of you Chick-fil-A supporters are also supporting JC Penney which is being boycotted by Christian conservatives because of their hiring Ellen DeGeneres?
CC: My reason for going to a Chik-fil-A for the first time ever was based on Rahm Emanuel’s despotic yammering. Francis Cardinal George’s comments could pretty much be mine:
Recent comments by those who administer our city seem to assume that the city government can decide for everyone what are the “values” that must be held by citizens of Chicago. I was born and raised here, and my understanding of being a Chicagoan never included submitting my value system to the government for approval. Must those whose personal values do not conform to those of the government of the day move from the city? Is the City Council going to set up a “Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities” and call those of us who are suspect to appear before it? I would have argued a few days ago that I believe such a move is, if I can borrow a phrase, “un-Chicagoan.”
But read the whole thing.
I’m not sure why I should “support” JCPenney any more than my usual rare appreciation of a sale or two there. For my, I don’t “buycott” someplace because some group I disagree with “boycotts” them. See above, again, for why I went to Chik-fil-A. They were victims of a despotic loon with political authority — not of citizens exercising free market choices. Since I can’t boycott HIM, I buycotted his victim.
Understand?
I personally never knew there was anyone boycotting JCPenney. If I started boycotting every company that hires sinners, I’d never shop anywhere.
I do boycott corporations that support Planned Parenthood, though. Currently, JCPenney isn’t on that list and I hope they keep it that way.
CC: “The idea that [marriage] is ‘sacred’ is ludicrous.”
As would be the idea that love itself, or joy, or dedication or loyalty, are anything more than epiphenomena in the brain — emergent qualities which have served us well evolutionarily speaking, but whose praise in poesy and lore are just so much romantic nonsense. Ludicrous.
Or for that matter, CC, your sense of offended justice on behalf of those who’d presume to deny gays their rights. Is justice sacred? You defend your understanding of it with zeal grounded in secular piety. Commendable. Your reflexive impugning of others’ ideals — not so much.
“Sacred”, in case you were unaware, may be recontextualized in any of a number of secular ways. That you dismiss its application to marriage is insensible. It merely reinforces the consistently credible inference, when reading you, that you arrive at positions about things based on your contempt for others.
As for the non sequitur that marriage “is” a civil matter because only some are married in a church, well if it comes to that, peas and carrots can’t be food, because only some of them make it into my granddaughter’s mouth. The floor is no place for food, ergo that must not be food.
:) Rasqual, at the risk of offering one of the most bizarre compliments I’ve yet offered: you have the somewhat nebulous honour of consistently writing comments that, even in the uncommon cases where I disagree markedly with them, almost always leave me in a brightened mood! That skill should be bottled and sold…
Anyway… digression over; as you were!
And EGV… (*sigh*)… my friend, what can I say, save for the fact that you are a hopeless political junkie and a near-absolute moral relativist? Remember what I told Doug? There are only three ultimate outcomes from relativism: solipsism, insanity, or conversion away from relativism. I hold out the “eternally-springing-hope” that you will come ultimately to the last of the three options.
And your deploying the phrase “uncommon cases” brightens my day immensely as well. :-)
And even where I suspect we may disagree, much of that disagreement on my part is provisional and contingent on epistemic commitments I hold in abeyance pending the eschaton.
LOL
Regardless of Rasqual’s prodigious verbosity, the fact remains that marriage is a civil contract that has nothing to do with religion. The “sacredness” of marriage is a meme that has been imputed to this civil arrangement by those who worship a particular god. The rights of marriage are those that have been defined by the secular state. My comment – “BTW, is a civil compact and only religious if a couple desires to be married in a church” – does not, as construed by Rasqual, (his philosophical dexterity does seem to include some interesting twisting) mean that marriage “is” a civil matter because only some are married in a church. As I said (nota Rasqual) marriage only takes on a religious dimension if one is married in a church and follows a certain religious persuasion. For many, who are married by judges and others in a position of authority and who are not adherents of any religion, marriage has no, nada, rien, bupkis religious meaning. I was actually married in a Catholic ceremony (for my parents) but my marriage has no spiritual meaning whatsoever. And thankfully, in some US States and some European countries, they have gotten over that old time religion that has this country still mired in the dark ages.
:) The vivification and the remedy for lugubriousness lent me by your soliloquies (laced with the judicious and not-very-parsimonious application of persiflage, redolent of the ebullient perspicaciousness of which I’ve become accustomed from you) is still a ready source of affective fortification, for me…
I hate it when I even partially agree with CC’s comments. :(
“The bottom line for me is, the institution of marriage as viewed by the government is different than the church. The government views it in regards to property rights, hospital visitation, and employee benefits. I have no issue then extending out these protections to others as I don’t think “marriage” is the term that should even be used for these partnerships (by the government).”
I agree with this, Ex. I have always said that I would be fine with “same sex marriage” being recognized by the government, but I would really prefer that the government simply issue civil unions for both gay and straight couples, and let the churches decide what they want to recognize as marriage within their congregations.
Well… I can appreciate (and I do not wish to disrespect, even by indirect means) the fact that non-theists would view the relationship between the Church and the state thusly. But to those who know God and acknowledge Him to be the Master and foundation of all, and who know that He is not (as Deists would believe) indifferent to or detached from the goings of the world, it is the very purpose of government to safeguard a God-honouring society. God’s laws are not designed to be an artificial add-on to civil laws; they are supposed to be an organic whole, with the civil subservient to the sacred. In our country (and in much of the modern world), it is the sad case that humanity is splintered, their intellects clouded, their wills weakened, and their passions twisted toward an appetite for sin, in this fallen world… and in such a case (with an admixture of believer and unbeliever, where belief is meaningless if not chosen freely), there must then rise up an artificial separation between the two. The so-called (and often ballyhooed) “separation of Church and state” is not the ideal; it is a necessary evil, in the face of a fallen and splintered world.
As such: an ideal government cannot but support and promote that which God wishes supported and promoted; and since God is real, and since He did design the human body and soul, and human marriage, and human sexuality, the laws which do not reflect His Will are laws which are, at least unintentionally, flawed.
(*sigh*) I expect the normal cascade of cries of “inquisition, Taliban, patriarchal theocracy!” and other self-contradictory nonsense from CC, joan, and other Christianity-hating trolls… but there’s little cure for that, short of their conversion. But there it is: it is never “good” for civil law to ignore, much less to violate, the law of God.
Not to interrupt, but I never knew there were so many Wisconsin people here! I will be going to WI for the first time ever this week – pretty psyched. I’m going for work reasons (blah) but I’m still looking forward to it.
“As such: an ideal government cannot but support and promote that which God wishes supported and promoted; and since God is real, and since He did design the human body and soul, and human marriage, and human sexuality, the laws which do not reflect His Will are laws which are, at least unintentionally, flawed.”
*shrug* And I fundamentally, utterly disagree with you. I really don’t know how to say this without offending you and others who I deeply respect, but there are like thousands of denominations (just of Christianity! not even to mention the other religions) claiming to reflect God’s will, and claiming that their specific interpretation of the Bible (and with the Catholic church, other sources that you believe are also reflective of God’s will). Like, for example, one very important case against the Bible being taught in public school in the sixties wasn’t brought by atheists, it was brought by Catholics upset that the schools were using the King James version and not… whatever version you guys use (lol, I don’t know, my dad told me that the Catholic Bible was literally written by Satan, because my dad is insane). Anyway, my point is, I figure it’s completely impossible to enforce any one denominations view on what is actually God’s will without severely inhibiting and damaging other people’s civil rights. And I will never vote for that type of government, I actually think it’s quite upsetting that anyone does want that type of government, simply because you agree with a lot of principles that would be enforced, doesn’t mean it still can’t kick you in the rump eventually. Theocracy never ends well.
Alexandra: that settles it! Carla, et al., we need to assemble the Wisconsin Jill Stanek Bar-B-Q that we’ve been threatening, and we need to do it now, while Alexandra’s in town! :)
:D As soon as I learned that I’d be in WI I told Carla! At the time she was the only person I could think of who lives there. Tragically she lives several hours from where I will be. Alas, cruel world.
Jack wrote, in reply to my comment:
*shrug* And I fundamentally, utterly disagree with you. I really don’t know how to say this without offending you and others who I deeply respect,
:) No worries about that from my end, friend. Heavens, if I were offended every time someone disagreed with some position of mine, I’d have died of chronic ulcers, by now (as would anyone who did so, IMHO)! Disagreement doesn’t equal rejection of me (personally), in my book… nor do I ever take it as an attack, per se. No worries, mate!
but there are like thousands of denominations (just of Christianity! not even to mention the other religions) claiming to reflect God’s will, and claiming that their specific interpretation of the Bible (and with the Catholic church, other sources that you believe are also reflective of God’s will).
True. I’m wary of going too far in that direction, on this particular blog (since I’m frightfully fond of a great many people on this blog, and discussions about “which denomination is right or wrong about [x]” sometimes engender hurt feelings, and I always feel badly when that happens), but I’d say, in the abstract, that the search for true religion is not simply a matter of personal taste, random chance, or the like; we can explore the matter logically and intelligently, and we can come to sound conclusions about it.
Like, for example, one very important case against the Bible being taught in public school in the sixties wasn’t brought by atheists, it was brought by Catholics upset that the schools were using the King James version and not… whatever version you guys use (lol, I don’t know, my dad told me that the Catholic Bible was literally written by Satan, because my dad is insane).
:) Hm. Perhaps I should’ve checked the inside cover for the author’s name, before reading my Catholic Bible(s)… (Just kidding!)
Understood… and again: God never intended for His people to be fragmented into tens of thousands of conflicting beliefs; our “separation laws” are a half-baked, spit-and-duct-tape-and-bailing-twine attempt to limp along in the face of a bad situation (i.e. error running rampant in society). This might only become obvious to many people when some of the most fundamental of God’s laws are violated by the state (e.g. abortion “legality”, etc.).
Anyway, my point is, I figure it’s completely impossible to enforce any one denominations view on what is actually God’s will without severely inhibiting and damaging other people’s civil rights.
Absolutely right. See above.
And I will never vote for that type of government, I actually think it’s quite upsetting that anyone does want that type of government, simply because you agree with a lot of principles that would be enforced, doesn’t mean it still can’t kick you in the rump eventually.
I understand… and, as things stand now, I (and the Catholic Church) agree with you; a government in our fragmented, fallen society which tried an imposition of one belief-set (whole-sale) onto all others would find it very difficult to avoid tyranny and injustice. I was speaking of an ideal, not quite of a situation which could be implemented carte blanche, in our society. (I also offer it as a reminder of where these laws originate, and how to rediscover the foundational principles… partially in a pre-emptive answer to those relativists who say, “Who are you to forbid abortion? Who are you to forbid euthanasia? Why is your position any better than mine?”)
Theocracy never ends well.
Hm. At the end of time, I’ll get back to you on that. :)
“I hate it when I even partially agree with CC’s comments. ”
Jack, it’s a pain I’ve known as well.
“You see, most conservatives see liberals as terribly misguided. I’m afraid many liberals see conservatives as just bad people”
Oh man I missed this comment. No, just… no. Both sides have a huge freaking problem with seeing the other as terrible people. I couldn’t even begin to count the amount of liberal bashing comments on this blog alone, not to mention the atheist/agnostic bashing, the pro-choicer bashing, the x-issue holder bashing. I am not saying liberals don’t do this, or that they do it less. As far as I see it, it’s about equal. I mean, seriously. I have watched Ex just get reamed and called all sorts of names and such for months, because he doesn’t agree with you guys politically and likes to argue lol. Not that you do that, Hans, but it’s pretty common, on this blog and others.
From what I can gather, Ex gets “reamed” after he makes comments like this: ”I speak slowly and use small words in their presence” regarding those who disagree with him or he gets caught up in lies.
Ex is no victim here.
b o has assigned himself more than one name.
b o has assigned himself more than one birthdate, birthplace and age.
b o has identified himself as a muslim and a devout, committed, christian.
b o has come out in favor of the historical definition of marriage: one man and one woman and bo has come out in favor of re-defining the tradtional definition of marriage to include a partnership of two people of the same gender.
b o has identified himself as a foreign student from Kenya and b o has claimed to be born in at least two different hospitals and his Kenyan grandmother claims she witnessed his birth and she has never been to the United States.
b o claims to have had a girlfriend, who, in his unauthorized autobiography, is a composite of many females, but not one has yet come forward and accepted the honor. [No ‘bimbo eruptions’ for b o.]
Larry Sinclair has come foreward accepted the honor of being b o’s ‘boy’ friend.
There is no verifiable record of b o having been birthed in any of the 50 or 57 United States of America.
b o has a social security number associated with someone who resided in Connecticut, but that is not one of the 50 or 57 states where b o has claimed to have lived.
b o and his minions remind us often enough that he is ‘black’. [Anyone who dares to question his credentials is labeled a ‘racist’ motivated solely by an animous towards non-caucasians.] But b o shunned an invitation to address the annual convention of liberal colored people and instead dispatched ole black joe biden to lean in and take one for the team.
The un-employment rate for all americans is 8.25%, but for densely pigmented people it is 14%.
non-caucasian christian pastors have questioned b o’s fidelity to the book because
b o has embraced the agenda of the homophobes and b o has equated being born non-caucasian with ‘being on the down low’.
Hmf. Maybe we should move the barbecue to Eau Claire, or Marshfield, or something…
…or the Dells! :) Get soaking wet, spend an obscene amount of money, and eat barbecued food; what’s not to like?
“Ex is no victim here.”
Did I say he was some innocent victim? No, he can give as good as he gets, at times. But, in the year or two I have been posting, most threads he is involved in seem to start with some broad statements he takes issue with, or inaccuracies he wants to correct, or just a simple opinion he apparently disagrees with. He’ll disagree, might throw some mild snark in his answer, then it seems to be dog pile on Ex. Makes the threads highly amusing. When Jerry starts out with something like:
“And now we can add mockery to the list of things the dems stand for. Mockery of religious freedom, self-reliance, and traditional values. The list of things the democrats stand against today are such that their forebears in the party would not recognize it today. The democrats are truly a ship with neither a sail nor a rudder and if we let them rule another four years we will go over the ciff with them.”
the thread is going to devolve quickly, because he has painted all things Democrat in an extremely inaccurate and unflattering light. Which seems to be par for the course on this blog, but you can’t really expect the more liberal commenters to not take issue with it. I thought Ex’s response to that was fantabulous myself, I wish I could like it 123124234232 times.
I swear sometimes some of the conservatives on this blog can’t even see how insulting they are. I find it funny that it’s all “Democrats are this, that and all this too!”, but when someone gives that back they are a terrible person lol.
And anyway, Ex was just an example of how I disagreed with Hans’ opinion that conservatives just think liberals are misguided while liberals think conservatives are bad people. That’s completely, demonstrably false.
Jack,
Look no further than the Tea Party vs. OWS. Which wants to hold people accountable, and which wants to tear down? Which says you’re wrong, and which says you’re evil?
“ No worries about that from my end, friend. Heavens, if I were offended every time someone disagreed with some position of mine, I’d have died of chronic ulcers, by now (as would anyone who did so, IMHO)! Disagreement doesn’t equal rejection of me (personally), in my book… nor do I ever take it as an attack, per se. No worries, mate!”
Lol okay good. I do respect you as a person even when I strongly disagree with you, always. And your IQ is pretty obviously double digits higher than mine, so I don’t generally like disagreeing with you in the first place, in some cases!
”Understood… and again: God never intended for His people to be fragmented into tens of thousands of conflicting beliefs; our “separation laws” are a half-baked, spit-and-duct-tape-and-bailing-twine attempt to limp along in the face of a bad situation (i.e. error running rampant in society). This might only become obvious to many people when some of the most fundamental of God’s laws are violated by the state (e.g. abortion “legality”, etc.).”
Understood. And as far as an agnostic can agree with you without actually agreeing with your religious viewpoint, I do. :) And as far as “fundamentals of God’s laws” goes.. I see the laws you are as referring to as fundamental laws for a functioning, free, safer society, from my agnostic perspective it seems as though societies need a certain base level civil rights and legal protections for their people to function in any type of positive way. As for whether these basics are God-given or not, well my agnostic brain tells me “I don’t know”. ;)
“I understand… and, as things stand now, I (and the Catholic Church) agree with you; a government in our fragmented, fallen society which tried an imposition of one belief-set (whole-sale) onto all others would find it very difficult to avoid tyranny and injustice. I was speaking of an ideal, not quite of a situation which could be implemented carte blanche, in our society. (I also offer it as a reminder of where these laws originate, and how to rediscover the foundational principles… partially in a pre-emptive answer to those relativists who say, “Who are you to forbid abortion? Who are you to forbid euthanasia? Why is your position any better than mine?”)”
Good, I am glad we agree that as it stands now, we can’t enforce one specific religious view-point in the real world (I don’t think in idealism very well, lol, I’m too utilitarian or something). And as for the rest of it, it is possible to argue from a non-religious ethical standpoint against all those things. Xalisae (and me, less awesomely) manage to do this with abortion and it works out pretty well. The thing that always trips me up when people try to argue from a religious standpoint on why something should be illegal, or prohibited, or not, is that like it or not we live in a diverse society, and if someone doesn’t already completely agree with your underlying religious belief they aren’t likely to buy your argument. I think that making secular arguments tends to be able to be accessible to more people than religious viewpoints. To be fair, that can also be turned around and secular reason can be used for very wrong things, but the same can be said about religious reasoning. But whatevs. Different strokes and all that.
“Look no further than the Tea Party vs. OWS. Which wants to hold people accountable, and which wants to tear down? Which says you’re wrong, and which says you’re evil?”
I’m sorry, but again I say just no. The OWS vs Tea Party thing… both sides have been vilified and accused of things that the majority don’t hold (the Tea Party gets accused of being complete racists, that they hate the poor, blah blah and blah. Meanwhile the OWS people are traitors, they hate America and want to tear us to pieces, etc etc and etc). You even did it in your comment, there, you made a sweeping generalization. I have spent a lot of time talking to people on both sides, and all I find is that these stereotypes hold up as well as the stereotypes of pro-lifers do. I stand by what I said before, both sides are guilty of the hate, it’s prevalent everywhere, and I don’t see either side doing it more than the other. I don’t even like the concept of “sides”, because people rarely fit into those labels neatly.
The issue is not whether two men can marry each other, or two women can marry each other. Marxists have streadily cozied up with american democrats across decades in order to advance their idea: that this society is inherently bad, and the worker’s eventual revolution will overturn our current society and usher in the next evolution of society, as Marx discussed.
After WWI, the marxists thought the events of wwi and other things would bring abt this worker revolution. It did not. They went back to the drawing board and figured out that society’s stability rested on more than economic relationships. Marx knew the Bible but failed to see this.
So, they recognized “cultural hegemony” as the glue holding society together for better or worse. This hegemony includes commerce, Christianity, and the nuclear family.
To usher in the revolution, those three things need to be de-stabilized.
The same-sex issue will eventually be used to declare normal Christian church activity a ‘hate crime.’ Media have already painted the nuclear family as unattractive, and backwards, or at the most benign, affable and laughable. A woman who is OK with being a homemaker feels pressure and stigma, but no liberal is jumping on that cause. It fits an American democratic agenda, but not the marxist agenda. So, out of luck, home-makers. Keep weakly defending your decision, and face accusations of being oppressed and old-fashioned.
Jack: “but there are like thousands of denominations (just of Christianity! not even to mention the other religions) claiming to reflect God’s will”
So let me get this straight: thousands of denominations suggests that there’s no reason to consider something most of them may share in common, as a valuable insight about society and human relationships — but thousands of individual citizens with as many viewpoints, for some reason, suggests we should sort out some aggregate viewpoint and deem it a new norm?
Have you actually considered what you’re implying? “Religious people vary so much that we can’t realistically consider what they have to say. Non-religious people who also differ astonishingly, however, we’ll take really seriously!”
:-\
“So let me get this straight: thousands of denominations suggests that there’s no reason to consider something most of them may share in common, as a valuable insight about society and human relationships — but thousands of individual citizens with as many viewpoints, for some reason, suggests we should sort out some aggregate viewpoint and deem it a new norm?”
No… That’s not was I was trying to say or imply. I was referring to the specific issue I can see with trying to base laws of what is God’s will. There is a gazillion billion things, on my last count, that people are considering to be God’s will, and it differs church to church, person to person. I think that legislating on the basis of that would be a difficult thing to do, not to mention dangerous.
“ Have you actually considered what you’re implying? “Religious people vary so much that we can’t realistically consider what they have to say. Non-religious people who also differ astonishingly, however, we’ll take really seriously!””
Well that’s an interesting way to take what I said. Religious people should be taken just as seriously as non-religious people when making an argument, for legal matters or otherwise. The strength of their argument should be judged for what it is, in my opinion. Me discounting your opinion simply because you are a Christian, that would be stupid. As stupid as you discounting mine because I am not. However, I don’t think that you telling me something should be illegal, or considered immoral, because God wills it so will be particularly convincing, considering I don’t share your beliefs. Just as you wouldn’t probably wouldn’t consider some argument from a competing religious tradition convincing since you don’t already accept that religion as valid. Like… Imagine a Wiccan telling you abortion is okay because the unborn don’t have souls until birth because that’s what their particular religion teaches. That’s what I was getting at with the problem of “God’s will” being used as the basis of an argument.
Jack: Understood. However, I think your point is academic and a wash. I could as easily point out how many major legal protections in the vast majority of civilizations are things pretty much every of your denominations agree on — and always have. Dittos for legal proscriptions.
No one’s wanting a theocracy. Religious people themselves got that idea out of their system following the religious wars in Europe. They left state power to their betters, apparently — leaving us with 100 million dead in the last century at the hands of the secular heirs of political power.
Statism — not religious ambition — remains the greatest threat in the world today (Islam excepted). In the U.S., federal authority is growing, and religious authority is decreasing. Anyone ranting about the latter and shrugging about the former is, frankly, a fool. But since I haven’t seen you rant thus, I digress.
Jack: “both sides are guilty of the hate, it’s prevalent everywhere, and I don’t see either side doing it more than the other.”
Wow.
What sources have best informed you to reach this conclusion?
“What sources have best informed you to reach this conclusion? ”
My personal opinion, talking to people, and reading stuff. We could play a game, if you wish. I’ll go find hateful stuff from Fox News and Free Republic, and other right wing sites, you go to Daily Kos and HuffPo or whatever and do the same. We could post for weeks and I don’t think that either of us could top the other for hateful rhetoric.
Oh, and I don’t buy for even a second there aren’t people who want a theocracy of some sort. I was raised by people who did, for one. Also, it seems like plenty of people are perfectly fine with a government that privileges one religion (Christianity) over others, which I think is exceedingly dangerous. Like that one Louisiana legislator that approved of a school voucher program until she found out that non-Christian private schools could also benefit from it. :/ That’s really the opposite of okay in my book. It seems like a common attitude, too, but that might just be my “raised in a cult, now scared of organized religion” paranoia.
Oh, and I am fairly libertarian. I am not exactly “huge government is awesome!”
General comment…
– It has been interesting to read the back and forth about me. I have no issue with people disagreeing with me and having good conversation. What I take issue with is what happens with a few folks on this board - where a decent, adult like conversation ends up with me being told I should 1) Leave the board 2) Repent of my democraticness because I need saving or 3) am an idiot poser.
While I can handle myself, it dismays me more than a bit that people who claim to be adults (though I suppose I don’t have proof) can become so anti-Christ like, or just anti-civilness when their viewpoint is threatened. It is sad to see.
Thanks Jack for sticking up for me – I appreciate it.
I think roughly 40 comments came in since my last post – so if I’ve missed a direct question to me that hasn’t been answered by somebody else, let me know.
Jack: How about this, Jack: I’ll offer a list of outrageousness from OWS, and you offer a similar list for the tea party.
The tea party has existed at least twice as long, and has had a HUGE following in comparison with the relatively small urban OWS phenomenon.
So if the OWS and the tea party’s outrageousness is comparable rather than a stark contrast, I’m sure someone has compiled reports on tea party crimes, right?
http://www.verumserum.com/?p=33490
No, Jack. There’s no comparison. There’s only contrast. Waste as much time as you want, you won’t find evidence that the tea party even begins to approach OWS for outrageous crimes and extremism.
Perhaps you’re the victim of media bias that continues, to this day, to lead quietly with OWS violence. http://goo.gl/BNBKp
I’m sorry Ex, did you say something? Could you use smaller words and slow down a bit for me, please? After all, I’m pretty darn conservative.
Rasqual
You seem to be arguing that Ed Kemper was a better guy than Ted Bundy because he killed less people.
The original post on OWS was: “Look no further than the Tea Party vs. OWS. Which wants to hold people accountable, and which wants to tear down? Which says you’re wrong, and which says you’re evil?”
Depending on which side you affiliate with more, you’ll make this exact statement (swapping OWS/Tea Party).
Those who like OWS better will say they want accountability for banks and for the 99%, and that the Tea Party demeans and hates people.
Those who like the Tea Party better will say they want accountability for individuals and that OWS hates those who generate money.
Prax -
I was clearly, without a doubt, in a nice conversation with another poster and said that as a joke. You are the only person on this thread, including the person who I was actually talking to, that doesn’t get that.
Addendum: I’m going to pose a theory for why you claim they’re comparable, Jack. I’m going to theorize that you’re like many others I’ve met who give the most loony progressives a “handicap” when scoring them compared with folks at the other end of the political spectrum, on the basis of thinking that goes something like this: “We all know that’s how they behave; they can’t help themselves, Bless the poor blokes.” That is, there’s a soft bigotry of low expectations with respect to run-amok progressives. They’re chuckled at — and because they’re so darned comical in their excess (except when they’re raping and such, of course), they get a pass.
Any of that count in your judgment?
So that could account for the OWS folk not being judged as harshly as they merit. But what could account for the tea party being judged so harshly, against the facts?
EG: If you’ll notice, I quoted Jack — not OP content.
I’m utterly astonished (thank you for informing me!) that subjective viewpoints exist.
It’s a good thing I was concerned to compare/contrast actual documented news concerning crimes and extremism by both groups, rather than these mere subjective opinions.
Why do I get this impression your renewed interest in the subjective angle is because you’re well-aware that a factual comparison will cast OWS in a far, far worse light than the tea party? The subjective thing comes to a draw. Convenient!
As for “You seem to be arguing that Ed Kemper was a better guy than Ted Bundy because he killed less people.” No. How about “I’d rather live in a town with fewer daily murders than Chicago.” That town — yes — would be a better population to cast my lot in with.
Rasqual –
The tea party folks had short rallies during the day, listened to speeches, and went home.
OWS ended up being filled with homeless people, and had these various camps for a long point in time.
Plus, what two sides are you even saying they are on? OWS seemed to just hate everybody – the left, the right – I don’t put them in a party at all. And the Tea Party prides itself in simply saying they are their own group.
What is the point though you are making anyways – that the tea party is filled with a bunch of angels, and OWS is a bunch of lawbreakers? Is that the point here?
You are the only person on this thread, including the person who I was actually talking to, that doesn’t get that.
In that case, I guess I’m not pretty darn conservative, I’m very darn conservative. Please keep it super-de-duper slow and simple for me.
“What is the point though you are making anyways – that the tea party is filled with a bunch of angels, and OWS is a bunch of lawbreakers? Is that the point here?”
His purpose in bringing up the subject of crime is to intentionally derail the conversation from its original topic: the elements of ideological extremism that can be found on both the left and right (and within their associated mass political movements). Comparing the number of individual examples of (mostly) petty criminal activity, of course, is not a suitable way of measuring the amount of extreme or hateful thought or rhetoric relative to each movement. If it was, then a shoplifting ring would be more ‘extremist’ than a white supremacist group whose members would like to see another Hitler rise up but otherwise refrain from criminal conduct.
joan/troll: “His purpose in bringing up the subject of crime is to intentionally derail the conversation from its original topic”
No, I quoted Jack directly and am wishing for a sidebar with him.
England thought our Declaration of Independence ideologically “extremist,” joan. Yet respect for the individual, for mediating institutions, for limited Constitutional government — all of these proved a moderate thing indeed compared with, by contrast, the French revolution. But you KNOW this, joan. It’s just not as FUN as painting moderates as if they were extremists.
joan: “Comparing the number of individual examples of (mostly) petty criminal activity, of course, is not a suitable way of measuring the amount of extreme or hateful thought or rhetoric relative to each movement.”
Right. Because it comes down on the wrong side, compared with gratuitously slandering the tea party. THAT, now, is a way to get somewhere!
If it was, then a shoplifting ring would be more ‘extremist’ than a white supremacist group whose members would like to see another Hitler rise up but otherwise refrain from criminal conduct.”
I’ll remember this next time I’m comforting a crime victim. “Remember, dear, there are worse people out there who never commit crimes at all. They’re the ones helpful Internet trolls diligently remind us of!”
Rasqual -
What is the point of calling Joan a troll there?
Is she not worthy of the conversation?
Or is it meant to belittle her?
Just wondering what it gains you?
EG: “What is the point though you are making anyways – that the tea party is filled with a bunch of angels, and OWS is a bunch of lawbreakers? Is that the point here?”
What was Jack’s specific claim — that I quoted, and that I claim my citation refutes?
I agree Ex gets jumped on pretty rabidly.
I agree ex asks for it most of the time. ( you come across extremely arrogant ex IMO sorry)
What crimes have been attributed to the tea party?
I had another question a million posts back but in all the jumping topics I gave up and forgot it lol.
Jack-What “cult” where you raised in? *chuckle
Rasqual – his specific claim was this:
“I’m sorry, but again I say just no. The OWS vs Tea Party thing… both sides have been vilified and accused of things that the majority don’t hold (the Tea Party gets accused of being complete racists, that they hate the poor, blah blah and blah. Meanwhile the OWS people are traitors, they hate America and want to tear us to pieces, etc etc and etc). You even did it in your comment, there, you made a sweeping generalization. I have spent a lot of time talking to people on both sides, and all I find is that these stereotypes hold up as well as the stereotypes of pro-lifers do. I stand by what I said before, both sides are guilty of the hate, it’s prevalent everywhere, and I don’t see either side doing it more than the other. I don’t even like the concept of “sides”, because people rarely fit into those labels neatly.”
I would agree – both sides get accused of a lot of stuff – both are guilty of a lot of stuff. I don’t see anywhere where Jack says that one is better than the other – and with his last statement, seems to shy away from even trying to label each “side” as a group than can be labeled.
You seem to want to twist it into some p*ssing match on who does more damage at property – which is nowhere near the original claim of Jack that you seem to be clinging to in the face of opposition.
EG: “Just wondering what it gains you?”
Glad to help you keep your sincere sense of wonder alive.
No charge. ;-)
Thanks Jamie
I think I deserve it about 70% of the time.
I dig when people come at me with a rational argument.
When people come at me with hateful rhetoric, I don’t like it.
I am argumentative – I try not to be disrespectful (though some people see any arguing as disrespectful).
EG: I haven’t faced any “opposition” yet — at least, not substantive. Merely theatrical.
Not taking sides is a concomitant of the “they all suck” mentality which fails to judge between cases. It resolves nothing, and pretends that some via media will show up like a deus ex machina to pacify the adversaries, obviating the judgment one prefers not to make concerning the competing ideologies.
Jack is simply wrong in his claim. That proposition has not been “opposed” with evidence. I have offered evidence joan deems inadequate, because she’s more concerned with thought crimes than with real ones.
“Plus, what two sides are you even saying they are on? OWS seemed to just hate everybody – the left, the right – I don’t put them in a party at all. And the Tea Party prides itself in simply saying they are their own group.”
Sure, but the Tea Party is conservative and OWS is liberal, not the absolute extremes on the right-left continuum, but going those directions.. The two parties align themselves in an obvious way on the scale, but are generally relatively moderate, believe it or not. “Sides” probably are not parties.
Ex-GOP,
I’m going to say this slowly. Yes, I knew you were joking.
Jack,
Rasqual picked up the ball rather well as I wandered.Really now. The Tea Party gets permits for their rallies and don’t trash the place. OWS blocks people from going about their business and turns the place into a Civil War triage hospital. Not to mention the anarchic rioting in Oakland and elsewhere.
In general, I see conservatsm as an effort to preserve and improve. I see the Left as improve their way, even if it means overthrow and destroy first, ask questions later. Yes, yes. Broad generalizations. But with too much truth these days.
“You say you want a revolution? Well, you know , we all want to rule the world.”
I should clarify something: The tea party and OWS have both brought valuable perspectives into the public eye. In many cases, there’s common ground. I’d suppose that most here would find that uncontroversial.
The “extremism” I’ve observed (thus it’s action, not joan’s thought crimes) has been on the OWS side. I chose as objective a measure as possible — reports of crimes with arrests (and other data) by a broad cross-section of law enforcement from around the country, who in the aggregate are highly unlikely to be acting in partisan fashion in a punitive way.
Is there something wrong with appealing to actual data from independent sources (law enforcement) as a measure of extremism that can be seen — as opposed to thought crimes?
Hans: “Civil War triage hospital”
If we’re going to evoke historical scenes, don’t forget Valley Forge.
Also recall the hilarious expose where someone with an IR camera went around and discovered that most of the tents, during those miserable winter months, were empty. The tent count implied more commitment to “occupy” than the absentees actually possessed.
“No, I quoted Jack directly and am wishing for a sidebar with him.”
And what exactly did Jack say that you specifically took exception to? Let’s review:
“… both sides are guilty of the hate, it’s prevalent everywhere, and I don’t see either side doing it more than the other” and then the follow-up: “I’ll go find hateful stuff from Fox News and Free Republic, and other right wing sites, you go to Daily Kos and HuffPo or whatever and do the same. We could post for weeks and I don’t think that either of us could top the other for hateful rhetoric.”
Nowhere is he referring to the prevalence of criminal activity. He explicitly and unambiguously is referring to extreme and hateful rhetoric. And your counter to this is citing examples of petty crime found at various OWS events. (Most of which is self-evidently apolitical: crimes involving theft, drugs, sex, etc.) You did this, of course, because, on the original point of contention (rhetoric that pushes the boundaries of civility and reasonableness), OWS (and the broader left wing political community in America) does not have the market cornered and is, in fact, quite evenly matched if not bested by the Tea Party and other sources of right wing activism. If you want to argue this point, I will be more than happy to furnish you with as many examples as you’d like of insane, vicious things that have been posted to prominent conservative websites. (Or to save me the trouble you could just browse the things that ken the birther, Jasper, truthseeker and others regularly post here.)
“England thought our Declaration of Independence ideologically “extremist,” joan. Yet respect for the individual, for mediating institutions, for limited Constitutional government — all of these proved a moderate thing indeed compared with, by contrast, the French revolution. But you KNOW this, joan. It’s just not as FUN as painting moderates as if they were extremists.”
I don’t know what nonexistent argument or claim this is meant as a response to. You’re apparently responding to some slight or smear of the Tea Party that happened only in your own mind.
“What is the point of calling Joan a troll there?
Is she not worthy of the conversation?
Or is it meant to belittle her?
Just wondering what it gains you?”
It’s just an expression of his annoyance that someone saw through and called him out on his sophistry. I don’t take it personally.
You like to argue?!?! No way! *lol
When you ask questions in response to someones ligit posts (non-rambling commonsense posting mind you) you sometimes sound elitist. *shrug. Maybe its just how I read you in my head. I can remember two occasions you did it to me where I felt I didn’t deserve it. But maybe you just thought my comments stupid and unworthy. Not a big deal just an observation in case you’d like to tamp down the drama coming at you a wee bit.
I do think people here hate you b/c you are
anti-GOP, and they get out of line a lot. You could try harder not to jump on jills comic selections LOL. I also notice you only comment on things that are critical of the DNP, I guess that is the main prolife issue in your mind?
Jack-im wondering what makes you “libertarian “? Esp since you are pro-obamacare and that is about as far from libertarian as you can get.
Rasqual,
I live 20 miles from Valley Forge and will never forget visiting there. Valley Forge is a friend of mine. Occupiers, you’re nothing like Valley Forge! :)
“Sure, but the Tea Party is conservative and OWS is liberal, not the absolute extremes on the right-left continuum, but going those directions.. The two parties align themselves in an obvious way on the scale, but are generally relatively moderate, believe it or not. “Sides” probably are not parties.”
Extremes? What extremes? As Professor Rasqual has thusly enlightened us, there is simply no such thing as ideological extremism. Racial supremacists who would like to see millions of people brutally executed? Not extremist, as long as they don’t actually physically engage in any crimes themselves, and to say otherwise is to buy into the concept of thought crimes. Now, someone selling marijuana or stealing beer, on the other hand? That’s extremism at work.
This thread got interesting while I was gone…
Rasqual… Joan’s breakdown is actually pretty much exactly what I meant. I was talking about the rhetoric, used against the other “side”, in both parties. I wasn’t talking about criminality at all. I actually think OWS vs Tea Party is a fairly crappy comparison. Contrasted to the Tea Party which was seems to me to be a completely different kind of movement, organized with clear political goals, OWS is a random social movement, it attracted some people who cared about a message and a LOT of people that either wanted to party and mess around (that is what I observed from Occupy Miami, could be different overall).
Jamie garcia, I was raised in a crazy little cult. And I am not pro-Obamacare, not sure where you came up with that. I don’t think it’s the single most evil law ever invented in the history of ever, like some people do. I think it has some good points, but overall doesn’t do what it was intended to do and wasn’t a good idea.
“Sure, but the Tea Party is conservative and OWS is liberal, not the absolute extremes on the right-left continuum, but going those directions.. The two parties align themselves in an obvious way on the scale, but are generally relatively moderate, believe it or not. “Sides” probably are not parties.”
joan:”Extremes? What extremes? As Professor Rasqual has thusly enlightened us, there is simply no such thing as ideological extremism. Racial supremacists who would like to see millions of people brutally executed? Not extremist, as long as they don’t actually physically engage in any crimes themselves, and to say otherwise is to buy into the concept of thought crimes. Now, someone selling marijuana or stealing beer, on the other hand? That’s extremism at work.”
Extremes was a poor choice of words on my part as it suggested extremism. The Tea Party is taken seriously and may prove to make the GOP more conservative (at times and places?) while OWS gives the democrat party a buzzword to hang their anti-GOP rhetoric on. So, yes, perhaps OWS doesn’t embrace a particular party, but a particular party seems to embrace enough of what they like about OWS to have to at least do some explaining about the rest.
Jack mistype- switch “obcare” for govt subsidized hc. I have an infant don’t have time to pull up old posts. I am genuinely interested in what you think.
Jack,
My comparison was primarily about what each group was trying to say. The Tea Party was saying, “Hey! Both you parties! Get your act together, spend our money more wisely, and don’t try to hit us up for money till you do!”
OWS, as near as I can tell, was trying to drown out the Tea Party by continuing Obama’s theme, “Hey, you greedy rich people! Give us more of your money! Spread the wealth around to me!”
The trouble is, they took this message to Wall Street. Not to corporations. Not to rich people’s homes. They forgot what Willy Loman said about going to where the money is, if you’re looking to rob someone.
Just because OWS is so lousy at expressing their goals and are so disorganized, does not mean they are not carrying the banner for Leftism just as much as the Tea Party is for the Right / Leave Me Alone / Don’t Tread On Me people.
Well, OWS seemed to have more of a message of “This sucks, corporations are getting tax breaks and bailouts while lower income people are getting screwed.” This is what I find frustrating about these conversations, is that no matter what, each side is going to paint the other in the worst light possible and won’t even state their opposition’s views correctly. Admittedly its hard with OWS, again they are not a cohesive movement like the Tea Party, but its not difficult to see what they are actually complaining about rather than straw manning it. Though they do have their share of idiots.
Jamie garcia, I just dislike the right’s position on healthcare. I see healthcare as not really something that works well in the free market, unlike most things. Unless you want people dying of very treatable illnesses, basic healthcare has to be available to everyone. Currently, poor people who don’t get assistance are making cost sky rocket because they cannot pay their bills and everyone who can is getting those costs passed on. This is bad. I don’t have a solution, but everything I have seen from the right on the issue frankly makes me incredibly nervous for lower income people.
And yes, Jamie, cults are *hilarious*. I can’t stop chuckling.
Jack,
Check out what may be the last comment on the “Abortion and Conception” thread (one can only hope). We may see more eye to eye on that one.
Yeah… I saw that. I am ignoring that particular poster in hopes that he disappears lol.
Oh, I didn’t see you had posted after him, lol. Nm. I can’t watch the video on my phone because it hates me today.
I agree with this, Ex. I have always said that I would be fine with “same sex marriage” being recognized by the government, but I would really prefer that the government simply issue civil unions for both gay and straight couples, and let the churches decide what they want to recognize as marriage within their congregations.
Yes!!!!!! I absolutely agree! Here here!!!
There, there! No seriously Go there. >
“Also recall the hilarious expose where someone with an IR camera went around and discovered that most of the tents, during those miserable winter months, were empty.”
Rasqual, those tents were not empty; they were used to store the free contraceptives. ;)
Do I need to pull out my history of all the contradictory and completely illogical posts Ex-RINO has made? He brings it on himself. If he had any respect for the truth he would quit regurgitating the Obama talking points and voluntarily quit posting.
LOL truth, do that. And I’ll post yours.
Jack,
Put up or shut up. Isn’t that what they say? I’ll start with one of his and you can follow with one of mine. OK?
And yes, I agree 100%. Disagreeing with someone’s politics completely justifies calling them a liar, saying that they aren’t really a Christian, accusing them of somehow agreeing with you secretly but not admitting it because he hates America or something (that always amuses me, the whole “you know I’m right! You just won’t admit it!!!!”). It’s possible to disagree with people without thinking that they are terrible people, you know.
Jack,
I don’t think you and Ex-GOP are terrible people. But it’s terrible when you disagree with me! ;)
LOL Hans, that’s probably one of the reasons you are one of my favorite conservatives! It does get old, to be accused of all kinds of interesting things because someone decides they don’t like your viewpoint. I find it funny. If I am arguing for anti-abortion or anti-HHS mandate I get accused of all the conservative stereotypes, if I’m arguing for gay marriage or drug legalization I get the liberal ones! Haha.
Ex-RINO says he thinks abortion is murder and his number one goal is to stop abortion AND he votes for Obama. If you really believe that he is being genuine then you would have to admit he is also either insane, an ignoramous, or an Obama campaign hack.
Seriously Jack, no offense, but that applies to you and anybody else who thinks they can come onto a pro-life blog and say that they believe stopping the murder of the unborn is their foremost political goal and vote for Obama. The audacity of Dope.
Lol,I don’t like Obama and I am not going to vote for him. I will probably just go cry in a corner on election day and dream of Gary Johnson getting elected, or something. I still don’t think Ex is somehow stupid or insane for being both anti-abortion and wanting to vote for Obama.
And I somehow can’t remember him ever saying abortion is the single most important political goal he has. If he has then whatever, I guess, if that’s his primary goal above all others voting for Obama wouldn’t be his best bet. I don’t think I would insult him while I told him I think that though. O.o
Jack, you are trying to claim that hypocrisy is just a difference in political opinion.
Jack, really, come on now. Obama has been more aggressive in using his position as president to support the abortion industry (Planned Parenthood) then he has been to ANY other industry. Including holding fund-raisers to keep partial-birth abortion legal and his vote against protecting born-alive infants. Wouldn’t that necessarily mean Ex-RINO and anybody else who says they think abortion is murder would be repulsed by Obama?
Disagreeing with someone’s politics completely justifies calling them a liar
No it does not. But calling a liar what they are is justified.
Ex says himself that he has it coming 70% of the time but then rips on me when I can’t pick out those times. He admits he likes to argue (but maybe he’s joking), so much of the time he may be arguing for arguments sake alone and nothing more. To me, he does not come off as firm in anything other than in his adoration of Obama.
Hello fellow Wisconsinites!! :)
In the mood for bar b que!! Commenting on the topic of this thread? Not so much.
Luv my guv btw!! Big surprise there.
Hi Jack.
Nice to see you!!
Interesting. So y’all are walking back the propriety of an OWS/tea party comparison?
joan, I realize you have a stake in ensuring that the tea party remains on the same page with white supremacists and thought crimes. But repeating analogies that happen to juxtapose them won’t influence anyone by osmosis.
Carla: OK, so how about a Wisconsin barbecue — Devils Lake, next week?
Eau Claire?? :)
Argh.
Ex-RINO says: August 5, 2012 at 1:12 pm
“Ken the Birther (and all birthers) should love Harry Reid – throw out a crazy idea and force the other person to prove that the lie is actually a lie.”
“The funadamental difference between myself and Harriet Reed is I don’t squat to pee.”
kenthebirther
Now everyone pay close attention and observe how I will compel Ex-RINO to prove that Harriet Reed ‘pisseth against the wall’ [to borrow from the King James version] at least once in his miserable life.
“Chic-Fil-A – we don’t have them in my area of Wisconsin.”
Ex-RINO: he puts the ‘sin’ in Wiscon.
Wait a second. Wisconsin…..Governor Scott Walker….The state where ‘big foot’ and ‘nessie’ and elvis were sighted/cited more times than the ‘0’bamateur.
How does it feel to be shunned, disregarded, ignored, disavowed by your imagined lover while his enemies and yours shout in triumph over you?
How magnanimous of mr. bo-jangles to set aside his feined affections for you for his greater good.
b o wont rest, until you are free at last, free at last, great goddesses, free at last.
104 rounds of golf in less than 4 years and ten more trillion dollars in debt and still finding time to work incessantly for you.
Do you keep that lock of his hair and his faded photo in your man purse?
I don’t know truth, I guess it depends on how you look at it. I think that most wars are flat out wrong, and civilian casualties are only a bit less than murder (I don’t talk about my anti-war sentiments much on this blog because I don’t want to come across as hating the troops which I definitely don’t, but I am very anti-war). Yet… I will still vote for a pro-war candidate if I think their other policies will benefit my country enough to make up for their pro-war stance, or if the opposition of the pro-war candidate is so terrible that I don’t have a choice. I don’t think it makes me a hypocrite to vote in a way that’s against my conscience if it’s the best option I have. For example, if I had a war mongering candidate who was also anti-abortion and pro-gay marriage and pro-healthcare reform (that I agreed with), I might vote for them over an more isolationist, anti-war pro-choicer. You have to prioritize which issues are most important to you when choosing who to vote for. It isn’t necessarily hypocritical to vote for someone who doesn’t share all of your ideals.
I can’t speak for Ex, but from reading his posts for quite a while now it seems to me that he thinks that Republicans are not only not going to end legal abortion (though they may be able to restrict it a bit), their social policies and economic policies are actually going to increase abortions. And since he disagrees with a lot of the other GOP stances on other issues I can’t see him supporting Romney on the vague hope that will actually change anything. I don’t exactly agree with him, but I see where he is coming from. I don’t see it as hypocritical, I see it as a different take on the situation. I mean I like Gary Johnson, a lot, and I would have voted for him over anyone else if he had made it to the ticket. And he isn’t even pro-life. :/
Correction, I would vote for Johnson if he were on either of the two party tickets. He is on the Libertarian ticket, but what’s the point of voting third party? Sigh.
And hi Carla! Good to see you too, hope you and the family are doing well.
“Interesting. So y’all are walking back the propriety of an OWS/tea party comparison? ”
I thought it was a crappy comparison in the first place. I think the most relevant comparisons of the two movements are how they are portrayed in the media, and the stupid rhetoric coming from a good portion of both “sides”. Other than that, they are pretty different. IMO
Now that hurts, since I’m the author of the comparison on this thread. :(
EGV,
Joan is, in fact, a troll, if the word means anything at all. If you don’t know that, then you really haven’t been paying attention, these past months/years. If you’re affecting ignorance for the sake of making strange debating bed-fellows, then… well… I really don’t know what to tell you.
Carla:
If it’s Eau Claire, I’m there! :) (I’d have to look up where Devil’s Lake is, I’m embarrassed to say…)
Paladin has a vested interest in painting me as a troll because he simply cannot competently make or defend an argument, and I can. He’s demonstrated this numerous times. Like certain others here, he is first and foremost a sophist, hiding bad arguments behind big words.
Sorry Paladin – if she’s a troll, you’d ignore her and move on.
It is simply meant to be demeaning and disrespectful, which is sad to see.
Jack
That’s pretty close. Most pro-lifers simply think that abortion rates are best controlled by creating hurdles to abortion.
I think the better way (and more realistic long term) is to try to create a culture that values life and supports people so that when a woman chooses life vs death, she chooses life.
EGV,
You seem to have taken “option B” (i.e. in which I really don’t know what to tell you); as you wish. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether your assessment is accurate, or not.
Re: your reply to Jack: would you be so kind as to explain why your suggestion cannot be done *at the same time* as the “put obstacles in the way of abortion” method? Would you be so chevalier about casting a frown at those who protected the Jews (my ancestors, by the way) from the Nazis by force and by law, rather than “changing their hearts and minds”? The two are hardly incompatible; it is not a strict “either/or” choice, at all.
Paladin
In regards to voting, it is – and that is what Jack was referring to – Obama vs Romney. If you look specifically at the post, that is what I’m referring to (I have to point that out often, as you accuse me of being overly political, even as I’m commenting on a thread specifically about political cartoons of the week).
If a party existed that truly tried to make abortion rare through both bettering opportunities, supporting young families and mothers, and putting forth common sense barriers, I would support that party.
I’m so sick of people acting like abortion is just some political issue. While we banter about which party is the worst, thousands of lives are lost EVERY DAY. Abortion is a violation of human rights! We need to stop the killing!
And don’t anyone even start with the “it’s a legal medical procedure” crap. Plenty of heinous things have been legal at one time or another. It doesn’t make them right.
2.5 million people died last year in the US.
And another 1.2 million were KILLED by abortion.
If someone believes that this killing should be legal and continue year after year after year, they need to be voted OUT!
Abortion is the #1 cause of death in the US.
Stopping abortion should be the #1 priority for all of us. How was the economy in Germany during the Holocaust? The state of education? The unemployment rate? WHO CARES!
joan: ”Paladin … cannot competently make or defend an argument, and I can.”
rasqual: Yes he can.
joan: No he can’t.
He can!
No, he can’t.
Oh look, you’re not arguing at all.
Yes I am.
No you aren’t. You’re just contradicting.
No I’m not.
You are!
I’m not.
Look, you just contradicted me.
I did not.
Oh you did!!
No, no, no.
You did just then.
Nonsense!
Oh, this is futile!
No it isn’t.
I came here for a good argument.
No you didn’t; no, you came here for an argument.
An argument isn’t just contradiction.
It can be.
No it can’t. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
No it isn’t.
Yes it is! It’s not just contradiction.
Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
Yes, but that’s not just saying ‘No it isn’t.’
Yes it is!
No it isn’t! Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
No it isn’t.
It is!
Not at all…
:) Lrning, you’re my hero…
…somewhat akin to Rasqual, who just became my idol, with the Monty Python quote of the year… :)
What about Lake Geneva? :P
Lrning made my point wonderfully (and far more briefly than I, methinks), EGV… your lofty-sounding comments need to have meaning behind them, or they fall to ash. Those who believe that killing unborn children in order to safeguard the so-called “freedom” of the mothers (which would be laughable, if it were not so heart-breaking) cannot be trusted to bring for “a culture of life”; the very idea is absurd. What, do you imagine your “culture of life” springing, whole-sale, out of a culture which has taken 40+ years of training in the idea that “I can kill whomever I wish, so long as they are inconvenient, and so long as I can de-humanise them in the eyes of enough people in positions of power”? You have no idea what you’re saying.
I’ll be candid, EGV: I would not want to live in your “culture of life”. I would far rather die an honourable death, no matter the suffering. God forbid that your vision ever come to pass; for it is an utterly evil one, offering not only a mess-o’-pottage in exchange for true good, but an illusory mess-o’-pottage, at that.
What about Lake Geneva?
:) Hm… 4 hours away, picturesque… not terribly far from the Clown Museum…
Paladin
I’d love to just throw politics and reality aside and make cute little posts that you desire.
I wish abortion was illegal, every woman who got pregnant wanted to keep her baby, and that the baby was born and could ride on unicorns and pick flowers all day.
Okay, that’s out of my system. Back to reality.
We’re not getting a federal ban on abortion. Scalia said as much, but the numbers and the political will just aren’t there. Let’s say though that RvWade got overturned. Does abortion go away right away? Certainly not – most of the population of the US will live in states that have abortion, and a vast majority would live within a couple hundred miles of a state that offered abortion.
So in the best case scenario that is laid out, we’re still coming down to a fight for the heart of every individual making the choice whether or not to have an abortion.
The US is terrible in regards to maternity leave, day care coverage, and general costs incurred by young families that are having children. I’ve said it before (not sure if you’ve seen me post this) – but before I moved, at my previous job when our insurance was through the open market, having another kid would have cost us roughly $8K. We weren’t going to have more kids. Now, if my wife had gotten pregnant, we would have figured out how to pay the hospital bills and have a baby. Many people would not have made that choice though because of the economics of it. And the numbers back that up. Women aren’t going out and saying “my goal for this year is to get knocked up and have an abortion”. That just isn’t the case.
So how do we change the dynamic.
Your way seems to be to carry around graphic signs, yell at women that they are sinners, fight to keep young families from having insurance (I mean, health insurance surely isn’t a RIGHT), and ignore progressive issues such as the day care coverage and maternity leave that we see in other countries (because heaven forbid a multi-millionaire pay tax rates we saw in the days of Reagan).
Quite frankly, I’m surprised we don’t see MORE abortions. You’ve raised kids, right? They are expensive! So what are we doing? Cutting education spending, fighting to undo insurance reform that will help families – everything we can to make having kids look less attractive.
So yes – I reject your plans. I reject the thought that if we throw up enough barriers, life will simply be better.
Again, if you want to hear it from me, I would LOVE if EVERYONE respected life and didn’t even contemplate abortions. Ain’t gonna happen.
And if my culture of life is so horrible, then sure, you reject my viewpoint. If it is terrible to put protections in place so that a family that chooses to have a severely disabled child doesn’t have to worry about lifetime medical caps, fine, reject my viewpoint. If you want families to prove they love their new baby by depleting their savings to have that kid – fine, reject my viewpoint. If you think young families should struggle with deciding to pay the house payment or daycare for the month – sure, reject my viewpoint.
That’s fine with me. You’ve had a few decades since RvWade…how is this plan of yours working out for you? Forgive me for not buying in.
I could do Geneva. :-)
OK, Paladin’s going to love this one. I’m not going infect this thread with another’s craziness, but I have to raise the issue. Is abortion the natural result of a “contraceptive mindset”? No, I say. And this is what Paladin will love — that’s why I agree with him that the culture of death can’t “walk back” abortion to a culture of life. They’re totally different things. There’s no path back from abortion to contraception to something still more ideal, because someone who’s willing to abort has made a leap from willing that something remain merely potential (contraception) to willing that something actual must die, so that one’s own potential inconvenience (or whatever) would not become actual. An actual life dies to redeem one’s own situation, to stave off what one fears that new actual life would mean if born. It’s a perverse sacrament of the self, dispensing faux grace from the self to the self at someone else’s cost — their life. From a Christian standpoint, it’s precisely what anti-Christ means.
People who’ve made that leap are not standing at the brink of social transformation on behalf of life, EG, just waiting for pro-lifers to stop with the negativity.
You gotta be stoned out of your gourd. I reckon you’re PLINO. (argh. I see truthseeker beat me to applying that epithet — to the same person. heh.)
Ex-GOP says: If you want families to prove they love their new baby by depleting their savings to have that kid – fine, reject my viewpoint. If you think young families should struggle with deciding to pay the house payment or daycare for the month – sure, reject my viewpoint.
Dear God. What exactly are you saying here? You think it’s the job of the federal government to make sure that every family is financially solvent?
CLOWNS??? shiver
Rasqual -
I’ve never gotten a good definition of what pro-life really is.
My family chose life. My daughters are being taught to choose life. If anybody came to me asking, I would coach them towards life.
But no, I don’t vote Republican. I don’t believe in graphic signs and shaming people. I don’t believe in picketing houses.
So if that makes me pro-choice, put whatever darn label you want on me. Quite frankly, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t care.
Lrning
No – I’m not saying that.
I did think that the most pro-life solution I’ve heard in a while though is when Santorum wanted to triple the child tax credit. Why? Because it said that as we make our national budget and decide what to value, we’re going to help out people with kids – value parenting.
There’s no assurance that any amount of help could make a family stable.
But I feel that these days, whenever there are pinches to the budget, it is affecting families and kids.
Budgets are moral documents. The “untouchables” these days for the right are military spending and keeping taxes low for the wealthy. That’s what they’ll go to the mat for – that’s what they’ll risk their whole career over. That’s what they won’t bend on. So that’s what they value.
I don’t know how Santorum was going to pay for it – but again, I liked his proposal. Help families. Make women realize that kids are a gift, not just a financial burden (and I’m not saying this generally – I’m speaking about a woman deciding between life and death).
Make women realize that kids are a gift, not just a financial burden (and I’m not saying this generally – I’m speaking about a woman deciding between life and death).
No act of government can “make” women realize that kids are a gift. But it can make it illegal to kill them!
And if our elected officials believe that this killing should be legal and continue year after year after year, they need to be voted OUT!
What pro-life activities are you involved in Ex-GOP?
Jack, soldiers kill to protect innocent life. Abortion is the intentional murder of children. Your analogy is pointless.
EG, you win the non sequitur paragraph of the week award, as far as I’m concerned: “But no, I don’t vote Republican. I don’t believe in graphic signs and shaming people. I don’t believe in picketing houses.”
Must I link you to endlessly scrolling collections of your Obama bedfellows, parading about with graphic signs and shaming people? The SEIU et al picketing houses?
Good GRIEF. What kind of cocoon do you live in?
Lrning: “Dear God. What exactly are you saying here? You think it’s the job of the federal government to make sure that every family is financially solvent?”
I may have to post my Scrooge rant again. ;-)
Ex-GOP,
So you think the other Party will make a less-stressful economy and nurture more choosing of life over death? Have you noticed the War On Poverty? Look at all the Dem- controlled inner cities. Not only did we lose the war, Death is having a fine old time.
You appear to be a demi-troll on this pro-life site. On one end of the spectrum would be those who advocate violence. You are on the passive end of that spectrum. Not illegal. Just disappointing and misguided.
EG: “You’ve had a few decades since RvWade…how is this plan of yours working out for you? Forgive me for not buying in.”
How long has the “war on poverty” been going on, EG? How’s that plan of yours working out for you?
Geez, the statists who think that because something ideally would be much better, that therefore some omnipotent government can make that happen with taxes so easily fetched from the rich (or whatever).
Dude. With all due respect, are you insane? If you get your nanny state worker’s paradise, the economy will tank and we’ll be a banana republic. You really don’t understand that there’s no free lunch.
“I wish abortion was illegal, every woman who got pregnant wanted to keep her baby, and that the baby was born and could ride on unicorns and pick flowers all day.”
Unicorns aren’t real, but a horse with a horn doesn’t sound that fantastic to me. I mean, lots of animals have horns, big deal. Not intentionally killing babies doesn’t seem like a fantasy to me either.
EG, sometimes you just seem like a sophisticated false flag with a subtle agenda. The problem is that were this plausible, the role casts you as indistinguishable from a mere naif. So I’m left to hope there’s a third alternative, and that you’re neither a false flag nor a naif.
[…]
OK, I’ll get back to you on that. I’m going to have to ponder this for a while.
;-)
Truth it all depends on which side you are sitting, and it depends on the war. I am not getting into an argument about the military, it was simply an example of how it is sometimes necessary to vote against your conscience, depending on what else is going on in the election. I could have made the same argument using animal rights.
Lrning, its not the government’s job to make sure every family is financially solvent. I didn’t get that out of what he said at all. I can see his point. If us, as pro-lifers
My phone decided to submit things before I did lol. Anyway, I think that if we as pro-lifers are going to assume that every child has a right to life (which they do), we can’t really be telling people to watch their children die because they hit their “lifetime cap” or they changed jobs and now their child’s genetic disorder is a “preexisting condition”.
Hans, I wasn’t trying to insult you, sorry. I just think its a bad comparison and I disagree that Tea Party rhetoric is superior in most cases.
And rasqual, what’s the point of accusing Ex of being disingenuous or ignorant, if that’s what you are doing? (I don’t always understand your vocabulary Lol, its over my head a lot). Maybe your “third alternative” is that he genuinely believes what he says and believes that his opinions have merit?
And I agree with Paladin, further up there. The best option in my opinion is to not only work on the legality of abortion, but to work on supporting a culture that means less women actually feel that it is a choice. I think most of us agree with that for sure. We just don’t agree on how to do that.
we can’t really be telling people to watch their children die because they hit their “lifetime cap” or they changed jobs and now their child’s genetic disorder is a “preexisting condition”.
And even without Obamacare, it’s not as if children were dropping dead in the streets. If you can find me the story of a child who was denied care because of such a “lifetime cap” or even a lack of insurance, I’d be highly interested in seeing it.
Lrning -
On your 11:06 post – I agree – no act of government can do that, but our financial policies can make the choice of life look more attractive.
Let me make an extreme here….let’s say that as a country we had a policy that said every family that had a baby got a $1 million gift. Do you think abortion would be very popular?
And while I don’t think we need to bribe people to have kids, we do need to be able to say to women who are contemplating abortion that the society we’ve set up values kids and is here to help.
On pro-life activities – I think the most important one we should all do is teach our kids and support life ourselves. Our church (and our family) has been involved with a pregnancy center as well. I also choose to help support those who have supported life and have helped several single mothers in our church – moving, schooling, donations, etc… I don’t parade around with signs though, nor do I drive graphic trucks. That probably makes me a bad person in your eyes.
Hans -
I fashion myself as a realist. Please read my views on the path that the GOP seems to be on and tell me where you think I’m wrong. Do you think we’ll get a federal ban (and read Scalia’s recent comments). Is the best REALISTIC case for you where women are driving around the country and crossing state lines for abortions?
The war on poverty, drugs, and terror have had successes and failures. But what I’m talking about isn’t radical. Let’s start with Santorums’ tripling of the child tax credit – I’ll pay for it by moving taxes on the top bracket to what they were under Reagan (unless he’s a socialist now!).
There – step one is done. See, was that hard?
Rasqual (11:39 post).
I’m not saying an extension on the war on poverty (though as a side note, it seems like the last GOP budget is quite the war on poor people…jump out of the war on poverty and attack those we once tried to help – yikes!)
You seem to think I’m advocating something seriously different here. Most countries have some sort of maternity coverages. Tax codes get changed all the time. I don’t know why you’re freaking out about this.
I mean, if your best solution is what I laid out – trying to get it illegal in some states and hoping women are too poor to drive to the next state – that’s fine – say you advocate that plan. Don’t blame me for putting out a realistic plan. If you want me to take the blinders approach that you seem to be taking, just tell me.
LifeJoy –
Okay, if it doesn’t seem like a fantasy – what does it look like.
Constitutional amendement? Federal ban? Tell me what this non-fantasy looks like and we’ll discuss.
Rasqual (12:08 post)
Sure – my idea isn’t plausible. But don’t pretend that your current path is very plausible either. Any path is going to be difficult. I’m saying that the path you seem on isn’t going to get us very far, and am suggesting a different path (that heaven forbid, values families and children).
My goodness – it is like I tried to hand a kid an ice cream cone and you folks are running in as fast as possible to knock it away.
What’s the part that is freaking you out? Letting kids have health care?
xalisae -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/14/health-care-reform-repeal-obama_n_1594888.html
http://www.momsrising.org/page/moms/healthcare-stories-by-state
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=10674273
I’m sorry, but care/treatment were still available to every one of those people. I’m talking about people being absolutely denied care and pushed out into the street. I’m not concerned about people going into debt. I have plenty of debt of my own to worry about, and nobody is coming around trying to make my credit card companies go away, nor am I asking for that.
Ex-GOP- but our financial policies can make the choice of life look more attractive.
That’s true. For people that factor financial considerations into the decision to kill or not, I guess financial policies could tip the scale to life for a few of them.
A lot of financial help already exists in this country. The killing needs to stop.
Ex-GOP- And while I don’t think we need to bribe people to have kids, we do need to be able to say to women who are contemplating abortion that the society we’ve set up values kids and is here to help.
No, we don’t. There is a (perhaps large) portion of society that doesn’t value kids and we may never be able to change that. The killing still needs to stop. There are many people and organizations in society that are there to help, today, right now. You mentioned supporting one of them. How many more do we need before you’ll agree that the killing needs to stop Ex-GOP?
Ex-GOP- I don’t parade around with signs though, nor do I drive graphic trucks. That probably makes me a bad person in your eyes.
No, it doesn’t. Their are many ways to defend life. One of the most important ways is to VOTE OUT those that believe this killing should continue year after year after year. And for whatever reason, you are unwilling to do this. You can’t hide behind your standard excuse, “It won’t matter which person I vote for, abortion will still continue.” You are going to cast a vote for the MOST pro-abortion President ever. You are going to cast a vote to continue the killing while posting on this very blog about how you think abortion is murder. You are going to cast a vote for a person that thinks abortion is awesome and who would make full use of it if his grandchildren were conceived at the wrong time. A person that is not basing this decision on financial considerations. You are going to cast a vote not for someone that just tolerates abortion, but for someone that champions abortion. Someone that made campaign promises about how he would preserve and protect the right to kill.
You once posted a long list of personal sins or character defects that would prevent you from voting for someone. With amazing mental gymnastics, you identified that if abortion were illegal you wouldn’t vote for someone that wanted to make it legal. Yet you’re going to vote for the person that promises he won’t let it become illegal. You are going to vote for a person that doesn’t want the killing to stop and will do his best to ensure that it never does.
You make me sick.
And while I don’t think we need to bribe people to have kids, we do need to be able to say to women who are contemplating abortion that the society we’ve set up values kids and is here to help.
How does legalized abortion say “I Value Children”???
“Any country that accepts abortion, is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what it wants.” Mother Teresa
Ex opposes showing the pics of aborted children but firmly stands with the party that put these children in the photos. If you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Lord, give me strength…
EGV wrote, in reply to my comment.
Paladin, I’d love to just throw politics and reality aside and make cute little posts that you desire.
Given that you apparently think that politics encompasses the whole of all significant reality, I’m not sure that this comment of yours makes any sense, even as an attempted snark.
I wish abortion was illegal, every woman who got pregnant wanted to keep her baby, and that the baby was born and could ride on unicorns and pick flowers all day.
…and you apparently think that there’s no middle position between “fantasy unicorn rides in a fantasy pro-life world” and “voting for a party which will fight to the death to prevent even one abortion from being declared illegal”. Amazing.
We’re not getting a federal ban on abortion.
You cannot possibly know that… nor is that the only possible pro-life objective.
Scalia said as much, but the numbers and the political will just aren’t there.
I really do wonder if the effort (on your part) needed to refrain from wild generalisations would cause you undue harm…
Let’s say though that RvWade got overturned. Does abortion go away right away? Certainly not – most of the population of the US will live in states that have abortion, and a vast majority would live within a couple hundred miles of a state that offered abortion.
All right. Your conclusion, therefore, is… what? That it is BAD to try to get it overturned? That, unless unicorns come prancing by, the pro-life movement (as it recognises itself, not as you recognise it–with all due respect) should just pack up, go home, and content itself with “not having abortions, themselves”?
So in the best case scenario that is laid out, we’re still coming down to a fight for the heart of every individual making the choice whether or not to have an abortion.
You may notice that I said as much, earlier, when I urged us to do BOTH (fight for legal protection for the unborn, AND work for the soul-deep conversion of society). Did you honestly think I’d be surprised by your statement, above? No sane and even semi-conscious pro-lifer is unaware of this fact… but such conversion does not happen in a vacuum. If a drunkard father forbids his son to drink, will that prohibition be effective, do you think? And if an abortion-drunk government urges (in some alternate reality) the nation’s mothers to “enact a culture of life” (and do you honestly see this administration urging *anyone* not to get an abortion? Seriously? In the interests of letting me think you non-delusional, please say “no”…?), do you suppose that lesson would be embraced with enthusiasm?
The US is terrible in regards to maternity leave, day care coverage, and general costs incurred by young families that are having children.
Then by all means, work to change that. But I fail to see how even these significant issues could possibly prevent you from denying pro-abortion politicians your vote… save for the fact that you find the deliberate murder of unborn children to be completely insignificant. You say “I wish abortions were no more” with the same zeal that someone else might say “I wish there were no stale Doritos”.
Women aren’t going out and saying “my goal for this year is to get knocked up and have an abortion”. That just isn’t the case.
Forgive me, EGV, but this statement is simply stupid. No pro-lifer on this board ever suggested anything of the sort… nor does this straw-man (and a ridiculous one, at that) bear into the issue at all. A large number of women could insist on the availability of legal abortion “for the sake of being equal to men, and fighting back against the oppressive patriarchy” (hat-tip to our resident pro-abortion trolls, there), without violating your mind-boggling mischaracterisation, above. Don’t you see?
So how do we change the dynamic. Your way seems to be to carry around graphic signs, yell at women that they are sinners, fight to keep young families from having insurance (I mean, health insurance surely isn’t a RIGHT), and ignore progressive issues such as the day care coverage and maternity leave that we see in other countries (because heaven forbid a multi-millionaire pay tax rates we saw in the days of Reagan).
(*sigh*) Some days, I really do wonder if the strain of commenting on these boards (and/or the strain of keeping such self-contradictory nonsense in your head) has driven you mad. You don’t even append this paragraph with any indication that this is a rhetorical, 100% satirical “flight of fancy” (such as your unicorn comment, above). And yet:
1) Can you please direct me to the place where I ever said that graphic signs (which I do regard as morally licit) were REQUIRED of any and every pro-lifer… or that I carry them, myself?
2) Can you quote me, even once, where I advocate “yelling at women that they are sinners”? (What, is there no room in your hyperbole-dripping mind-set for those of us who, knowing full well that we are sinners deserving of death and hell, ourselves, kneel in front of Planned Parenthood clinics and pray quietly, silently [with our eyes] beg the women going into the clinic to turn back, and beg God for mercy for them?) This is either full-fledged calumny, EGV, for which you owe me an apology… or you’ve gone utterly insane.
3) Please direct me to any quote of mine which expressed any intent (much less a “fight”) of mine to “prevent young families from having insurance”.
4) Given that I, in full view of your eyes, urged us to embrace BOTH (your pet liberal projects, albeit possibly by different means, AND direct pro-life initiatives), your statement is wrong, insulting, and hysterical.
So yes – I reject your plans. I reject the thought that if we throw up enough barriers, life will simply be better.
“Broad-Brush Caricature EGV” strikes again, apparently. See above, re: your ridiculous claim that pro-lifers see legal initiatives as a “magic bullet which will cure everything and breed unicorns for everyone”.
Again, if you want to hear it from me, I would LOVE if EVERYONE respected life and didn’t even contemplate abortions. Ain’t gonna happen.
Then work to repeal any and all laws against rape and murder; surely you’re not so unrealistic as to think that everyone (without exception) will respect life enough to refrain from these completely, or even a little? Your “all or nothing” approach, especially in the face of so many pro-lifers (on this board alone) refuting such nonsense, is beyond tiresome; it’s becoming rather depressing.
And if my culture of life is so horrible, then sure, you reject my viewpoint.
My dear fellow, you do not have a culture of life, as such. You suggest that we take a group of people who fight with every fibre of being to safe-guard legalised abortion in any and every case, who portray that legalised abortion not as a necessary evil but as a RIGHT by which women “can be free and equal” (and free from the “punishment of a baby” if the baby is unwanted/undesired), give these life-disrespecting people virtually UNLIMITED POLITICAL CONTROL over our lives, and then content yourself with personally refraining from purchasing an abortion, and suggesting to your children that they might not want to get one, either… and hope for unicorns, perhaps. This is insane.
If it is terrible to put protections in place so that a family that chooses to have a severely disabled child doesn’t have to worry about lifetime medical caps, fine, reject my viewpoint.
“Severely disabled”… such as Down’s Syndrome? You realise that your president (and candidate of choice) finds the idea of “punishing people with a Down’s Syndrome Baby” (by forcing them to carry him/her to term) to be repugnant? That, apparently, is beneath your notice.
If you want families to prove they love their new baby by depleting their savings to have that kid – fine, reject my viewpoint.
You’re really devolving into raw hysteria, EGV. What, would you find it convincing if I should do the same? For example:
“If you want families to prove their ‘freedom’ by killing every unwanted child with whom they become pregnant, fine: reject our view-point. If it is terrible to stop children from being murdered and mothers from being ravaged by abortion for any and every reason under the law, then fine: reject our view-point.”
Did that convince you? I rather suspect not.
That’s fine with me. You’ve had a few decades since RvWade…how is this plan of yours working out for you? Forgive me for not buying in.
Perhaps we might wait until you’re a bit more calm, before we discuss this further? Your comments are making less and less sense, as they go on.
To sum up:
1) There is no logical reason why “progressive initiatives” and the legal prohibition of abortion cannot happen simultaneously; in fact, they would be synergistic. For the umteenth time: whenever you argue against the GOP, I couldn’t possibly care less; I value the GOP as a straw, and I reject any GOP candidate who is more pro-abortion than the alternative.
2) While I might find many of the modern-day “progressive initiatives” to range from “workable” to “ill-advised” to “financial suicide and delusional”, I assure you: I would vote for an advocate of even the looniest of financial plans such as these, so long as they did not transgress the sanctity of life. This is why even the most passionate of your political pleas seem to fall on deaf ears, when you yell them at me.
3) Once upon a time, you said that your personal choice to refrain from abortion was sufficient for you, re: your pro-life credentials… despite the fact that it was but one passive example in the face of a juggernaut of political death, and despite the fact that it would not assure so much as one other person to shy away from abortion (even your own children, who can easily see your voting preferences). Well, then: do the same with your vote: vote against the pro-abortion candidate, despite the fact that it is seemingly only one passive act in the midst of a maelstrom of abortion advocacy.
4) See the comments of the others for cogent replies to your other points.
I have, of course, no high hopes that you’ll read even a tithe of that with any particular attention, EGV. A favour, if you please: if you’re too busy to do anything other than skim-and-fire-back, perhaps you might as well wait until you have more leisure, or else not bother?
I’m going to have to come back Paladin and read the whole post again – I got so angry halfway through that I just started typing.
You are completely mischaracterizing everything I’m saying and instead of reading the big picture, doing your little hack job.
I SPECIFICALLY stated earlier that I’d love to do both if there was a party for it. It is an either or proposition. You are saying “vote pro-life”, ignore every other issue.
I’m not going to do that. I voted pro-life before. We’ve had lots of pro-life years before. And you know what? They go to the mat for busting unions, cutting taxes for the rich, rolling back food stamp programs, and cutting unemployment. They don’t go to the mat for the pro-life issue. And when they do anything remotely related to it, it is funding shifts. Little funding shifts.
You present a false option. Pro-life candidates who actually have a plan to get rid of abortion don’t exist. And defunding planned parenthood isn’t a pro-life position – planned parenthood will continue to perform abortions. Little funding shifts are the victories that are needed.
I’ve been characterized as a villain just for being against graphic signs. That’s why I put that in there. I was never saying that YOU specifically said that. I was saying that many on this board have a picture of a box, and if you don’t fit into that box (carry signs, vote Republican, make fun of any pro-choicer and hate them) - that you aren’ truly pro-life. I think it’s a joke. If you think I was saying that YOU specifically have said those things, than I apologize.
You completely dodged the issues in regards to things like lifetime caps. Fine, the Democrats want to allow people to abort severely disabled babies. Most Republicans seem fine with it as long as they don’t have to pay for it. If you want to post any legislation that says otherwise, feel free. Most Republicans go one step further and say that if you choose to have a severely disabled child, that they want to make sure that there are things such as lifetime caps out there to really put tough pressure on the family. You dodged that. You shouldn’t dodge these things. They are legitimate issue you are turning a blind eye to.
On your last statements…thankfully, I’m on vacation in less than 48 hours – 10 beautiful days away from the internet!
But there is one massively good reason why I can’t fight for both limits on abortion and valuing of young families and life – and that is because the two parties are further polarizing and neither party gives that choice.
1) Democrats do a pretty good job of loving people. They just hate babies and for some reason, find it acceptable to brutally kill a baby before it has a chance to be born.
2) Republicans do a pretty good job of loving babies. Unfortunately, their current leadership seems to want to do everything to preserve the pocketbooks of the rich even at the expense of young families and children (see Rand’s cuts to feeding the poor – see Walkers’s cuts to health care programs for people of all ages – see the entire GOP budget we’ve talked about, that some folks in Catholic circles have condemned.
So, while I know you’re going to hate this – it comes down almost like a math equation. Even under the best case plan for the GOP, we’re STILL going to be fighting for the actual soul of women making this choice. Even under the best case, we’re still going to have abortion legal in many, if not the majority of states. So even if we go the path of repealing RvWade, which is a HUGE if, we’re talking about saving a small percentage of babies unless we change that overall dynamic.
So I’m fine working to change that dynamic. Again, I’d love to be able to have the choice to do both – but here’s how I see my choice (and let me just put it at the Presidential level – I’m not saying there aren’t other levels, I’m stating that just so you don’t go on a big rant that all I talk about is federal legislators).
I could vote for Obama, who I think will give us a better chance for having health care reform that helps young families out, and will lead to a stronger middle class (in the long run) through more of a progressive tax system. I think these things will help normal, every day Americans. I realize that this means that the Mexico City Policy funding stays in place. I realize that Obama will keep Planned Parenthood funded (I think every president has funded them since Nixon)
I could vote for Romney, who I think will dismantle health care reform, which will lead to lifetime caps, pre-existing conditions, and more uninsured people. I think all these things, and stats point to it, make it harder for women to say “I want to actually have this baby” because there is more economic uncertainty. I realize that if Romney were in place, Mexico City Policy funding will evaporate. I also realize that with him in place, some funding might be cut to planned parenthood.
I feel you are presenting alternatives that don’t exist. I voted for George Bush. I voted for Dole before him. I voted Republican in every election I could when I began voting. And the Republicans won a lot of elections. And we’re nowhere near close to flipping legislation that still, won’t make much difference if we care more about the pocketbook of the uber-rich than we do about normal, every day families.
Lrning -
Thanks for the thoughts.
I hope you start feeling better – don’t mean to make you feel sick. I hope you didn’t physically vomit, as that would a shame.
You bolded some info that I think is incorrect – Reagan had many, many more babies aborted under his watch. Wouldn’t it be logical to say that he’s the king of abortion?
Should we go back and look at some numbers when you are feeling better?
Ex-GOP – Thanks for the thought, but I won’t start to feel better until abortion is illegal.
Nice misreading of what I bolded. I guess that’s what you need to do to make yourself feel better as you cast your vote to continue the killing.
Lrning – I apologize – I forgot that lip service is more important than numbers.
My bad.
“I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”
Rev 3:15-16
Lrning -
If you feel that you have enough to judge me based on a few interactions on a board – wow. Just wow.
Furthermore, I hope you do realize that being pro-life is not a substitue for Christ. I feel like you are teetering on the edge of idol worship with your post. I follow Jesus – I don’t follow Mitt Romney or pro-life viewpoints. I’m not in the position to judge you – I’ve read enough of my Bible to know not to fall into that trap. I pray that you search your heart and your intentions though to make sure they are pure.
Judge you? Would that have been your response if I had quoted song lyrics or a poem? Those words of Scripture perfectly describe how I feel right now. I’m ready to spit you out and be done with you. I pray that you search your heart and your intentions and make sure that it’s Jesus that’s leading you to vote for elected officials that will do everything in their power to make sure the killing stays legal.
Lrning
Yes, you were just quoting that to quote that – no judgment from you – sure! Don’t lie. It isn’t nice.
I’m judging your actions, not your eternal destiny. I judge you a lukewarm (at best) defender of life.
Keep voting for those that keep the killing legal, so in another ten years you can still throw up your hands and say “It doesn’t make a difference how I vote, abortion will still happen!”
So first you say you aren’t judging me, now you’re judging me by my “actions” – so you are essentially saying that voting for a Democrat, or mainly Obama, makes a person lukewarm Biblically.
Again, if this is your belief, you have a very odd understanding of the Bible.
What other qualifications have you added to the Bible to be a follower of Christ. What other words have you added to the scripture?
I can’t judge your relationship with Christ based on how you vote, or your words on this board – and if I thought I could, I’d be a dam* fool and worthy of judgment harsher than I’ve shown towards you!
EGV wrote, in reply to my comment:
I’m going to have to come back Paladin and read the whole post again – I got so angry halfway through that I just started typing.
Hm. I don’t suppose it’d make you feel better if I told you that, at least on occasion, the feeling was mutual?
You are completely mischaracterizing everything I’m saying and instead of reading the big picture, doing your little hack job.
You’ve made that accusation before… often (ironically) in the midst of mis-characterising my own comments (usually with grandiose, broad-brush, sweeping generalisations). To borrow a quip from earlier: I’ll let the reader decide between us, on that point.
I SPECIFICALLY stated earlier that I’d love to do both if there was a party for it. It is an either or proposition. You are saying “vote pro-life”, ignore every other issue.
I am saying that your entire paradigm is nonsense, sir! Has that escaped you?
You find the motives and intentions of your “liberal political saviours” to be utterly irrelevant; and unless you are an utterly amoral person, I cannot fathom why you would think thusly. You claim that “neither party will ever do anything substantial re: abortion–they’re all talk” (note the sweeping generalisation, opinion-rich and fact-impoverished)… but you don’t seem to give even a split-second’s thought to what would happen if your champions SUCCEEDED. If they gained complete, utter power (i.e. swept all three branches of government, in all levels of government), you would have placed into power such individuals as have no remorse for the direct killing of unborn children… for any reason whatsoever. You will have installed a set of sociopaths into absolute power… and you somehow think that, when all poverty is abolished by them (using their magic money trees, I imagine?), the horrid pressures which led women to abort will vanish, and all babies will be “wanted babies”… magically, and without so much as a finger being lifted.
Do you not see? Not only would the economy implode in the attempt (Rasqual and others have tried to explain that to you, interminably, and you ignored their points completely), but even if it were to survive the financial difficulties, your own utopia would not survive its own enactment! Your saviours would have no motive, whatsoever, for changing their minds about abortion, once absolute power was handed to them. You seem to be under the deluded notion that all abortion-tolerant people view abortion as an ugly “necessity” driven entirely by poverty, and that this so-called “woman’s right” would be cast off like a dirty rag, once (assuming, for the sake of argument) poverty was abolished. If you are in earnest, sir, then you are dreaming, or deluded. An evil attitude (e.g. believing that it is justifiable to target an innocent unborn child for death) does not disappear by giving unbridled power to its adherents… or did that self-evident fact not occur to you?
I’m not going to do that. I voted pro-life before. We’ve had lots of pro-life years before. And you know what? They go to the mat for busting unions, cutting taxes for the rich, rolling back food stamp programs, and cutting unemployment. They don’t go to the mat for the pro-life issue. And when they do anything remotely related to it, it is funding shifts. Little funding shifts.
Whereas your favourite party has, it must be admitted, “gone to the mat” for the abortion issue… and you find that either (a) completely acceptable, or (b) irrelevant. Suppose you’re correct about the GOP (and must I remind you again about my lack of allegiance to the GOP per se?), and that they’ve never had any progress at all with regard to abortion (which is nonsense, as we’ve discussed before); your converse assumption (i.e. that the democrats are utterly apathetic and/or ineffectual on the abortion issue, in the other direction) is insane, and disproven as easily as a glance at the Washington D.C. abortion standards, the president’s decision to use Medicaid monies to pressure states to support Planned Parenthood, the president’s pro-abortion judicial appointees, the president’s pro-abortion cabinet members and czars and what-have-you [do you remember Kathleen Sebelius, and some minor actions vis-a-vis a mandate which you also dismiss with a scoff, without reason?], and more. At best, you seem to have fooled yourself with your own smoke-and-mirrors act (e.g. “vote to help the poor, the abortion issue is politically irrelevant!”).
In short: you really do think that the Democrats can do no substantial wrong. You downplay, minimise and dodge any criticism of their aggressive pro-abortion actions, and you support them with your vote. You say that you do not vote for them *because* of their “abortion-rights” aggression; well and good… you’ve avoided a particularly grotesque sin. But you comfort yourself by thinking that their abortion efforts matter so little, in the grand scheme of things, that your support of such abortion-saturated people is a trifle. God help you.
You present a false option. Pro-life candidates who actually have a plan to get rid of abortion don’t exist.
(!!) Is there a stronger synonym for “irony” which I can use, as you use a false option to try to criticise my supposed “false option”? Whoever said that the only choices were “find a GOP candidate with a magic bullet to end abortion, or else vote for Obama”? I most certainly did not.
And defunding planned parenthood isn’t a pro-life position – planned parenthood will continue to perform abortions.
(*facepalm*) Friend, your statement above is logical smoke; I see no shred of sane reasoning, here. You seem to suggest that funding of Planned Parenthood is morally neutral in the pro-life scheme of things. That’s… interesting. So… efforts to stop tax-payers from funding the deliberate murder of children is not pro-life? That’s… grotesque.
Little funding shifts are the victories that are needed.
There must be some context missing here… since you were mocking and denouncing “little funding shifts”, above… and I doubt that you think they’re “needed”.
I’ve been characterized as a villain just for being against graphic signs. That’s why I put that in there. I was never saying that YOU specifically said that.
Well… to quote you, directly, a second time:
So how do we change the dynamic. YOUR way seems to be to carry around graphic signs, yell at women that they are sinners, fight to keep young families from having insurance (I mean, health insurance surely isn’t a RIGHT), and ignore progressive issues such as the day care coverage and maternity leave that we see in other countries (because heaven forbid a multi-millionaire pay tax rates we saw in the days of Reagan). (emphasis mine)
So… when you said “your”, you weren’t including me? Interesting. What does the word “your” mean, in your lexicon? In mine, it’s a possessive pronoun (either singular or plural), which in this case indicates that carrying graphic signs, yelling at women and calling them sinners, etc., are “mine” (either individually, or as a member of the pro-life contingent). You didn’t mean that?
I was saying that many on this board have a picture of a box, and if you don’t fit into that box (carry signs, vote Republican, make fun of any pro-choicer and hate them) – that you aren’ truly pro-life.
Had you said “some people on this blog”, or some such thing, I would surely have understood you to mean that.
If you think I was saying that YOU specifically have said those things, than I apologize.
I don’t just “think” you did, sir; read your own words. And the word in question was very much in keeping with your general tenour and past history of commentary, so it really didn’t seem to be a “gaffe”. I’ll certainly accept your apology, though my main point is to show that you’re mistaken, here.
You completely dodged the issues in regards to things like lifetime caps.
I did not. I suggested (and I said this repeatedly) that I can tolerate, and that I could even support, such initiatives as you suggest, so long as the person in question didn’t violate the sanctity of life while promoting it. Do you remember me saying that?
Fine, the Democrats want to allow people to abort severely disabled babies. Most Republicans seem fine with it as long as they don’t have to pay for it.
I present your first sentence as an iron-clad example of your tendency to dismiss the importance of an issue (such as the murder of disabled children–remember the “no stale Doritos” approach?) by mentioning it once, and then knocking it utterly aside. I present your second sentence as a golden example of your hyperbolic, opinion-rich, fact-impoverished, sweeping, broad-brush, crystal-ball-esque, mind-reader-esque statement which so clearly typifies comments of yours. And you wonder why people get frustrated with your comments?
You dodged that. You shouldn’t dodge these things. They are legitimate issue you are turning a blind eye to.
You seem willfully blind to them, sir. I addressed these issues, repeatedly… and I’ve done so, yet again.
On your last statements…thankfully, I’m on vacation in less than 48 hours – 10 beautiful days away from the internet!
I do hope it’s a pleasant one, at least.
But there is one massively good reason why I can’t fight for both limits on abortion and valuing of young families and life – and that is because the two parties are further polarizing and neither party gives that choice.
That is why all Christians must use a firm set of priorities, grounded on principles, when deciding between any incompatible choices (while trying to make other efforts to change that state of affairs; how many times have you written your Democratic governmental officials, asking them to abandon their abortion-championing efforts?)… not on predicted political outcomes. Let me try to get through to you, at least one more time:
When you are called before the judgment seat of Christ, EGV, He will not ask you “Did your votes actually change things in the political land-scape?” He will ask, “Did you consent to a clear, provable evil?” In saying that you might as well vote for the Democrats (who have abortion as a plank in their party platform, and who have demonstrated a concrete resolve to safeguard and secure it at all costs) because they are “ineffectual at promoting abortion” and “so very good at promoting the social programmes which you think will help the poor” (and hoping for a Reagan-esque “trickle-down abortion economy” to help reduce abortions a bit), you are essentially placing a loaded gun in the hand of a murderer on the pretext that you think him to be such a very awful shot! That decision is not morally neutral, friend… and it is the very opposite of wise.
1) Democrats do a pretty good job of loving people.
You seriously do not see your own bias (i.e. what Rasqual fittingly calls “tribalism”) in this statement of yours?
They just hate babies and for some reason, find it acceptable to brutally kill a baby before it has a chance to be born.
It is not necessary to assume that they hate babies. It is only necessary to assume that they love something else more than they love babies, and more than they hate the murder of babies (e.g. free sex without any limits, misandry, eugenics, donations from abortion providers, etc.). Your second part of your sentence is very accurate.
2) Republicans do a pretty good job of loving babies.
That is also a sweeping generalisation (albeing in a direction unusual for you… i.e. sympathetic to the GOP), and invalid, as it stands.
Unfortunately, their current leadership seems to want to do everything to preserve the pocketbooks of the rich even at the expense of young families and children (see Rand’s cuts to feeding the poor – see Walkers’s cuts to health care programs for people of all ages – see the entire GOP budget we’ve talked about, that some folks in Catholic circles have condemned.
Your tribalism is showing again, methinks… and we’ve already discussed the “Catholic circles” issue, before (i.e. it’s completely misleading and irrelevant for you to bring that up, as if it were some sort of relevant moral factor).
So, while I know you’re going to hate this – it comes down almost like a math equation. Even under the best case plan for the GOP, we’re STILL going to be fighting for the actual soul of women making this choice.
You, sir, are charged with the state of your own soul, and no one else… as am I. No political grand-standing will dodge the fact that abortion is the DELIBERATE murder of unborn children, while even the most seemingly cynical and loathsome political “plan” of any GOP operative does not target innocents for death. Even an imbecile could see that the first crime is more grave, and intrinsically evil.
Even under the best case, we’re still going to have abortion legal in many, if not the majority of states.
“God does not call us to be successful; He calls us to be faithful.” -Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta
That’s a summary of almost everything I’ve been trying to tell you, EGV.
So even if we go the path of repealing RvWade, which is a HUGE if, we’re talking about saving a small percentage of babies unless we change that overall dynamic.
Your choices may have a very small impact (or negligible impact) on the body politic. It will, however, have a tremendous impact on your own soul. That is the concern of every Christian.
I could vote for Obama, who I think will give us a better chance for having health care reform that helps young families out, and will lead to a stronger middle class (in the long run) through more of a progressive tax system.
I’ll indulge you in a purely political question/comment, despite my distaste for it. If you were to confiscate every last dollar of every mast member of the supposed “1%”, and funnel it directly into your favourite social entitlement programmes… how long would that money sustain such programmes, do you think? Has that questions been asked before? Perhaps you might dig out some numbers for me?
I think these things will help normal, every day Americans.
That is gravely unlikely, I think. But more importantly: which is of greater importance: material wealth, or the salvation of souls? This is very likely to be a case where you cannot choose both at once.
I realize that this means that the Mexico City Policy funding stays in place. I realize that Obama will keep Planned Parenthood funded (I think every president has funded them since Nixon).
And you regard these as morally irrelevant/insignificant.
I could vote for Romney, who I think will dismantle health care reform,
Friend, are you unaware of the fact that Obamacare is utterly unsustainable, and that its implosion will likely hurt far more people than it will ever help? The money simply isn’t in EXISTENCE! The fact that the implosion will happen in the future (the “kick the can” approach) puts it “out of sight, out of mind”, I suppose… but why is it more merciful for future people to suffer, than it is for present people to suffer? Is it simply in order for you to feel a bit better about the process?
I feel you are presenting alternatives that don’t exist.
(*sigh*) Irony, thy name is EGV.
I voted for George Bush. I voted for Dole before him. I voted Republican in every election I could when I began voting.
All right: WHY did you vote for them? You’ll remember that I’ve been quite unimpressed with mere “votes for the GOP”. The intention is everything, when dealing with personal integrity (and personal sin).
And the Republicans won a lot of elections. And we’re nowhere near close to flipping legislation that still, won’t make much difference if we care more about the pocketbook of the uber-rich than we do about normal, every day families.
I… think I’ll leave (forgive me) that mini-rant without a specific comment.
So first you say you aren’t judging me, now you’re judging me by my “actions”
Nope. Judging your actions, just like I said.
so you are essentially saying that voting for a Democrat
Nope. I’m not talking about Democrat or Republican, I’m talking about voting for those that vow to keep abortion legal.
“lukewarm Biblically”
I have no idea what you mean by this phrase.
I can’t judge your relationship with Christ based on how you vote, or your words on this board
Neither can I. I told you what I was judging, your actions as a defender of life, not your relationship with Christ.
I pray that you search your heart and your intentions and make sure that it’s Jesus that’s leading you to vote for elected officials that will do everything in their power to make sure the killing stays legal.
Paladin
Won’t have time to go through all these before I go.
one quick question though:
“Did you consent to a clear, provable evil”
What is your Biblical source that this question will be asked? Not recalling it off the top of my head.
EGV,
It’s in the verse immediately after the verse which says “Unless you find it in the Scriptures, don’t believe it.”
(Just in case you don’t recognise it: that’s “satire with a point”. Go find the Scripture in question, and you’ll see what I mean.)
You really do seem to be bending the “Bible” to mean whatever you wish it to mean. Where, for example, does it give you the moral clearance to tolerate abortion for the sake of a national health-care plan? I don’t remember that, either… though perhaps it was simply omitted in my Douay-Rheims version…
Won’t have time to go through all these before I go.
Surprise. Surprise.
Have a great vacation, ExGOP. Take time to unplug and meditate.
Quite frankly, I want to avoid bending the Bible to backup whatever I wish.
You and I have MUCH different denominational backgrounds, which is part of it. I’m from a denomination that says that here are the central core elements of faith, and people can agree to disagree on a lot of the issues outside those bounds.
Abortion is a HUGE issue personally – in that, I see it as murder and would never have my family get an abortion, would never convince somebody to get one – it is a serious thing.
At this point, with these politicians, I won’t be convinced that abortion is a serious issue on the national stage. It is a serious issue for our country, but the laws of the land, the reality of the situation consistently point me to the fact that concerning abortion, the vote for either party is not that different from each other (at least on the federal level).
Let me try to explain one last time – and I know we’ll never see eye to eye on this – but I want you to at least understand my viewpoint – and my days on this board are coming to a close soon… but take the death penalty. I think the death penalty is a bad thing, an evil thing. But I don’t take it into high consideration when it comes to voting because at the end of the day, not much happens with the death penalty.
Now, voting for somebody who does or doesn’t support it, to me, doesn’t say a whole lot because not much action will take place on it.
I understand you believe in the seriousness of funding issues and the Mexico City Policy. I don’t want to belittle that.
RvWade was overturned, what 40 years ago? And Presidents have come and gone, and people have come in with promises and beliefs and raised money off of it – and the killing goes on.
I’d like to avoid a candidate that doesn’t support abortion. I’d like to avoid a candidate that isn’t a Christian. I’d like to avoid a candidate that doesn’t want to cut food programs for the poor. I’d like to avoid a candidate that doesn’t favor the rich. I’d like to avoid a candidate that doesn’t break promises.
I haven’t found that candidate. Whatever candidate I vote for, I’m going to be compromising values.
I’m okay with supporting somebody who wants to keep abortion legal because even though there are candidates that don’t want abortion legal, it doesn’t get acted on. And at the end of the day, I see very little difference other than some lip service.
Health Care won’t be a lip service thing. The vote will matter. People will have coverage or not have coverage based on this vote. That is a sure thing. It is a lesser priority than abortion, I agree. But it will actually be an issue.
I believe I’ll be asked how I lived my life and what I did with the gifts God gave me. In some areas, I’ve done okay. In other areas, I’ve been an utter failure and sinner. Thankfully, I believe that through the death on the cross, Jesus has wiped away those sins and reconciled all things to Him. If we are judged by the sins of those we’ve voted for, I think we’re all in deep trouble.
EG: “Democrats do a pretty good job of loving people.”
LOL
If we are judged by the sins of those we’ve voted for, I think we’re all in deep trouble.
Nice try. A vote for a pro-abortion politician is a vote to keep the killing legal. In the time it took you to type out your post, 11 babies were aborted. Congratulations.
EG’s position isn’t falsifiable. He can use it as an excuse to vote for pro-abortion pols in perpetuity, because there’s no way you can prove ahead of time that anything will change in a pro-life direction as a consequence of electing a non-pro-abortion candidate.
But he’s engaging in special pleading for Obama. Despite the same conditions obtaining — you can’t prove ahead of time that Obama will bring on the wonderful changes for the poor etc. — EG chooses, gratuitously, to imbibe the hopenchange and believe about Obama what he believes no one is entitled to believe about any pro-lifer candidate who might have opposed Obama. Obama’s simply de man.
I think you better have your basement checked for absurdium seeping in, EG. It’s causing your preposterone levels to soar to outrageous levels. It’s bad for mental health.
It’s bad for my health anyway. My eye is literally twitching. I truly, truly have to stop reading his posts.
Rasqual -
Two thoughts:
– I don’t elect people personally. I believe somewhere around 110 or so million people voted in the last election. I can look back and see how previous elections went and the consequences (or lack of). I agree that I can’t predict the future – figured that would go without saying. I do feel though that a President that wants to keep taxes steady (or decrease them) for the middle class and poor would be better for the middle class and poor than somebody who would increase taxes. So yes, I can’t say definitively the outcome, but I can make educated guesses.
Lrning -
And what is a vote for a pro-life candidate that doesn’t actually change any laws, but the results of their presidency leads to more abortions?
Based on the stats I’ve seen, the major (or second depending on the poll) reason women have abortions is for financial reasons. So when we have recessions, that is going to have a large impact on abortion rates (rates dropped during Clinton years when the economy was good – but he certainly wasn’t a pro-life candidate).
You just make it seem like if a person votes for a candidate that says he’s pro-life, then *poof*, abortions will go away and everyone can have a clean conscience. Is that all it takes to “win” the battle – get Romney in office, and then we can relax?
My goodness…
I see it as murder and would never have my family get an abortion
You are a man so you have absolutely NO SAY about whether or not a female family member chooses an abortion. You have as much say as an unborn child.
Are you a Democratic politician or do you work for one?
That’s my rational disagreement with EG, just here. My substantive disagreement is that he’s another naive progressive. And he most certainly is a progressive, not a conservative. By definition.
I’d suppose he favors increasing the minimum wage as an expression of Democrats’ “love” for people. Conservatives want to eliminate it. To benefit the rich? No. Hell no. to benefit the poor. It’s Democrats who’ve kept them poor and dependent on the dole — in order to keep a constituency. “The mean Republicans want to take away your entitlements!” Who’s that sound like? Resident progressive, EG.
The minimum wage keeps employers from hiring more teenagers, simple enough. A store that could hire 7 at a lower wage for an entry level job where they’d gain OJT that would serve them well in the near future, can only afford to hire 4 at minimum wage. Another 3 are left to roam the streets, getting in trouble and overcrowding the prisons on account of this “despair” the liberals always yammer about while being the very cause of it.
Democrats who are stupid (there are other kinds) talk about the minimum wage as if it’s something that helps primary wager earners for families. It doesn’t. That’s not the target group. And if it is, it’s because Progressive idiocy about this and other economic matters has created a chronic underclass where primary wage earners are stuck in crummy jobs because progressive education, social programs and ideas about jobs are just. so. freaking. stupid.
EG: “I do feel though that a President that wants to keep taxes steady (or decrease them) for the middle class and poor would be better for the middle class and poor than somebody who would increase taxes.”
In other words, you’re sucker enough to buy into demagogues who tell people what they want to hear, even if the economics don’t work out that way.
Dude. You have an ACTIVIST IN CHIEF. He was trained as a left-wing idealist whose previous activist work didn’t even succeed in achieving its objectives. Have you actually READ about his failures in Chicago?
You want a tanked economy? Stick with the Progressive model. Laugh it up, fuzzball.
“the major (or second depending on the poll) reason women have abortions is for financial reasons.”
No, the major reason is because they have no ethic of life that rules out abortion. Duh. Geez.
There’s something else you’re woefully unaware of, EG — the pedagogical effect of law. It tends to teach people, wrong or right, about what’s right and wrong. A wrong law will teach [many] people that something wrong is right, and vice versa. A vast number of people are, indeed, sheep. Abiding laws that reinforce the idea that killing unborn children is OK — among people who watch as abortion advocates cheer and press their public relations to show that it’s such a good thing — is an abysmal way to change the world for the better. Yet you advocate those who champion such laws and celebrate abortion (adieu, “safe legal and rare” of late, I’ve noted) on the merits of your hope that folks who don’t give a rat’s ass about the unborn — are such vunderful folk who’ll be so loving of people, don’tcha know.
Geez what idiocy. But what do we expect when people “feel” certain ways instead of “think” certain ways, about things which are complex and actually require a lot of thought. There’s just not much room for sentiment. Love isn’t sentiment. You can’t just bleed for someone and expect everything to turn out peachy. There’s cold hard facts out there about what makes people do well and what makes them fail — and progressives have a way of getting it wrong most of the time. Not all the time — but most of the time.
Doesn’t matter. Obama’s more than a progressive. He’s a class warfarist who’s working hard TO RAISE CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS. That’s straight our of Marx and the Soviet freakin’ Bloc countries that failed because of their damn 5-year central planning asshats in the bureaucracy.
Argh.
Vote the asshat out. Fast. Send every moron from Chicago back . . . er . . . here. We’re just a penal colony where the worst crooks are running the joint, so we’re used to it.
Ex-RINO said “I follow Jesus”
Ex-RINO, Would the Jesus you follow defend unborn children from murder by voting out of office people who support the legal murder of unborn children? Cause if the answer is NO then your Jesus is not much like the Jesus Christ of the Bible.
Naifs believe what they say. So that’s not it. ;-)
And from a trolls perspective the bolder the lie the better.
Ex-GOP – And what is a vote for a pro-life candidate
A vote to stop the killing.
Ex-GOP – that doesn’t actually change any laws,
http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=35892
EGv wrote, in reply to my comment:
Quite frankly, I want to avoid bending the Bible to backup whatever I wish.
That’s an admirable desire. The next trick, however, is to bring that desire to actuality… and to believe that it’s possible to know the difference between doing so, and not doing so.
You and I have MUCH different denominational backgrounds, which is part of it.
That is practically irrelevant in this case, friend, since you have cast yourself as a “functionally abortion-tolerant Christian” on a board where Catholics and Protestants are firmly united against your view. If you take the Bible seriously at all, then you are forbidden to pick and choose which parts you want to follow, and which parts you relegate to “optional and insignificant (save, perhaps, for Biblical researchers who go in for that sort of thing). Either it’s all divinely inspired, or it’s all nonsense, or else there’s no possible way to tell one from the other (save through an extra-biblical source, which you apparently reject).
I’m from a denomination that says that here are the central core elements of faith, and people can agree to disagree on a lot of the issues outside those bounds.
My question is this: HOW, exactly, did your denomination reach its conclusions about “what is essential” vs. “what is optional” (assuming that you understand their position correctly, and you haven’t simply run off with your own privatised opinions, regardless of the teachings of your denomination–akin to Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, Joe Biden, etc.)? Surely they must have had some reasonable way of reaching those conclusions, yes? Or do you simply swallow what your denomination’s leaders tell you, without any question?
Abortion is a HUGE issue personally – in that, I see it as murder and would never have my family get an abortion, would never convince somebody to get one – it is a serious thing.
But you think that your moral responsibilities end with this catalogue of passive responses? Does your Bible not have the following verses?
If you faint in the day of adversity,
your strength is small.
Rescue those who are being taken away to death;
hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.
If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,
and will he not requite man according to his work?
(Proverbs 24:10-12)
If we see someone about to be murdered, we do not content ourselves with resolving to vote to increase taxes so that, with added governmental funds supporting added governmental programs, this might influence a murderer to be less inclined to do so in the future (since a significant number of murders are due to a failed robbery attempt by needy people, after all). Such an idea is devoid of moral compass, devoid of common sense, and devoid of the imperative given us by God.
At this point, with these politicians, I won’t be convinced that abortion is a serious issue on the national stage.
You are either willfully blind, or delusional, if you believe that. The Democrats are utterly aggressive in treating “legal” abortion as a “serious issue” to promote, safeguard and expand at all costs.
It is a serious issue for our country, but the laws of the land, the reality of the situation consistently point me to the fact that concerning abortion, the vote for either party is not that different from each other (at least on the federal level).
See above. You are utterly impressed with what you take to be GOP apathy re: abortion; and you are apparently utterly insensate to Democratic zeal for entrenching abortion into our culture permanently… not only as a “necessary evil”, but as a “right” which supposedly equalises women and men. Many women certainly choose abortion out of desperation; but the architects of abortion choose it for more activist-esque reasons… and these are the very people whom you seek to place in power, and to make more powerful than ever before.
Let me try to explain one last time – and I know we’ll never see eye to eye on this – but I want you to at least understand my viewpoint – and my days on this board are coming to a close soon… but take the death penalty. I think the death penalty is a bad thing, an evil thing. But I don’t take it into high consideration when it comes to voting because at the end of the day, not much happens with the death penalty.
No? How many states have now banned/withdrawn the death penalty, in the past 40 years? I count nine of them including D.C., with five of them in only the past 5 years. I’m not sure what standards would please you in this regard… but I think this is enough to refute your claim, as stated.
But surely you don’t see a moral parity between abortion (whose intention is to kill an undeniably innocent human baby) and capital punishment (whose intention is to kill an adult person who’s been convicted of a heinous crime)? I do not think that the death penalty is justified in our current situation, either… but it simply doesn’t belong in the same category with abortion, in any case.
Now, voting for somebody who does or doesn’t support it, to me, doesn’t say a whole lot because not much action will take place on it.
Not so; see above. And: that’s not a good reason (i.e. pragmatism) for giving or withholding your vote on a moral imperative, anyway.
I understand you believe in the seriousness of funding issues and the Mexico City Policy. I don’t want to belittle that.
I mention those because you seem oblivious to the much more important idea of “voting on principle” (rather than on a raw, utilitarian, pragmatic calculus), and because those sorts of things (i.e. political maneuverings and financial concerns) are practically the only things capable of getting your attention. They do not exhaust my concerns of this issue, in the least.
RvWade was overturned, what 40 years ago? And Presidents have come and gone, and people have come in with promises and beliefs and raised money off of it – and the killing goes on.
Just so, with murder, rape, theft, and virtually every crime under the sun. And yet, I don’t see you voting for people who are hell-bent on legalising any of the above (simply because they also have a socio-political agenda which excites your tastes); I do wonder, rather darkly, if you refrain from such votes not out of principle, but simply because you lack the opportunity (i.e. no “progressive” candidate currently espouses such positions, but you’d be willing to support them with your vote, had they existed).
I’d like to avoid a candidate that doesn’t support abortion.
I assume you mean that you’d like to avoid a candidate that *does* support abortion?
I’d like to avoid a candidate that isn’t a Christian.
All right. But do you see how that is not a moral imperative? Caesar need not be a Christian, in order for us to render unto him what belongs to him (cf. Mark 12:17, Romans 13, etc.). But we cannot positively support that which violates the objective moral law. We cannot support with our vote, for example, a new Nazi regime to establish a “legal Jew-killing programme” in the United States, even if you judge their chances of success to be minimal, and even if you’re utterly in love with their social-program-related campaign promises. Obama (when he’s not describing his “Muslim faith” in a nation that is “no longer a Christian nation”) declares himself to be a Christian, after all… to the dishonour of the Name.
I’d like to avoid a candidate that doesn’t want to cut food programs for the poor.
I have no complaint with that objective, morally speaking (though I’d suggest that your approach is not the only morally licit one, nor is it necessarily wise, financially and socially). But again: this is miles away from a direct ambition to put in place legal child-killing.
I’d like to avoid a candidate that doesn’t favor the rich.
Again: all other things being equal, this is a morally licit position for you to hold… but in addition to the fact that this is a bumper-sticker, rather than a well-defined position, and it is so vague as to mean almost anything you wish it to mean, it also is utterly removed from moral parity with the intent to empower the state to make abortion sacrosanct and subsidised.
I’d like to avoid a candidate that doesn’t break promises.
Though lying is indeed bad (and to be avoided, both in oneself and in candidates for whom one casts a vote), there are worse things. Remember the insane anti-Bush bumper-sticker, “No one died when Clinton lied”? Obama has told manifold untruths (many of which appear to be bald-faced lies), but none of these seem to be as deadly as his truthfulness when he supports abortion with the full weight of the bully pulpit, with his appointments, and with his veto. Priorities, sir.
I haven’t found that candidate. Whatever candidate I vote for, I’m going to be compromising values.
Yes… but some values are of greater weight than others… and you really don’t seem to be able to tell the difference between them. A lie about “fracking” (for example) seems to have the same moral weight to you as does a pro-abortion vote, appointment, or the like… and that is simply insane.
I’m okay with supporting somebody who wants to keep abortion legal because even though there are candidates that don’t want abortion legal, it doesn’t get acted on.
It’s really not logically possible for you to be more wrong on that point, I think. Not only is it misguided (i.e. trading principles for pragmatism–which is called “selling out”, in some circles), but your claim is simply and provably false.
And at the end of the day, I see very little difference other than some lip service.
That is, I fear, because you do not wish to see any difference, as it does not fit your narrative.
Health Care won’t be a lip service thing.
Nor will his support for abortion, in every way possible, be mere “lip service”.
The vote will matter.
It might. It might have good results (perhaps in the short term), and it might have disastrous results (almost definitely, in the long term). But it remains true that you sell out the greater for the lesser. You are quite willing to allow abortion to be an irrelevancy to you, since it is inconvenient for your intention (i.e. to support liberal entitlement causes).
People will have coverage or not have coverage based on this vote. That is a sure thing.
I assume that you mean “people will have coverage if the vote passes”? I know a friend, who otherwise supports Obama, who (as a Baptist minister) earns less than $20,000 per year… and who can afford neither health insurance nor the penalty which will be exacted from her by your “people-loving” government. You don’t seem to have people like her in your equation.
It is a lesser priority than abortion, I agree. But it will actually be an issue.
You are delusional, friend, if you can say that with full awareness of what it means. I pray that this is not the case.
I believe I’ll be asked how I lived my life and what I did with the gifts God gave me.
I don’t suppose you could quote Scripture to that effect? Fair’s fair, after all. And on that point: God gave you, as a gift, the intellect and the will necessary to stand athwart the greatest evil of our age (i.e. the slaughter of over 50,000,000 children in this nation alone), and you refuse to use it. Your votes certainly play into “how you lived your life”, yes?
In some areas, I’ve done okay. In other areas, I’ve been an utter failure and sinner. Thankfully, I believe that through the death on the cross, Jesus has wiped away those sins and reconciled all things to Him.
You are badly misled. Jesus has certainly paid the price for our sins… but your further conclusions (i.e. that your choices in life are utterly irrelevant to that point, and that we need not appropriate His saving grace by faith working through love [Galatians 5:6, 1 Corinthians 13, etc.]) are nonsense, and they would make nonsense of our entire existence on earth. We will be judged according to our works (cf. Revelation 2:23, 20:12, 20:13, etc.) which are part-and-parcel with our living faith (cf. James 2:14-26)… and our votes are indeed works of ours. We are not free to say, “Christ died for us! Tra-la, tra-lei! Whatever I do in this life, I am saved, and I can vote for whomever I wish, and Christ will give me His approbation regardless of my choices!” Nonsense and balderdash, sir. Our Blessed Lord is not so indifferent to evil as all that.
If we are judged by the sins of those we’ve voted for, I think we’re all in deep trouble.
That is a bland, broad-brush and slippery statement, friend… and it describes nothing of any use, in this situation. If you know, full well, that candidate [x] is quite serious in having an ambition for abortion-legalisation and abortion-safeguarding and abortion-subsidising, and if you freely choose to vote for him when a less-evil option exists, then you take responsibility for part of that evil.
And please, I beg of you, do not weary me with complaints about Romney, per se; no one on this board (myself included) has any illusions about Romney’s “perfection” as a pro-life candidate. But when choosing between one who waveringly hands a starving person a stale sandwich, and another who pledges federal monies in order to have that starving person ripped limb-from-limb, any sane person can see the moral obligation re: one’s vote between them.
Paladin -
As noted, I’m taking off soon to be gone for a while – I’ll revisit this later.
Three quick thoughts to leave you with:
1) Church denomination info – http://www.covchurch.org/
2) I could be convinced NOT to vote for Obama – I really could – people on this board think I love him just because most of the people on this board hate him so much. I like his policies in comparison to Romney, but he’s far from a perfect fit for my beliefs. I couldn’t vote for Romney though – not in a million years. So in your last statement on choosing between – the choice would be none of the above.
3) Your friend needs to read up on the health care law – she’d be exempt from the individual mandate based on that income level. Would have a ways to go actually.
EGV,
No worries; I comment based on need and content, not necessarily on timing. Write when you can.
Re: your information:
1) Thank you for the link; I’ll peruse it when I have some spare moments.
2) Well! If you’re in earnest, here, and not simply blowing smoke, then apparently we’ve made some progress!
https://www.jillstanek.com/2010/11/sunday-funnies-11-14-10/comment-page-1/#comment-294081
…and it took only 20 months to get from there to here! I also note with some interest that your current questions/comments have not only been asked and answered, but answered in detail:
https://www.jillstanek.com/2010/11/sunday-funnies-11-14-10/comment-page-1/#comment-294490
3) That doesn’t agree with what her financial advisors told her; nor is she anyone’s fool (as an Ivy League grad). Are you quite certain that such exemptions cover the self-employed and/or religious organisations which are so small that they cannot afford to supply said insurance to her (I’m not quite sure which she would be)?
Paladin: “You are utterly impressed with what you take to be GOP apathy re: abortion; and you are apparently utterly insensate to Democratic zeal for entrenching abortion into our culture permanently…”
That’s really the preposterous thing that has me believing EG could be total false flag here — because he’s not stupid. The other thing is this: “I’d like to avoid a candidate that isn’t a Christian.” — which seems more the way false flags try to plant a large proportion of themselves within the target group’s values. But false flags sometimes subtley misread those values — as here, as you note.
“But it remains true that you sell out the greater for the lesser.” And yet EG apparently wishes to be esteemed in some sense as “pro-life” in this forum. Perhaps he abhors abortion only in his family, and is indifferent to it elsewhere. The prospect of a guilty conscience impels a pro-life ethic to the borders of his family; beyond that, actual liberal guilt promotes entitlement politics. If he’s real at all, that is.
“We will be judged according to our works…” Permit this Protestant (though I’m not really defined by those historical protests) to agree. In fact, the book we Protestants hold to be the locus of teaching on salvation by grace through faith is book-ended by Paul saying that the entire purpose of his apostleship is to bring the gentiles to the point of obedience appropriate of this kind of faith. That is, his objective is not faith. That’s the instrumental means. His objective is obedience to God — and this only comes by saving faith. The oft-cited conflict with James is a ridiculous fiction.
The world doesn’t need more milquetoast, pansy-utopians who imagine the State can sanctify us and purify us of temptation to sin (whether abortion or anything else)l. The world needs folk who’ll say HELL no, and F*CK YOU to the kind of idolatry that entrusts Moloch himself with our souls: “Here’s another million infants in sacrifice; bless us materially now, so that despite our unchanged willingness to offer such sacrifices, our bourgeois satiety will no longer see need of it.”
If he’s real at all, that is.
He’s not. “and my days on this board are coming to a close soon…” Yeah, he’ll be around another 12.5 weeks, then his work will be done here.
I agree, Lrning,
We’ll see if Ex answers my question:
Are you a Democratic politician or do you work for one?
I think I’m concluding that EG is a false flag. A smart one, but one who should note how difficult it is to secure creds in the target community in order to subvert that community’s interests. Big fail, EG.
The unsettling thing is that if EG is a false flag, he (?) has teeth. Such prevarication is not consistent with the feigned virtues of his (?) persona. It’s not pathological lying, which could invite pity. It’s mercenary duplicity.
Paladin, thanks for the links to the old comments. Ex-GOP is even more of a broken record than I thought. And you are even more patient, which is saying a lot because I already recognized that you have the patience of a saint.
Lol, you all new to the internet? This is funny.
?? “New to the Internet?”
This isn’t “Gosh, whodathunk such people exist!” — It’s that folks who read others in good faith can only be snookered for so long before they notice.
Lrning: “[Paladin has] the patience of a saint.”
Well, he is one, so that would stand to reason. :-)
No, I mean, if he is a shill or something, so what? It doesn’t change anything. I just think it’s funny when people get worked up about who people “really” are online. Everyone is basically anonymous, you never really know who someone is. For all you know, Ex is some thirteen-year-old posting from his parents’ computer. What if Jerry is a plant from the GOP?! Lol the whole conversation is amusing to me. The points that are invalid or valid don’t change, no matter who is saying them.
Jack,
They do if the basis of a conjured persona is a disingenuous attempt at subverting the Constitutional integrity of my country through popular appeal. Also, it explains WHY the points he brings up are so invalid, and WHY he refuses to deviate from “the script”. It’s dangerous.
Imagine it like this: you go to a health website. You are getting ill with bronchitis and looking for home remedies. Someone starts out their post with “When I was graduating top of my class in med school…” in order to try and gain credibility, and suggests someone start drinking copious amounts of strong vinegar to stave off the illness. Well, this person seems to know what he is talking about and must be an expert, what can go wrong? But now you’ve got caustic burns all down your esophagus. You knew from how vinegar tasted in small quantities on its own something bad might arise, but you just kinda went with it because you took “an expert’s” word on it.
The first thing I am going to teach my kids about the internet is “safe search stays on at all times”. The second is “don’t believe any random commenter is really who they say they are”. People seriously need to not take advice from the internet.
“The internet, where men are men, women are men, and children are the FBI.”
JackBorsch says: People seriously need to not take advice from the internet.
Bears repeating. I laugh when Yahoo Answers comes up in my searches.
Whoops! Not only did I have a 1.5-day hiatus from the board (I moved my “tech-free day” to Sundays), but I completely missed this one, earlier! Sorry about that…!
Lrning wrote:
Paladin, thanks for the links to the old comments. Ex-GOP is even more of a broken record than I thought.
(*sigh*) Truth.
And you are even more patient, which is saying a lot because I already recognized that you have the patience of a saint.
:) Thanks… though it might simply be that my exasperation has dulled a bit, after so many repetitions from him… a bit like having an annoying periodic noise drop into the back-ground after a bit of waiting…
Rasqual wrote:
Well, he is one, so that would stand to reason.
:) …with a lower-case “s”, yes (by the grace of God); with an upper-case “S”… not so much, and nowhere near! But thanks…
Back from my great trip out west. Let me do some catching up:
– Paladin – I can see your overall point on the support for abortion being a disqualifier…but at this point, I’m left with two options:
1) Disqualify any politician from my vote who I see supports something evil as voting for them would be evil. In this case, I don’t believe I could vote – I’d sit out.
2) Go with the lesser of two evils. This comes down to a general calculation that you’ve frowned upon so dearly, pointing me back to option one.
On your final comments to Rasqual – first off, I find it a little sad to see people critiquing and discussing my posts from a couple of years ago. If I weren’t a broken record though, you’d call me a flip flopping fool. At least I’m consistent!
Prax –
Close. In fifth grade, we had a mock election and me and a buddy won. To be honest, he was the President and I was the vice, and we didn’t take many actual positions, so it is tough to say if we were Democratic or not.
Sorry though – way off – my company actually works with the military. Never ran for office in my life.
You? I don’t even know if you are a man or a woman – what’s your deal? Why are you on this board?
rasqual –
I actually am a bit of a phony (or a false flag in your words…)in regards to, I didn’t come to this board because I was pro-life.
In my previous job, I worked closely with an organization called NACHC – free clinics that saw as the mission to get health care coverage for all. It was a company we did business with.
Anyway, through that, I started researching health care and seeing the massive issues we have in this country.
During the battles for health care reform, I was surprised to hear that there were Christians who were against reform (other than just general political reasons – wanting the other party to fail) – so in an effort to educate myself, I went to some various websites including this one. I started to get into dialogues with people, and have continued to use this site as a tool for education, and because I think that this site needs both some other perspectives, and some general fact-checking.
So yes, I am a phony in regards to the fact that I didn’t come to this board because I was out protesting and wanted to connect with other pro-life protesters.
I think in the US, if you broke down the 100% of people – about 30% never give a thought about abortion. Then about 65% have an opinion about it, but don’t treat it as their number one political voting issue. Then there’s a few percent who do. I’m in the 65%, posting in the world of those few percent at the end.
Which is why I’m starting to feel like I shouldn’t post on this board – there are a bunch of folks very dedicated to the cause and feeling that it is the number one voting issue in the country, and I’m just not in that same boat.
That’s exactly what a plant from the Obama administration would claim, Ex! ;)
Jack- I’m actually Todd Akin – I heard there were some people on this board you use really big words, and could probably explain to me what “legitimate” means.
EG: It’s not that people are against reform. It’s that they’re rightly cynical about whether it’s “reform” at all. And the latest round isn’t much to write home about. That drags the cynicism deeper — especially when Obama’s toadies worked so hard to “reverse the charges” to Romney on Obama’s $716b raid of Medicare to fund it.
“Legitimate” was his inept malaprop for “Authentic”, as far as I can tell. Definitely a lexically challenged fellow, as well as biologically in dufus territory.
Nah, if you were Akin you would be way way too busy inventing biological functions to worry about something as inconsequential as proper word choice!
EGV,
Welcome back, and I’m glad to hear that the trip was a good one!
You wrote, in reply to my comment:
Paladin – I can see your overall point on the support for abortion being a disqualifier…but at this point, I’m left with two options:
Well… you’re welcome to dash my small hopes to that effect, as you like; after all, it was you who suggested that you might be gaining openness to the idea, not I.
1) Disqualify any politician from my vote who I see supports something evil as voting for them would be evil. In this case, I don’t believe I could vote – I’d sit out.
(*sigh*) I don’t suppose you could see your way to thinking that a politician’s aggressive defense of (and promotion of, at tax-payer expense) legal abortion in any and all circumstances (and couched not as a “necessary evil”, but as a “woman’s right”), up to and even beyond the third trimester, might possibly be of greater gravity than would be another politician’s opposition to thus-and-so federally-subsidised-health-insurance plan? I never said that you needed to equivocate all evils (I said the very opposite, consistently, throughout the times we’ve ever chatted), either in one direction (e.g. taking a la-de-da, devil-may-care attitude about all of them, with nothing being an “absolute disqualifier” for your vote) or in the other (e.g. never voting again, since no candidates are perfect). Had you set out to prove (beyond all reasonable doubt) my contentions that you argue almost completely in catastrophic, “all-or-nothing, broad-brush” extremes, you could scarcely have done better than this. Honestly, I sometimes think you’ve legally wedded yourself to the “fallacy of the non-existent middle”, without your dear wife’s knowledge…
2) Go with the lesser of two evils. This comes down to a general calculation that you’ve frowned upon so dearly, pointing me back to option one.
I really don’t know how you could have read everything I’ve ever written, these past years, and said something so off-base and ridiculous about my views. Where, exactly, did I condemn all possible application of “choosing the option which minimises the evil” (sometimes misnamed “choosing the lesser of two evils”)? No… that is a valid thing to do, so long as a non-negotiable moral principle is not violated by the prospective recipient of your choice. You seriously don’t remember me saying that, over and over, in manifold ways?
Be reasonable, at least for once, sir: you would not (may God grant that I’m not mistaken about you, on this point) vote for a public advocate of lynching blacks or gassing Jews, no matter how attractive their entitlement promises might be to your tastes, and no matter how ineffectual you think their efforts in actualising their deadly aims might be in the future. You would not regard such a maniac as trustworthy enough to hold any public office at all (and perhaps not even trustworthy enough to run about freely in society).
I challenge you then, EGV: tell me whether you find abortion to be a lesser evil than “black-lynching” and “Jew-gassing”, or not. Many in our country (and world) DO find it to be a “lesser evil” (on many spurious pro-abortion pretexts: viability of the unborn child, “bodily autonomy” of the mother trumping the right to life of the child, “it’s just a blob of tissue”, or some version of “out of sight, out of mind”, etc.). Are you among them?
On your final comments to Rasqual – first off, I find it a little sad to see people critiquing and discussing my posts from a couple of years ago. If I weren’t a broken record though, you’d call me a flip flopping fool. At least I’m consistent!
I do not deny that you’ve been consistent, at least insofar as your acceptance of abortion in the public sphere (and your reluctance to place it even on an even-keel with entitlement programmes, financial plans, and other lesser things) is concerned. I can’t exactly say the same about your arguments (many of which are internally inconsistent, and/or inconsistent with each other), but that’s a separate topic. I mentioned your previous comments only because your present comments (about perhaps being talked into not voting for Obama–cf. August 9, 7:26 PM, this thread) indicated a distinct change in your position since that past year’s comment, and I was encouraged to hear that (and I wondered whether you were going to disown the reasons you used, back then, to support your past position).
Paladin –
Cleaning out my email today and found this – not sure if you’re still subscribed to this thread still, so maybe this is just talking to myself at this point…we’ll see!
The two various conventions have left me a bit discouraged in regards to the elections (at least on a Presidential level). I feel that the two sides have polarized so much that I’m really leaning to not voting in the Presidential race, or going for a smaller party. The Dems have shifted completely away from any language regarding making abortion more rare – and the Republicans stance on health care and economic policies are ones I simply can’t support.
I do want to get to your bolded question and answer as honestly as I can. My head says yes – a life is a life is a life.
But with those who murdered the jews, I was completely in favor of trying those involved and prosecuting in the full extent of the law. Same with those who lynched blacks. If abortion were made illegal today though, I wouldn’t want to go back and imprison or execute those who had abortions over the last years – which is a completely different stance than I have in regards to killing jews or blacks.
Again, my head tells me the answer is yes – all equals. My wife and I had a miscarriage years ago – happened around 10 weeks along. A guy at my work lost a two month old a couple of years back. When he was going through that, I would never have thought to say “I know how you feel” – I don’t see the two as comparable.
EGV wrote:
Paladin – cleaning out my email today and found this – not sure if you’re still subscribed to this thread still, so maybe this is just talking to myself at this point…we’ll see!
:) Apparently I never unsubscribed; I was quite startled to find an e-mail linking to this particular (old) thread!
The two various conventions have left me a bit discouraged in regards to the elections (at least on a Presidential level). I feel that the two sides have polarized so much that I’m really leaning to not voting in the Presidential race, or going for a smaller party. The Dems have shifted completely away from any language regarding making abortion more rare – and the Republicans stance on health care and economic policies are ones I simply can’t support.
All right. Let me put it this way: if you do not vote for Barack Obama, I will rejoice in that small victory, even if you happen do so for utterly political reasons (and only you can decide that). If I were to hear that you’d voted for a rabidly pro-abortion third party (which I think is unlikely), I’d grieve insofar as neglect of the pro-life position was your intent; and if I were to hear that you’d voted for a staunchly pro-life third party, I’d rejoice insofar as promotion of the pro-life position was your intent.
I do want to get to your bolded question and answer as honestly as I can. My head says yes – a life is a life is a life.
I’d gently suggest that your head is quite right, on this point.
But with those who murdered the jews, I was completely in favor of trying those involved and prosecuting in the full extent of the law. Same with those who lynched blacks. If abortion were made illegal today though, I wouldn’t want to go back and imprison or execute those who had abortions over the last years – which is a completely different stance than I have in regards to killing jews or blacks.
I see. Well… after some quiet thought (and prayer) on that point, do you have some idea of how to reconcile those contradictory views?
Again, my head tells me the answer is yes – all equals. My wife and I had a miscarriage years ago – happened around 10 weeks along.
I’m terribly sorry to hear that, EGV… especially since my wife and I went through something which might have been a miscarriage, but which was so ambiguous and hard to diagnose that no one knows quite what happened. If you find it appropriate, please express my heartfelt sorrow and sympathies to your wife (and to yourself).
A guy at my work lost a two month old a couple of years back. When he was going through that, I would never have thought to say “I know how you feel”
There’s no reason at all to say anything of the sort… because, no matter what the differences in age, it wouldn’t really be true. A couple who loses a new-born child to death does not strictly “know how it feels” to lose a child of seven years to a car accident, or vice-versa (though the expression of “I know how you feel” is an inexact term used to express sympathy and offer comfort through solidarity–it’s not meant to be the basis for a moral taxonomy). Both deaths are poignant and painful in ways which no other situation can ever re-create, so there’s no need for your experience to be identical to your colleague’s experience. Even in the case of two families who both lost two-month-old infants, one could not securely say “I know exactly how you feel”; they’re both impossibly different. That’s always the case with something so limitlessly deep as the human being; no tow are ever identical, or even very close to it.
I don’t see the two as comparable.
You must distinguish, I think. The murder of a Jewish man is both comparable and incomparable to the murder of a black man–comparable, in that both are inhuman crimes, and incomparable, in that the life of the first man (and his relations to everyone he knows) cannot possibly be equated to the life of the second.
In the case you mention, it would be perfectly consistent to say (silently, to oneself, when in the presence of a grieving family) that the death of an infant is comparable to the death of an unborn child (even at the single-cell stage), which is comparable in turn to the death of a toddler, an adolescent, a man or woman in the full blush of young adulthood, a disabled person confined to a bed or wheelchair (such as the lovely Chelsea Zimmerman, whose “Reflections of a Paralytic” blog is a wealth of edification), or an elderly person nearing natural death.