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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
A long the path toward the creation of a global capitalist system, some of the most significant steps were taken by the English enclosure movement.
Between the 15th and 19th centuries, the rich and the powerful fenced off commonly held land and transformed it into private property. Land switched from a source of subsistence to a source of profit, and small farmers were relegated to wage laborers. In Das Kapital, Marx described the process by coining the term land-grabbing. To British historian E.P. Thompson, it was “a plain enough case of class robbery.”
More recently, a similar enclosure movement has taken place. This time, the fenced-off commodity is life-saving medicine. Playing the role of modern-day lords of the manor are pharmaceutical corporations, which have taken a good that was once considered off-limits for private profiteering and turned it into an expensive commodity. Instead of displacing small landholders, this enclosure movement causes suffering and death: Billions of people across the globe go without essential medicines, and 10 million die each year as a result.
Many people curse the for-profit medicine industry. But few know that the enclosure erected around affordable medicines is both relatively new and artificially imposed. For nearly all of human history, attempting to corner the markets on affordable medicines has been considered both immoral and illegal.
It’s time now to reclaim this commons, and reestablish medicines as a public good.
Source
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On February 15 2016 07:27 Gorsameth wrote:I said it long ago but if you have a government that can get into the position where nothing gets done there should be safeguards in place to resolve the stalemate.
Taking the Netherlands as an example if we get in a gridlock the likes of which the US has had we get forced elections in order to get a new government that holds the majority. Sadly, the USA has no constitutional provision for new elections. We're a presidential democracy, not a parliamentary one, so when the president and the legislature are elected by opposing sides of the electorate whose preferred policy agendas are basically opposite and contradictory, nothing gets done, because both sides have a mandate from the people. The only constitutionally available means of breaking this sort of deadlock that I am aware of is impeaching the president, which is basically the president being indicted and tried for crimes by the legislature. Assuming the President is successfully impeached, I'm pretty sure the Vice-President gets promoted, which is not going to be at all conducive to breaking a deadlock. If the Vice-President is also impeached, the Speaker for the House takes over.
I'm pretty sure there would be rioting in the streets if either party used control of both houses of Congress to impeach the President and Vice President (of the other party) fast enough to break governmental deadlock between elections. Barring really damning evidence or a confession, it would look a lot like a power grab.
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On February 15 2016 03:34 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2016 03:33 KwarK wrote:On February 15 2016 03:18 Biff The Understudy wrote:On February 15 2016 03:14 xDaunt wrote:
I find the attacks on Scalia around here to be hilariously uninformed. Knock his judicial views and philosophy all you want, but he was consistent, which is really all that you can ask for out of a judge. And he certainly was not one of the judges who was prone to crapping out unworkable majority opinions (like O'Connor). I think the consensus is that the guy was consistent and probably had some integrity. Thing is that you can be consistent, have integrity AND be a piece of shit. Which is Kwark's point (correct me if I am wrong). His position against gay sex (I didn't know that) is just plain horrible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas#Scalia.27s_dissentwhat a cunt Horrible. That being said it is AMAZING that the USA had laws prohibiting gay sex in 13 (!!!!!!) states in 2003. That's twelves years ago. Talk of medieval bullshit in the land of the free (then again, for some people, "free" is to have the right for a 13 years old to owe a kalachnikov but not for a gay man to shag his boyfriend at home. Amazing.)
Still does.
February 05, 2016
The Michigan Senate has passed a bill that effectively reaffirms the state's unconstitutional law making sodomy a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
Michigan is one of more than a dozen states that still have sodomy bans on the books, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas declaring them unconstitutional.
source
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On February 14 2016 07:38 oneofthem wrote:
gg scalia
expect a lot of people confusing ideology with consistency in the coming days
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On February 15 2016 08:16 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2016 03:34 Biff The Understudy wrote:On February 15 2016 03:33 KwarK wrote:On February 15 2016 03:18 Biff The Understudy wrote:On February 15 2016 03:14 xDaunt wrote:
I find the attacks on Scalia around here to be hilariously uninformed. Knock his judicial views and philosophy all you want, but he was consistent, which is really all that you can ask for out of a judge. And he certainly was not one of the judges who was prone to crapping out unworkable majority opinions (like O'Connor). I think the consensus is that the guy was consistent and probably had some integrity. Thing is that you can be consistent, have integrity AND be a piece of shit. Which is Kwark's point (correct me if I am wrong). His position against gay sex (I didn't know that) is just plain horrible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas#Scalia.27s_dissentwhat a cunt Horrible. That being said it is AMAZING that the USA had laws prohibiting gay sex in 13 (!!!!!!) states in 2003. That's twelves years ago. Talk of medieval bullshit in the land of the free (then again, for some people, "free" is to have the right for a 13 years old to owe a kalachnikov but not for a gay man to shag his boyfriend at home. Amazing.) Still does. Show nested quote +February 05, 2016
The Michigan Senate has passed a bill that effectively reaffirms the state's unconstitutional law making sodomy a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
Michigan is one of more than a dozen states that still have sodomy bans on the books, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas declaring them unconstitutional. source
At least you can marry your first cousin in 25 of the states! Well, 19, six of them require you to be unable to make babies.
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On February 15 2016 08:19 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2016 08:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 15 2016 03:34 Biff The Understudy wrote:On February 15 2016 03:33 KwarK wrote:On February 15 2016 03:18 Biff The Understudy wrote:On February 15 2016 03:14 xDaunt wrote:
I find the attacks on Scalia around here to be hilariously uninformed. Knock his judicial views and philosophy all you want, but he was consistent, which is really all that you can ask for out of a judge. And he certainly was not one of the judges who was prone to crapping out unworkable majority opinions (like O'Connor). I think the consensus is that the guy was consistent and probably had some integrity. Thing is that you can be consistent, have integrity AND be a piece of shit. Which is Kwark's point (correct me if I am wrong). His position against gay sex (I didn't know that) is just plain horrible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas#Scalia.27s_dissentwhat a cunt Horrible. That being said it is AMAZING that the USA had laws prohibiting gay sex in 13 (!!!!!!) states in 2003. That's twelves years ago. Talk of medieval bullshit in the land of the free (then again, for some people, "free" is to have the right for a 13 years old to owe a kalachnikov but not for a gay man to shag his boyfriend at home. Amazing.) Still does. February 05, 2016
The Michigan Senate has passed a bill that effectively reaffirms the state's unconstitutional law making sodomy a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
Michigan is one of more than a dozen states that still have sodomy bans on the books, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas declaring them unconstitutional. source At least you can marry your first cousin in 25 of the states! Well, 19, six of them require you to be unable to make babies.
The latter part is not exactly unreasonable. The two main arguments against incestious relationships are a) damage to potential children and b) possibly abusive relationships with large power inequalities like father/daughter.
I currently don't see any reason to oppose someone marrying their first cousin if they are infertile.
Sodomy Laws still very weird. I am constantly surprised at how much some people seem to care about what other people do with their penises, to the point where they want to make laws about it. General rule of thumb: If the penis is not in you, it is none of your business. Similar things obviously also apply to vaginas. (And yes, there are exceptions, which is why it is a rule of thumb and not an absolute law. I would probably be pretty annoyed if i randomly found penises in my fridge, for example)
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On February 15 2016 08:18 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2016 07:38 oneofthem wrote:
gg scalia
expect a lot of people confusing ideology with consistency in the coming days
Is ideology inherently inconsistent or something?
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Scalia's one was, if he had any ideology in the first place. Hard to tell.
Wouldn't be surprised if it comes out soon that he was a self-hating homosexual, that cleansed his own 'sins' by being harsh on gay rights.
Would also explain why he suddenly went liberal, then back, then flip-flop on key constitutional interpretations, and all the odd unpredictable things he did.
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On February 15 2016 08:29 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2016 08:18 oneofthem wrote:On February 14 2016 07:38 oneofthem wrote:
gg scalia
expect a lot of people confusing ideology with consistency in the coming days Is ideology inherently inconsistent or something?
I guess more like inherently consistent, which is why people will confuse Scalia's ultra-conservatism with consistency. I also don't see the virtue in being consistent for the sake of consistency. I mean like after half a century he could have simply accepted that he was wrong about the gays and he could've moved on with his life
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On February 15 2016 08:32 trulojucreathrma.com wrote:
Scalia's one was, if he had any ideology in the first place. Hard to tell.
He thought he exlusively had the best vision of what the Law was supposed to be and he used, what I think is fair to say his extremely gifted legal mind combined with what I think many would call deranged social view, to enshrine that view in law.
I think his vision of the law can be summed up with his quote on the death penalty.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
It's not that he didn't think being innocent mattered, but that he would be willing to knowingly kill an innocent man because that's what the law said. He was kind of like Judge Dredd.
On February 15 2016 08:32 trulojucreathrma.com wrote:
Scalia's one was, if he had any ideology in the first place. Hard to tell.
Wouldn't be surprised if it comes out soon that he was a self-hating homosexual, that cleansed his own 'sins' by being harsh on gay rights.
Would also explain why he suddenly went liberal, then back, then flip-flop on key constitutional interpretations, and all the odd unpredictable things he did.
No kidding, at a resort, with a room to himself, near the border with Mexico, and dies suddenly and unexpectedly of "apparent natural causes" after being described by everyone around him as "robust" and such. Only discovered because he didn't arrive at an expected location.
I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that there's more to his death than has been reported. Frankly it doesn't add up. Maybe there was something obvious in his medical history that didn't manifest in his behavior, but I think some bad Mexican Viagra and or a rough night "alone" seems like a more likely explanation.
Particularly because no one is asking any questions. Normally if someone is being active with you one day and dead the next it sparks a curiosity about what happened, but nobody seems even remotely curious.
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It would also help to remember how long he was on the Court. While I disagree that was he as inconsistent, I can certainly imagine that over such a large body of work there are bound to be inconsistencies. I've read that some (many) justices don't have any process at all. One article I read mentioned Breyer, I believe, as someone who is very malleable.
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he was very much an originalist, screw legal realism and all the rest
though eventually i think he began to conflate originalist with being a conservative dick
but on the other hand, him and RBG were besties, so he can't be a completely terrible person
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On February 15 2016 08:51 ticklishmusic wrote:
he was very much an originalist, screw legal realism and all the rest
though eventually i think he began to conflate originalist with being a conservative dick
but on the other hand, him and RBG were besties, so he can't be a completely terrible person
idk but everything I've read (even from liberal students or colleagues) said he was a genuinely nice person, fwiw.
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On February 15 2016 07:56 Plansix wrote:
Krikkitone, you seem to be arguing with a fictional person suggesting Obama should appoint a racist or something. Maybe come back down here with the rest of us.
Just saying "best for the job" and "most qualified" mean something almost exactly opposite between politics and real life.
There isn't some uniformly agreeable, measurable 'goodness of government action' that says whether something or someone is good for the country.
While people might have some things they agree on, what they disagree on, and are or aren't willing to compromise on is just as important.
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On February 15 2016 08:57 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2016 08:51 ticklishmusic wrote:
he was very much an originalist, screw legal realism and all the rest
though eventually i think he began to conflate originalist with being a conservative dick
but on the other hand, him and RBG were besties, so he can't be a completely terrible person idk but everything I've read (even from liberal students or colleagues) said he was a genuinely nice person, fwiw.
That is sort of cold comfort to the people he wanted to deny rights to and did so in his rulings. "This Judge basically doesn't' want you to get married, be able to adopt, or be able to have sex because your gay, but he is a nice guy."
Krikkitone: I've been able to vote for almost 20 years now and I have a pretty decent grasp of the nuance of "politically possible" and best for the job. Maybe pure some ice water on your hard you got to talk down to people.
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On February 15 2016 08:57 Introvert wrote:
idk but everything I've read (even from liberal students or colleagues) said he was a genuinely nice person, fwiw.
What does that matter. He was just a supreme court judge who wasn't very good at his job. Yeah, he protected or squashed people's constitutional right; he did both.
But that he seemed like a nice person, some of the most horrible persons ever seemed like nice persons. You really want to compare him with some of those? All he was was a bad judge, not some serial killer.
If a person is charming, all alarm bells should go off. Especially if they have power.
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On February 15 2016 09:05 trulojucreathrma.com wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2016 08:57 Introvert wrote:
idk but everything I've read (even from liberal students or colleagues) said he was a genuinely nice person, fwiw. What does that matter. He was just a supreme court judge who wasn't very good at his job. Yeah, he protected or squashed people's constitutional right; he did both. But that he seemed like a nice person, some of the most horrible persons ever seemed like nice persons. You really want to compare him with some of those? All he was was a bad judge, not some serial killer. If a person is charming, all alarm bells should go off. Especially if they have power.
I was responding to part of a post, and even added "for what it's worth." Spare me the lectures. I would agree that how nice he was doesn't matter as much. But by the same token people on the other side should perhaps watch what they say, as well.
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On February 15 2016 04:31 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2016 03:49 Cowboy64 wrote:On February 15 2016 03:33 KwarK wrote:On February 15 2016 03:18 Biff The Understudy wrote:On February 15 2016 03:14 xDaunt wrote:
I find the attacks on Scalia around here to be hilariously uninformed. Knock his judicial views and philosophy all you want, but he was consistent, which is really all that you can ask for out of a judge. And he certainly was not one of the judges who was prone to crapping out unworkable majority opinions (like O'Connor). I think the consensus is that the guy was consistent and probably had some integrity. Thing is that you can be consistent, have integrity AND be a piece of shit. Which is Kwark's point (correct me if I am wrong). His position against gay sex (I didn't know that) is just plain horrible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas#Scalia.27s_dissentwhat a cunt Is he even in the ground yet? I don't think him being dead had any effect on Kwark's opinion. I am sure he was a wonderful father and family member, but he saw homosexuals as less than human, not worthy of human rights. Scalia thought terrible things about gays, live, dead or otherwise.
No. The media told you to hate the people you disagree with so you do. There isn't anything else to it.
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Funniest thing to me is this conservative attitude that they have a right to have the majority on the court. As if the liberals have no right to having a 5-4 advantage. God forbid a sitting President and Congress actually do their job and consider candidates. How long before we start seeing a party block supreme court candidates from year 2, or even 1, of a Presidents term? "Let's wait for a new vote so the people can decide!" A bunch of hypocritical, petulant children.
Going to laugh my ass off when the GOP inevitably loses after sending up some unelectable scrub and Hillary/Sanders puts up some HYPER liberal judges on the court, rather than the potential moderate that would be there if they were willing to play ball.
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United States43731 Posts
On February 15 2016 10:27 Cowboy64 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2016 04:31 Plansix wrote:On February 15 2016 03:49 Cowboy64 wrote:On February 15 2016 03:33 KwarK wrote:On February 15 2016 03:18 Biff The Understudy wrote:On February 15 2016 03:14 xDaunt wrote:
I find the attacks on Scalia around here to be hilariously uninformed. Knock his judicial views and philosophy all you want, but he was consistent, which is really all that you can ask for out of a judge. And he certainly was not one of the judges who was prone to crapping out unworkable majority opinions (like O'Connor). I think the consensus is that the guy was consistent and probably had some integrity. Thing is that you can be consistent, have integrity AND be a piece of shit. Which is Kwark's point (correct me if I am wrong). His position against gay sex (I didn't know that) is just plain horrible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas#Scalia.27s_dissentwhat a cunt Is he even in the ground yet? I don't think him being dead had any effect on Kwark's opinion. I am sure he was a wonderful father and family member, but he saw homosexuals as less than human, not worthy of human rights. Scalia thought terrible things about gays, live, dead or otherwise. No. The media told you to hate the people you disagree with so you do. There isn't anything else to it.
You think you think that but you're just regurgitating Fox news because you're incapable of doing anything but blaming the media for opinions you disagree with. If you were capable of independent thought you wouldn't think what you do.
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EPT
