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On November 03 2013 04:57 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 04:33 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:On November 03 2013 04:26 KwarK wrote:On November 03 2013 04:18 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +That is the point. I mean that's where it ends. I believe it's a human life and you don't. I'm not mad at ya. That's all. Which comes down to ensoulment, basically. Hence the issue. You may not personally be religious but you're living in a society built on a Christian background and despite your lack of religious beliefs somehow ensoulment got stuck in there. You go "those cells are just cells but these ones over here have some special value that is worth taking away someone else's liberty for". If you wanna legislate on it, prove it. OK I'll splooge on the table and in nine months if it's up crawling around eating and shitting I'll let you know. STOP! If you go on the table and not in a fertile woman millions of potential genetic combinations for potential children will cease to be possible! Won't someone please think of the children! The jacking off argument is actually a fun one. There really isn't much reason to treat some genetic material as special and not others but as men we like jacking off way too much so we create a little bit of double think where genetic material only becomes special when it's the obligation of the woman to look after it but has no value before then. Kinda funny when you think about it. We literally flush the stuff down the toilet when being logically consistent would interfere with masturbating but when the same belief means we don't have to do anything but control women we're all for it.
If you say it's arbitrary then you have no justification for any personhood whatsoever, and hence no individual rights.
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United States43272 Posts
On November 03 2013 05:29 Ghostcom wrote:
Women can also suffer from muscular dystrophy, but you are at least partly correct in that some subtypes they can't.
Also, a sperm only possess half the genetic material, but I guess ignoring facts are convenient when yelling at others.
How about we discuss US politics in this thread and abortion in one of the many threads already present here on TL for that specific purpose? Y'all would do well reading them at least as you have yet to make an argument which hasn't already been debated and make up hilariously terrible analogies.
Must have been one of those subtypes. I'm not an MD expert, just familiar with one friend who had it.
A sperm possesses enough genetic material to create a person. Science is magic. Even if that weren't the case it can still potentially become a person under the right conditions when combined with the right stuff and I have no idea why people see that as intervention rather than inevitability but hosting a baby in your womb is inevitability rather than intervention. Sperm try to become people. Saying they're not a potential person because they need an egg but a fetus is a potential person, despite the need for a home for 9 months reeks of ensoulment bullshit. If you can get beyond the life starts at conception because it does and show the difference go for it but the idea that carrying a fetus to term is entirely passive is a nonsense.
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United States43272 Posts
On November 03 2013 05:45 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 04:57 KwarK wrote:On November 03 2013 04:33 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:On November 03 2013 04:26 KwarK wrote:On November 03 2013 04:18 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:+ Show Spoiler +That is the point. I mean that's where it ends. I believe it's a human life and you don't. I'm not mad at ya. That's all. Which comes down to ensoulment, basically. Hence the issue. You may not personally be religious but you're living in a society built on a Christian background and despite your lack of religious beliefs somehow ensoulment got stuck in there. You go "those cells are just cells but these ones over here have some special value that is worth taking away someone else's liberty for". If you wanna legislate on it, prove it. OK I'll splooge on the table and in nine months if it's up crawling around eating and shitting I'll let you know. STOP! If you go on the table and not in a fertile woman millions of potential genetic combinations for potential children will cease to be possible! Won't someone please think of the children! The jacking off argument is actually a fun one. There really isn't much reason to treat some genetic material as special and not others but as men we like jacking off way too much so we create a little bit of double think where genetic material only becomes special when it's the obligation of the woman to look after it but has no value before then. Kinda funny when you think about it. We literally flush the stuff down the toilet when being logically consistent would interfere with masturbating but when the same belief means we don't have to do anything but control women we're all for it. If you say it's arbitrary then you have no justification for any personhood whatsoever, and hence no individual rights.
My justification for the idea of individual rights is that I want everyone else to pretend I have something special in me which grants me rights and protections and the price of that is that I have to pretend everyone else has those things too. Honestly I can't see an explanation better than that, we're monkey's that fell out of the trees and are now trying to act like we're not animals and all get along and build a civilisation and the big lie that we all deserve special treatment but that other animals are food and so forth falls apart if you look too closely at it. There is no underlying system or justice to the world, if you start looking for one you'll come back disappointed. We have rights because everything works better if we pretend we all have rights but if someone were to start breaking the rules the earth wouldn't break apart and swallow him. If you have a better explanation for why we have rights I'd love to hear it.
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"Life starts at conception" is such a trap. An incurious reading of basic biology text boots will rightly say: It's true, the genetic material from mom and dad combines to form entirely the new genome of a genetically distinct and new organism. But reaching beyond that simple definition, there is nothing that says this process will surely go on to form a living human without any potential problems along the way. And there is no reason to assume this process of growing into a human could not derive from an entirely artificial process provided more technical knowledge in stem cell bio/embryology, wherein sperm does not meet the egg in a traditional human-human interaction, but rather by genetic material from the two parent organisms combining via genetic intervention and exposure to artificial developmental cues in an in vitro or artificial surrogate setting that recapitulates with great fidelity what is commonly known as "the natural process".
If you assemble all the biological details and facts, it's hard to understand a very early stage human embryo as anything more than human tissue, up until a certain point in development of course. The early stage tissue is living, and it's composed of novel genetic material a bit distinct from either mom or dad, but it's not sentient. It does not possess a brain. In fact, neural cells have not yet begun to differentiate from the primordial germ layers -- there isn't even an inkling of a brain, a nervous system, of a neuron cell for that matter (all of which are absolutely required to "live" in the abstract sense of being alive and human.
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On November 03 2013 05:42 farvacola wrote:
Well, it is relevant given recent news that Lyndsey Graham is championing a new, highly restrictive anti-abortion bill.
Many people believe late term abortions after fetal viability are wrong. Wikipedia says that begins at 22 weeks, and 41 states now have laws restricting post-viability abortions. This bill goes all the way down to 20, and the legislation allows abortions after 20 weeks for life of the mother and rape/incest exceptions. Why do you think it's highly restrictive? I oppose the law because it's banning abortions for a short period pre-viability, 2 or so weeks, but I don't think it's highly restrictive.
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I suppose I should rephrase; it is not the bill itself that is highly restrictive, rather that it serves as a tacit congressional approval of pre-viability abortion restriction, and in states where access is already highly limited, such as Arizona for example, conservative lawmakers have made it clear that they have a variety of "companion" legislations that will only make things worse and are highly restrictive. The outcome of Horne Vs. Isaacson, an Arizona Supreme Court case that deals specifically with the tenets of viability as it pertains to abortion, is also going to have a dramatic impact.
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consciousness seems like a good place to start when trying to establish rights. even small children have a consciousness no more significant than a labrador's, and i certainly wouldn't require a woman to go through pregnancy to keep a dog alive. then again i'm against animal cruelty where it can be avoided. perhaps the greeks weren't far off base when they let nature reclaim deformed babies.
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The whole debate is basically moot because the law would obviously be unconstitutional. Even if the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade today in a unanimous decision and allowed states to criminalize all abortion, any Federal ban would clearly still be unconstitutional.
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On November 03 2013 08:08 HunterX11 wrote:
The whole debate is basically moot because the law would obviously be unconstitutional. Even if the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade today in a unanimous decision and allowed states to criminalize all abortion, any Federal ban would clearly still be unconstitutional.
The thing is, states can get around that by making it almost impossible to operate an abortion clinic or be cleared to have one through byzantine legislation and bizarre restrictions. They can't take away the right, but they can take away the practical availability, which in the end amounts to the same thing.
And then blame the mother when the unwanted/unplanned child ends up in jail after being raised with zero opportunities by a single mother woefully unprepared for the task. "Pro-life", the gall. The state-side legislative efforts to undermine the constitutionally protected right to abortion are about as pro-life as Skeletor. The level of hypocrisy is on the wrong side of hilarious.
Case in point: North Carolina, which has now become the state that makes Rick Santorum noisily ejaculate every night. It's so very much like every other anti-choice or so called libertarian republican escapade; unprincipled, undemocratic, self-serving and unfathomably sanctimonious.
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On November 03 2013 08:08 HunterX11 wrote:
The whole debate is basically moot because the law would obviously be unconstitutional. Even if the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade today in a unanimous decision and allowed states to criminalize all abortion, any Federal ban would clearly still be unconstitutional.
Oh I've no doubt that the entire thing will be quashed; I don't see the current Roberts court touching abortion (The smart conservatives on the court will save their "activist ammo" for something more worthwhile). What most certainly isn't moot, though, is the prejudicial limbo that many are forced into as states that adopt clearly unconstitutional abortion restrictions await supreme court decisions. Quite a few women (and men for that matter) are basically being toyed with by the contours of the political debate surrounding the service that they (oftentimes desperately) need, and I had hoped for a moment that the recent Republican schism regarding the propriety of a government shutdown as tactic indicated that this recent trend in what amounts to conservative tribalism had finally began to lose steam.
Sadly, geopolitical segmentation continues to take its toll, and the government's and the people's time must be wasted by more legislative tactics that actively ignore trends in popular consensus. It is quite startling to compare the agendas of southern conservative politicians with the demographics and general state of the areas surrounding their voting district and realize that many of these people are figuratively spitting on their neighbors in the booth, in many cases while not even knowing it. The lines of Ron Paul's former district in Galveston are plain enough for all to see, and the same can be said for the political delineations of practically every poverty stricken area in the south. Granted, I'm painting in broad strokes here, and there most certainly are exceptions (Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Colorado come to mind), but this conservative insistence on a very narrow political platform that revolves around their demands and their demands alone is going to push people off the side as it focuses on things like abortion, and there are only so many ships floating in our political sea of shit.
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An entire section of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s 2013 book Government Bullies was copied wholesale from a 2003 case study by the Heritage Foundation, BuzzFeed has learned. The copied section, 1,318 words, is by far the most significant instance reported so far of Paul borrowing language from other published material.
The new cut-and-paste job follows reports by BuzzFeed, Politico, and MSNBC that Paul had plagiarized speeches either from Wikipedia or news reports. The book was published in August 2013 by Center Street, a division of Hachette Book Group.
In this case, Paul included a link to the Heritage case study in the book’s footnotes, though he made no effort to indicate that not just the source, but the words themselves, had been taken from Heritage.
A Paul aide defended the senator, saying he makes clear in the book’s “notes and sources” that he didn’t individually research each case.
“In the book Government Bullies all the information… was sourced by end notes. In the two cases described, the end notes clearly define the sourcing for the book. In no case has the Senator used information without attribution,” said Doug Stafford, an advisor to Sen. Paul who co-wrote the book. “There were 150 endnotes and cites including The Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute. This is a witch hunt and grasping at straws.”
The copied text relates to the 2003 case of David McNab, a Honduran businessman who, along with three American businesspeople, was convicted of multiple felony counts related to the illegal harvest and importation of Caribbean spiny lobster tails in violation of the 1900 Lacey Act. The Lacey Act prohibits the trafficking of illegal wildlife.
Source
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That was one of the more useless 8 minutes of my life. Of course Republicans are hounding it. I guess he advocates that we should really be more lenient when looking at the bill. You know, maybe just don't look to see where it's screwing people over. If you do, it's a partisan witch hunt!
A couple things really are amusing from the video:
First: ignoring the problem that after hundreds of millions of dollars (and more importantly) 3 full years, they still managed to screw up the website...and he compares it to a failed Apple demo. That's rich.
Second: Blaming the fact that it's not single payer. They fought and fought (over the past 3 years) to defend this law, talked about how much good it was going to do, but now that it's bearing (bad) fruit, and failing expectations, the excuses begin pouring in. If it's bad, and they couldn't get the single payer plan through, then WHY pass the bill in the first place? The bill that was passed was a sucky bill that they touted for years, and now they begin to lower the standards/bring in the excuses. I suppose it wouldn't do to admit that their promises have been lies and that the Republican's predictions have been coming true, one by one. That would be too hard.
(In my own estimation, the dems knew this would most likely fail, and they knew they could use it to push SP. It doesn't matter if it fails for them, they already planned to argue for the next step.)
Also, gotta love that "republicans oppose healthcare for the poor" garbage.
Third: The "irony" he talks about. I think it makes perfect sense to ask for explanations (and maybe apologies) when you waste such a massive amount of taxpayer money. No one expected the website to be such a massive flop. When something that simple (compared to the rest of the law) is screwed up it seems fair to me to demand knowledge on why.
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On November 03 2013 14:23 Introvert wrote:That was one of the more useless 8 minutes of my life. Of course Republicans are hounding it. I guess he advocates that we should really be more lenient when looking at the bill. You know, maybe just don't look to see where it's screwing people over. If you do, it's a partisan witch hunt! A couple things really are amusing from the video: First: ignoring the problem that after hundreds of millions of dollars (and more importantly) 3 full years, they still managed to screw up the website...and he compares it to a failed Apple demo. That's rich. Second: Blaming the fact that it's not single payer. They fought and fought (over the past 3 years) to defend this law, talked about how much good it was going to do, but now that it's bearing (bad) fruit, and failing expectations, the excuses begin pouring in. If it's bad, and they couldn't get the single payer plan through, then WHY pass the bill in the first place? The bill that was passed was a sucky bill that they touted for years, and now they begin to lower the standards/bring in the excuses. I suppose it wouldn't do to admit that their promises have been lies and that the Republican's predictions have been coming true, one by one. That would be too hard. (In my own estimation, the dems knew this would most likely fail, and they knew they could use it to push SP. It doesn't matter if it fails for them, they already planned to argue for the next step.) Also, gotta love that "republicans oppose healthcare for the poor" garbage. Third: The "irony" he talks about. I think it makes perfect sense to ask for explanations (and maybe apologies) when you waste such a massive amount of taxpayer money. No one expected the website to be such a massive flop. When something that simple (compared to the rest of the law) is screwed up it seems fair to me to demand knowledge on why.
Maybe because it isn't simple?
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On November 03 2013 14:45 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2013 14:23 Introvert wrote:That was one of the more useless 8 minutes of my life. Of course Republicans are hounding it. I guess he advocates that we should really be more lenient when looking at the bill. You know, maybe just don't look to see where it's screwing people over. If you do, it's a partisan witch hunt! A couple things really are amusing from the video: First: ignoring the problem that after hundreds of millions of dollars (and more importantly) 3 full years, they still managed to screw up the website...and he compares it to a failed Apple demo. That's rich. Second: Blaming the fact that it's not single payer. They fought and fought (over the past 3 years) to defend this law, talked about how much good it was going to do, but now that it's bearing (bad) fruit, and failing expectations, the excuses begin pouring in. If it's bad, and they couldn't get the single payer plan through, then WHY pass the bill in the first place? The bill that was passed was a sucky bill that they touted for years, and now they begin to lower the standards/bring in the excuses. I suppose it wouldn't do to admit that their promises have been lies and that the Republican's predictions have been coming true, one by one. That would be too hard. (In my own estimation, the dems knew this would most likely fail, and they knew they could use it to push SP. It doesn't matter if it fails for them, they already planned to argue for the next step.) Also, gotta love that "republicans oppose healthcare for the poor" garbage. Third: The "irony" he talks about. I think it makes perfect sense to ask for explanations (and maybe apologies) when you waste such a massive amount of taxpayer money. No one expected the website to be such a massive flop. When something that simple (compared to the rest of the law) is screwed up it seems fair to me to demand knowledge on why. Maybe because it isn't simple?
You referring to the website? Of course it's not simple, but given the time and money, complexity seems like a really poor excuse for the fact that this website will spend two full months essentially useless.
Of course, when you can't test everything you need to test, you are going to have issues, But it's good that it wasn't delayed by even a couple weeks for that, this way we know what the president's priorities were.
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My policies are the right idea for America and there's nobody to blame when things go awry. It could've happened to anybody! State Department, IRS, Justice Department, Health and Human services. Which section of this administration will give a facepalm moment next?
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he's a remixing wordsmith
it's the remix baaaaaaabyyyyyyyyy
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I've written stuff myself, and the rules regarding other people's (or your own previous work) are very clear and quite simple: if you copy something, make clear that it's a quotation and attribute it entirely to the original authors. If you are just copying the idea, but rewriting it in your own words, you just need to reference the source.
If Rand Paul copied someone else's text, but didn't make it completely clear he was doing that, the original authors can have a pretty strong case for plagiarism. Of course, that's assuming they care enough to complain.
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On November 03 2013 14:23 Introvert wrote:That was one of the more useless 8 minutes of my life. Of course Republicans are hounding it. I guess he advocates that we should really be more lenient when looking at the bill. You know, maybe just don't look to see where it's screwing people over. If you do, it's a partisan witch hunt! A couple things really are amusing from the video: First: ignoring the problem that after hundreds of millions of dollars (and more importantly) 3 full years, they still managed to screw up the website...and he compares it to a failed Apple demo. That's rich. Second: Blaming the fact that it's not single payer. They fought and fought (over the past 3 years) to defend this law, talked about how much good it was going to do, but now that it's bearing (bad) fruit, and failing expectations, the excuses begin pouring in. If it's bad, and they couldn't get the single payer plan through, then WHY pass the bill in the first place? The bill that was passed was a sucky bill that they touted for years, and now they begin to lower the standards/bring in the excuses. I suppose it wouldn't do to admit that their promises have been lies and that the Republican's predictions have been coming true, one by one. That would be too hard. (In my own estimation, the dems knew this would most likely fail, and they knew they could use it to push SP. It doesn't matter if it fails for them, they already planned to argue for the next step.) Also, gotta love that "republicans oppose healthcare for the poor" garbage. Third: The "irony" he talks about. I think it makes perfect sense to ask for explanations (and maybe apologies) when you waste such a massive amount of taxpayer money. No one expected the website to be such a massive flop. When something that simple (compared to the rest of the law) is screwed up it seems fair to me to demand knowledge on why.
The laws been intact for less than a month, no one is in a position to say how it has worked at this point, and you won't even be able to BEGIN to make an accurate assessment until early next year. There is no need to "defend" the law itself yet. The parts of the law that have already been implemented for a while now have been nothing but helpful to many people (like being able to stay on your parents insurance until your 26). Yes the website was a debacle, fortunately the goal of the ACA was not to make an awesome website, it was to provide affordable healthcare to uninsured Americans and improve the quality of existing coverage. The government contracted a Canadian company to implement the website and they botched it, the explanation isn't that complicated. There should have been better oversight, I can't defend the administration there.
Obviously they could not get single payer through, but it was still worth passing the ACA because it's a step in the right direction. Not being able to deny for pre-existing conditions is huge. It's a great thing for the insurance consumer, because before an insurance company could basically just refuse to pay due to some trivial condition. There is also no more caps on reimbursement, before it was possible to still go bankrupt when you got sick despite having insurance, and this does in fact happen to millions of people. Your not supposed to go bankrupt if you have insurance. I love republicans because they are so fixated on bashing "Obamacare" yet they offer no solutions of their own to fix our healthcare system. They want to keep things status quo, and would in fact go the opposite way by defunding Medicare and Medicaid (but they wouldn't cut our defense budget). They are obviously against healthcare for the poor, that's what Medicaid is. Their plan for the poor is "hey, just go to the emergency room". Mitt Romney himself said it during his presidential campaign. And do you know what happens when the poor go to the emergency room? We, the taxpayers, end up paying for it through higher insurance premiums. Republicans themselves championed the idea of the individual mandate back in the early 90's, it's about "taking personal responsibility". Their sentiment then was that people should be forced to have health insurance so other people don't end up having to pay for them. Same idea as car insurance. Hey, be responsible for yourself. That's the mantra of the republican party right? Well now that it's Obama's idea, it's suddenly horrible. It's just comical.
I find your comment that the dems purposely passed the ACA knowing it would fail so they could get single payer is interesting. Shows the kind of delusional thinking that is so common in the party today. Same thinking along the lines of "the American people are so against Obamacare care they want us to shut down the government"
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