On September 08 2012 15:18 farvacola wrote: ^I don't know who you are or where you came from, but hot damn do I agree with everything you've written. Well done
I agree! The one thing I don't understand is why both him and xdaunt are talking about abortions when it comes to this line...
"Allowing health care providers to deny birth control if it conflicts with their religious/moral convictions"
So what do you want to do? Violate a constitutional right just to allow a woman to get an abortion where she chooses?
------------------------------------
What does birth control have to do with abortions in the context of this discussion, both of your responses to that quote touched on abortion and not on birth control. (other than the fact having more access to birth control and more knowledge about how to use it decreases unwanted pregnancies)? I know some religions are against birth control but there are valid reasons for getting hormonal birth control without the purpose of having sex. I don't know why abortion is being brought up in reference to birth control, these are two different things.
From a European perspective, the US election should be no contest, as these results from an opinion survey by Pew indicate.
Now if you are a Republican, this may just confirm your view that Europeans are forced to live in just the kind of socialist state that Obama wants to turn the US into, and that we have been brainwashed into not knowing any better. However I think it has rather more to do with things like:
1) Many Republican Party supporters campaign to have intelligent design taught on an equal footing to Darwinian evolution in schools.
2) Climate change denial appears to govern Party policy on what may well be the greatest threat mankind currently faces.
3) Party leaders appear to at best tolerate, if not promulgate, the idea that tax cuts (particularly for the rich) will increase tax revenue, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
4) Veracity seems to be in short supply in Party speeches and propaganda in the current election.
In other words significant sections of the Republican Party seem to have a problem with reality, or as Paul Krugman says, facts have a liberal bias.
Of course the two major parties in the UK have their more extreme elements, but these are either much less extreme, or much more marginal, than in the Republican Party. Indeed, it is generally thought that when this ceased to be the case for the Labour Party in the 1980s, it did Labour great harm in terms of the popular vote. Labour leaders learnt that attacking these extreme elements within their own Party won them votes.
There appears to be another puzzle, and that is that many Republican voters seem to be voting against their own economic interest. Residents of red states tend to receive more government transfers than blue states. More generally, how can the poor possibly vote for a party which is so devoted to tax cuts for the (very) rich and reducing aid to the poor?
Now one possible answer to this puzzle is that facts, veracity and economic benefits are not at the top of many voters list of what they look for in politicians. It’s all about values. ‘Culture Wars’, traditionalists versus progressives, that kind of thing. Perhaps voters in Kansas just value individualism and religious belief more than European voters, and creationism, climate change denial and tax cuts convey these values.
I’m well outside my comfort zone here, but I want to suggest an alternative answer. In the decades around the 1970s, there was much discussion in the UK about the apparent enigma of the Conservative working class voter. Previously it was argued that voting, and the two political parties in the UK, had been split along class lines – the Labour Party could be said to represent the working class. How then to explain that a growing number of the working class were apparently voting against their own party? In a paper written in 1967, the sociologist Frank Parkin turned that question on its head. The dominant culture, he suggested, was conservative with a small ‘c’. The relevant enigma was therefore not the working class Conservative, but the Labour voter of any class. The latter could be understood by considering the strength of working class networks (e.g. trade unions) that could resist the influence of the dominant conservative culture, and the changing strength of institutions promulgating that dominant culture. Of particular importance was the growing influence of radio and television as conveyors of information and values.
In the UK the state played a central role in the development of radio and television, through the BBC. It appears as if most European countries followed a similar model. Now this can have severe disadvantages if the state decides to take too much control, but in many European countries there are various safeguards designed to minimise the influence of the particular party in power over what is broadcast. I want to suggest that this set up has some important implications. State controlled media will tend to be centrist in its outlook, and dismissive of extremes. It will also try and reflect establishment views and opinions, which include academic scientific opinion and mainstream religious views. Partly as a result, a political party which appeared to tolerate the views listed above would be given a hard time. I’m also pretty sure that party leaders would not be able to get away with being as ‘economical with the truth’ as Ryan’s convention speech was.
In the US public sector broadcasting is not a major force. Now there is a chicken and egg problem here: perhaps the US media model may reflect different values, like a greater aversion to state power. However it could also just be a consequence of the political power of corporations in the US at a particular point in time. As Robert McChesney documents, it was not inevitable that the private sector model that now dominates in the US should have emerged, although once it was established it became easier to sustain this position. My key point is that this lack of a major state presence in TV and radio makes it easier for those with money to try and control the information and social values promulgated by media.
In the UK we are used to newspaper barons manipulating news and opinion to further their own or a political party’s views on particular issues. However the BBC, together with a legal requirement on other TV channels to be politically balanced, limits the scope of newspapers to manipulate information or change values. Surveys repeatedly show much higher levels of trust in the BBC compared to the media in general. Undoubtedly the press does have considerable influence in the UK, but few would argue that it alone could fundamentally change the political landscape. However, if both TV and radio were able to work to the same model as newspapers, such manipulation becomes a distinct possibility.
Just as Frank Parkin argued that the working class Conservative voter was not an enigma in the UK once we thought about the dissemination of information and values, so the steady drift to the right of the Republican Party could be explained in similar terms. Paul Krugman argues that pundits who describe America as a fundamentally conservative country are wrong. What I am suggesting is that the drift to the right of the Republican Party may be a function of the ownership structure of the media in the US. If true, this raises two questions. First, has this process in the US been there since the invention of radio and TV, or is it more recent, and if so why? (Simon Johnson amongst others suggest it started with Reagan.) Second, does the two party system in the US provide a limit to the power that money can have over the media, or does the trend have further to go?
They're right in stating that it is a chicken and egg issue. In my opinion the media most likely initially reflected the different values; however, perhaps in recent times these values were exacerbated by the media, hence the drift to the right.
On September 08 2012 07:23 sunprince wrote: The Department of Labor study concludes that any unexplained gap is well within the margin for statistical error and is probably due to the factors they didn't control for. If you have compelling proof that this is not the case, then feel free to show your sources.
Just out of curiosity what are the factors they didn't control for? That Department of Labor study was really long and I don't have the willpower to truck through it all.
Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but Im pretty sure it's not "well within the margin of error", it's between 4.8-7% (that IS the margin of error). Again, maybe I'm reading this wrong, but that's what I took away from it (which, ironically, is almost exactly what I said before).
With respect to the factors that were "omitted", most of the factors you listed were omitted because of collinearity with other variables (occupation and industry, for example). The statistical analysis would not be valid including those variables, but the fact that they are significantly collinear with others indicates that they probably would not have explained significantly more of the variation (and, in fact, they probably omitted those variables in favour of the others they used because the others explained more variation than those ones, so I would hazard a guess that including occupation and industry would decrease the fit of their model.
Tenure and work experience are the ones not included in this study, but they are based off of longitudinal data, not cross sectional, which is what this study uses. It is certainly possible that they might explain more of the gap, but I suspect that variables like "proportion of workers not in labour force" attempts to control for those issues in an indirect way (as best they can with a cross-sectional dataset). Addtionally, "age" was also used as a proxy for work experience, I believe. There are definite issues with this, as women are more likely to take breaks from the labour force than men (largely for child rearing), so it is a poor proxy. However, as explained, the "proportion of the workers not in labour force" is used as a proxy for career interruptions, so hopefully would capture that variation.
So, in all, the variables you listed weren't directly included, but there are "caveats" which you failed to mention. It is certainly true that their inclusion might explain more of the variation in earnings, but "make-do" proxies for the variables you listed. More variation might be explained including them, but probably less than you would like to think, as the "proxies" probably capture some of that variation (hence their inclusion in the model).
To be fair, you did fail to mention other factors that could account for the gap, though, that the authors themselves bring up. Issues like fringe benefits and overtime, amongst other things.
Interestingly, there are a lot of studies that do actually look at all of those things, and they still find gender gaps, and most of them larger than the one found in the Dept. of labour study (go look in the Appendix, these dudes listed quite a few with easy to read summaries, as well).
Anyhow, I have to go to work. If you wanna delve into the report more, we can, but I have to stop for now.
I think Mitt romney will win but I think it's fairly unrelated who victories. Their information are fairly identical so the advantage goes to the bright guy.
On September 08 2012 20:42 james5 wrote: I think Mitt romney will win but I think it's fairly unrelated who victories. Their information are fairly identical so the advantage goes to the bright guy.
If by "fairly identical" you mean "almost as different as humanly possible"....
I mean I know about their Human Rights abuses and stuff, but China is just as bad and an ascendant power... Is Romney picking on Russia because they are in decline?
Perhaps there isn't much difference between republics and democrats in their political decisionmaking, however their retorics are completely different:
On September 07 2012 23:09 xDaunt wrote: I agree with Peggy Noonan's take on the convention.
On Obama:
Barack Obama is deeply overexposed and often boring. He never seems to be saying what he's thinking. His speech Thursday was weirdly anticlimactic. There's too much buildup, the crowd was tired, it all felt flat. He was somber, and his message was essentially banal: We've done better than you think. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?
There were many straw men. There were phrases like "the shadow of a shuttered steel mill," which he considers writerly. But they sound empty and practiced now, like something you've heard in a commercial or an advertising campaign.
It was stale and empty. He's out of juice.
On the tone of the convention and the delegates:
Beneath the funny hats, the sweet-faced delegates, the handsome speakers and the babies waving flags there was something disquieting. All three days were marked by a kind of soft, distracted extremism. It was unshowy and unobnoxious but also unsettling.
There was the relentless emphasis on Government as Community, as the thing that gives us spirit and makes us whole. But government isn't what you love if you're American, America is what you love. Government is what you have, need and hire. Its most essential duties—especially when it is bankrupt—involve defending rights and safety, not imposing views and values. We already have values. Democrats and Republicans don't see all this the same way, and that's fine—that's what national politics is, the working out of this dispute in one direction or another every few years. But the Democrats convened in Charlotte seemed more extreme on the point, more accepting of the idea of government as the center of national life, than ever, at least to me.
The fight over including a single mention of God in the platform—that was extreme. The original removal of the single mention by the platform committee—extreme. The huge "No!" vote on restoring the mention of God, and including the administration's own stand on Jerusalem—that wasn't liberal, it was extreme. Comparing the Republicans to Nazis—extreme. The almost complete absence of a call to help education by facing down the powers that throw our least defended children under the school bus—this was extreme, not mainstream.
On Fluke (just because I don't think this woman can ever get enough scorn):
The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception. I am old enough to know a wedge issue when I see one, but I've never seen a great party build its entire public persona around one. Big speeches from the heads of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, HHS Secretary and abortion enthusiast Kathleen Sebelius and, of course, Sandra Fluke.
"Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception," Ms. Fluke said. But why would anyone have included a Georgetown law student who never worked her way onto the national stage until she was plucked, by the left, as a personable victim? What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they're not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That's not a stand, it's a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.
And she was one of the great faces of the party in Charlotte. That is extreme. Childish, too.
Here's the most important part that dovetails with the "poisoning the well" conversation that we have had on and off in this thread:
Something else, and it had to do with tone. I remember the Republicans in Tampa bashing the president, hard, but not the entire Democratic Party. In Charlotte they bashed Mitt Romney, but they bashed the Republican Party harder. If this doesn't strike you as somewhat unsettling, then you must want another four years of all war all the time between the parties. I don't think the American people want that. Because, actually, they're not extreme.
And finally, on Slick Willy:
Bill Clinton is The Master. That is stipulated. Almost everyone in the media was over the moon about his speech. It was a shrewd and superb moment of political generosity, his hauling into town to make the case, but it was a hack speech. It was the speech of a highly gifted apparatchik. All great partisan speeches include some hard and uncomfortable truths, but Mr. Clinton offered none. He knows better than so much of what he said. In real life he makes insightful statements on the debt, the deficit and the real threat they pose. He knows more about the need for and impediments to public-school reform than half the reformers do. He knows exactly why both parties can't reach agreement in Washington, and what each has done wrong along the way. But Wednesday night he stuck to fluid fictions and clever cases. It was smaller than Bill Clinton is.
Still, he gave the president one great political gift: He put Medicaid on the table. He put it right there next to the pepper shaker and said Look at that! People talk Medicare and Social Security, but, as Mr. Clinton noted, more than half of Medicaid is spent on nursing-home care for seniors and on those with disabilities such as Down syndrome and autism. Will it be cut? .... Romney-Ryan take note: this will arrive as an issue.
Ultimately, she predicts a dead-cat bounce for Obama just like the one that Romney got. Most of the article is above, but you can read the rest here.
The fact that she considers anything in the Democratic party "extreme" or "extremism" questions the validity of anything she writes. There is nothing extreme about the Democratic party or anything they're doing or saying.
Except for the platform's stance on abortion:
The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay
Which means government funded abortion with no restrictions. A departure from previous DNC platforms that stated that abortion should be, "Legal, safe, and rare".
Now let's look at the polling. 20% say abortion should be illegal under any circumstance, 25% legal under any circumstance and 52% legal under only certain circumstances (Source).
By definition, among the American electorate, BOTH parties platform stance on abortion is extreme.
Am I missing something? Where does it say 'no restrictions'?
I thought the Roe v Wade decision set these ground rules:
First trimester - decision to abort is between mother and doctor. Second trimester - decision to abort is between mother and doctor, but states may intervene in the interest of the mother's health.
Once the fetus is capable of surviving the outside world (dunno when this is), the state can choose to regulate abortion.
So it's not without restrictions...
Indeed. As the DNC stated, they "unequivocally support Roe v. Wade."
The Court later rejected Roe's trimester framework, while affirming Roe's central holding that a person has a right to abortion until viability.[1] The Roe decision defined "viable" as being "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid", adding that viability "is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks."[2]
As for partial-birth abortion there was a debate about that earlier... I suppose you can say the abortion stance is more extreme now but not without valid reason.
For the record, I'm fine with how we currently stand with abortion legally. I'm just tired of the RNC being labeled extreme by the media while the DNC gets a pass. Noonan was right, abortion is being used as a wedge issue and frankly if Noonan is the "conservative" columnist that people want to go after then the country is never moving back to the center.
It's because the DNC platform isn't extreme. Democrats are very moderate on just about everything; there's not even a hint of socializing anything coming from the entire party, and access to birth control and early abortions is very moderate. Basically every issue is handled half-assedly by the party because they don't want to alienate anyone who is even remotely conservative by suggesting socializing anything, seriously tackling climate change, overhauling education/healthcare/the tax code, actually separating church and state, etc. Republicans, on the other hand, are one of the most right-wing, extremist political parties in any developed, first world nation.
On September 08 2012 15:18 farvacola wrote: ^I don't know who you are or where you came from, but hot damn do I agree with everything you've written. Well done
I agree! The one thing I don't understand is why both him and xdaunt are talking about abortions when it comes to this line...
"Allowing health care providers to deny birth control if it conflicts with their religious/moral convictions"
So what do you want to do? Violate a constitutional right just to allow a woman to get an abortion where she chooses?
------------------------------------
What does birth control have to do with abortions in the context of this discussion, both of your responses to that quote touched on abortion and not on birth control. (other than the fact having more access to birth control and more knowledge about how to use it decreases unwanted pregnancies)? I know some religions are against birth control but there are valid reasons for getting hormonal birth control without the purpose of having sex. I don't know why abortion is being brought up in reference to birth control, these are two different things.
It is basically the same issue. Catholic hospitals and institutions don't want to be forced to provide/do/fund abortions and birth control because it is against Catholic doctrine. This is why Sandra Fluke attracted the conservative ire that she did. It wasn't just that she wanted her birth control paid for, she wanted to force a Catholic institution (Georgetown) to do it.
On September 08 2012 15:18 farvacola wrote: ^I don't know who you are or where you came from, but hot damn do I agree with everything you've written. Well done
I agree! The one thing I don't understand is why both him and xdaunt are talking about abortions when it comes to this line...
"Allowing health care providers to deny birth control if it conflicts with their religious/moral convictions"
So what do you want to do? Violate a constitutional right just to allow a woman to get an abortion where she chooses?
------------------------------------
What does birth control have to do with abortions in the context of this discussion, both of your responses to that quote touched on abortion and not on birth control. (other than the fact having more access to birth control and more knowledge about how to use it decreases unwanted pregnancies)? I know some religions are against birth control but there are valid reasons for getting hormonal birth control without the purpose of having sex. I don't know why abortion is being brought up in reference to birth control, these are two different things.
It is basically the same issue. Catholic hospitals and institutions don't want to be forced to provide/do/fund abortions and birth control because it is against Catholic doctrine. This is why Sandra Fluke attracted the conservative ire that she did. It wasn't just that she wanted her birth control paid for, she wanted to force a Catholic institution (Georgetown) to do it.
You're being extremely slippery on this issue, xdaunt. You've repeatedly claimed that abortion isn't an issue even pro choice people should care about because the Republicans can't do anything about it. But what matters for whether or not it's in the interest of pro choice people to vote based on abortion doesn't depend on what you think the proper role of government is, it depends on what they think it is. You might as well say it's absurd for anyone to vote based on one party being less hawkish than the other because clearly the government is supposed to be hawkish.
Most pro choice people have a far more expansive conception of governmental function than you, and this conception often includes the government providing things like health care and contraception and abortions. Since you admit that there is a real possibility of Republicans threatening funding for these types of things, of course it is in the typical pro choice person's interest to in part base their vote on the Republican stance toward them.
On September 07 2012 23:09 xDaunt wrote: I agree with Peggy Noonan's take on the convention.
On Obama:
Barack Obama is deeply overexposed and often boring. He never seems to be saying what he's thinking. His speech Thursday was weirdly anticlimactic. There's too much buildup, the crowd was tired, it all felt flat. He was somber, and his message was essentially banal: We've done better than you think. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?
There were many straw men. There were phrases like "the shadow of a shuttered steel mill," which he considers writerly. But they sound empty and practiced now, like something you've heard in a commercial or an advertising campaign.
It was stale and empty. He's out of juice.
On the tone of the convention and the delegates:
Beneath the funny hats, the sweet-faced delegates, the handsome speakers and the babies waving flags there was something disquieting. All three days were marked by a kind of soft, distracted extremism. It was unshowy and unobnoxious but also unsettling.
There was the relentless emphasis on Government as Community, as the thing that gives us spirit and makes us whole. But government isn't what you love if you're American, America is what you love. Government is what you have, need and hire. Its most essential duties—especially when it is bankrupt—involve defending rights and safety, not imposing views and values. We already have values. Democrats and Republicans don't see all this the same way, and that's fine—that's what national politics is, the working out of this dispute in one direction or another every few years. But the Democrats convened in Charlotte seemed more extreme on the point, more accepting of the idea of government as the center of national life, than ever, at least to me.
The fight over including a single mention of God in the platform—that was extreme. The original removal of the single mention by the platform committee—extreme. The huge "No!" vote on restoring the mention of God, and including the administration's own stand on Jerusalem—that wasn't liberal, it was extreme. Comparing the Republicans to Nazis—extreme. The almost complete absence of a call to help education by facing down the powers that throw our least defended children under the school bus—this was extreme, not mainstream.
On Fluke (just because I don't think this woman can ever get enough scorn):
The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception. I am old enough to know a wedge issue when I see one, but I've never seen a great party build its entire public persona around one. Big speeches from the heads of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, HHS Secretary and abortion enthusiast Kathleen Sebelius and, of course, Sandra Fluke.
"Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception," Ms. Fluke said. But why would anyone have included a Georgetown law student who never worked her way onto the national stage until she was plucked, by the left, as a personable victim? What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they're not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That's not a stand, it's a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.
And she was one of the great faces of the party in Charlotte. That is extreme. Childish, too.
Here's the most important part that dovetails with the "poisoning the well" conversation that we have had on and off in this thread:
Something else, and it had to do with tone. I remember the Republicans in Tampa bashing the president, hard, but not the entire Democratic Party. In Charlotte they bashed Mitt Romney, but they bashed the Republican Party harder. If this doesn't strike you as somewhat unsettling, then you must want another four years of all war all the time between the parties. I don't think the American people want that. Because, actually, they're not extreme.
And finally, on Slick Willy:
Bill Clinton is The Master. That is stipulated. Almost everyone in the media was over the moon about his speech. It was a shrewd and superb moment of political generosity, his hauling into town to make the case, but it was a hack speech. It was the speech of a highly gifted apparatchik. All great partisan speeches include some hard and uncomfortable truths, but Mr. Clinton offered none. He knows better than so much of what he said. In real life he makes insightful statements on the debt, the deficit and the real threat they pose. He knows more about the need for and impediments to public-school reform than half the reformers do. He knows exactly why both parties can't reach agreement in Washington, and what each has done wrong along the way. But Wednesday night he stuck to fluid fictions and clever cases. It was smaller than Bill Clinton is.
Still, he gave the president one great political gift: He put Medicaid on the table. He put it right there next to the pepper shaker and said Look at that! People talk Medicare and Social Security, but, as Mr. Clinton noted, more than half of Medicaid is spent on nursing-home care for seniors and on those with disabilities such as Down syndrome and autism. Will it be cut? .... Romney-Ryan take note: this will arrive as an issue.
Ultimately, she predicts a dead-cat bounce for Obama just like the one that Romney got. Most of the article is above, but you can read the rest here.
The fact that she considers anything in the Democratic party "extreme" or "extremism" questions the validity of anything she writes. There is nothing extreme about the Democratic party or anything they're doing or saying.
Except for the platform's stance on abortion:
The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay
Which means government funded abortion with no restrictions. A departure from previous DNC platforms that stated that abortion should be, "Legal, safe, and rare".
Now let's look at the polling. 20% say abortion should be illegal under any circumstance, 25% legal under any circumstance and 52% legal under only certain circumstances (Source).
By definition, among the American electorate, BOTH parties platform stance on abortion is extreme.
Am I missing something? Where does it say 'no restrictions'?
I thought the Roe v Wade decision set these ground rules:
First trimester - decision to abort is between mother and doctor. Second trimester - decision to abort is between mother and doctor, but states may intervene in the interest of the mother's health.
Once the fetus is capable of surviving the outside world (dunno when this is), the state can choose to regulate abortion.
So it's not without restrictions...
Indeed. As the DNC stated, they "unequivocally support Roe v. Wade."
The Court later rejected Roe's trimester framework, while affirming Roe's central holding that a person has a right to abortion until viability.[1] The Roe decision defined "viable" as being "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid", adding that viability "is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks."[2]
As for partial-birth abortion there was a debate about that earlier... I suppose you can say the abortion stance is more extreme now but not without valid reason.
For the record, I'm fine with how we currently stand with abortion legally. I'm just tired of the RNC being labeled extreme by the media while the DNC gets a pass. Noonan was right, abortion is being used as a wedge issue and frankly if Noonan is the "conservative" columnist that people want to go after then the country is never moving back to the center.
It's because the DNC platform isn't extreme. Democrats are very moderate on just about everything; there's not even a hint of socializing anything coming from the entire party, and access to birth control and early abortions is very moderate. Basically every issue is handled half-assedly by the party because they don't want to alienate anyone who is even remotely conservative by suggesting socializing anything, seriously tackling climate change, overhauling education/healthcare/the tax code, actually separating church and state, etc. Republicans, on the other hand, are one of the most right-wing, extremist political parties in any developed, first world nation.
For someone looking at this from the outside i agree. Democrats are more right leaning than anything we have in sweden. Our two most right leaning parties would place to the left of the scale in the US, and i think this goes for almost all of europe.
What americans call socialist/communist is what people here consider quite moderate stuff. Our left leaning parties want controlled pharmacies, alcohol only sold at government run stores, no profit for businesses running private schools, even stronger unions and worker rights (which are already way stronger than those in the US), increased and forced split of parent leave, and much more.
It's just really weird when people talk about the "threat" of socialism when most right wing europe is more left leaning than democrats in the US.
On September 08 2012 15:18 farvacola wrote: ^I don't know who you are or where you came from, but hot damn do I agree with everything you've written. Well done
I agree! The one thing I don't understand is why both him and xdaunt are talking about abortions when it comes to this line...
"Allowing health care providers to deny birth control if it conflicts with their religious/moral convictions"
So what do you want to do? Violate a constitutional right just to allow a woman to get an abortion where she chooses?
------------------------------------
What does birth control have to do with abortions in the context of this discussion, both of your responses to that quote touched on abortion and not on birth control. (other than the fact having more access to birth control and more knowledge about how to use it decreases unwanted pregnancies)? I know some religions are against birth control but there are valid reasons for getting hormonal birth control without the purpose of having sex. I don't know why abortion is being brought up in reference to birth control, these are two different things.
It is basically the same issue. Catholic hospitals and institutions don't want to be forced to provide/do/fund abortions and birth control because it is against Catholic doctrine. This is why Sandra Fluke attracted the conservative ire that she did. It wasn't just that she wanted her birth control paid for, she wanted to force a Catholic institution (Georgetown) to do it.
You're being extremely slippery on this issue, xdaunt. You've repeatedly claimed that abortion isn't an issue even pro choice people should care about because the Republicans can't do anything about it. But what matters for whether or not it's in the interest of pro choice people to vote based on abortion doesn't depend on what you think the proper role of government is, it depends on what they think it is. You might as well say it's absurd for anyone to vote based on one party being less hawkish than the other because clearly the government is supposed to be hawkish.
Most pro choice people have a far more expansive conception of governmental function than you, and this conception often includes the government providing things like health care and contraception and abortions. Since you admit that there is a real possibility of Republicans threatening funding for these types of things, of course it is in the typical pro choice person's interest to in part base their vote on the Republican stance toward them.
How am I being slippery? I've made it incredibly clear that the only meaningful action in the abortion debate lies in funding. With this in mind, I then argued that if you are still a single issue voter on the issue of abortion (regardless of whether you are for it or against it), then you should reexamine your priorities. All that I am really saying is that the issue gets far more press than is due.
On September 08 2012 15:18 farvacola wrote: ^I don't know who you are or where you came from, but hot damn do I agree with everything you've written. Well done
I agree! The one thing I don't understand is why both him and xdaunt are talking about abortions when it comes to this line...
"Allowing health care providers to deny birth control if it conflicts with their religious/moral convictions"
So what do you want to do? Violate a constitutional right just to allow a woman to get an abortion where she chooses?
------------------------------------
What does birth control have to do with abortions in the context of this discussion, both of your responses to that quote touched on abortion and not on birth control. (other than the fact having more access to birth control and more knowledge about how to use it decreases unwanted pregnancies)? I know some religions are against birth control but there are valid reasons for getting hormonal birth control without the purpose of having sex. I don't know why abortion is being brought up in reference to birth control, these are two different things.
It is basically the same issue. Catholic hospitals and institutions don't want to be forced to provide/do/fund abortions and birth control because it is against Catholic doctrine. This is why Sandra Fluke attracted the conservative ire that she did. It wasn't just that she wanted her birth control paid for, she wanted to force a Catholic institution (Georgetown) to do it.
You're being extremely slippery on this issue, xdaunt. You've repeatedly claimed that abortion isn't an issue even pro choice people should care about because the Republicans can't do anything about it. But what matters for whether or not it's in the interest of pro choice people to vote based on abortion doesn't depend on what you think the proper role of government is, it depends on what they think it is. You might as well say it's absurd for anyone to vote based on one party being less hawkish than the other because clearly the government is supposed to be hawkish.
Most pro choice people have a far more expansive conception of governmental function than you, and this conception often includes the government providing things like health care and contraception and abortions. Since you admit that there is a real possibility of Republicans threatening funding for these types of things, of course it is in the typical pro choice person's interest to in part base their vote on the Republican stance toward them.
How am I being slippery? I've made it incredibly clear that the only meaningful action in the abortion debate lies in funding. With this in mind, I then argued that if you are still a single issue voter on the issue of abortion (regardless of whether you are for it or against it), then you should reexamine your priorities. All that I am really saying is that the issue gets far more press than is due.
You're being slippery because you've repeatedly downplayed the importance of funding based on your own views about what government should fund. Those views are irrelevant to the voting interests of most actual pro choice people, making your arguments a complete non sequitur in so far as they are meant to address how much weight pro choicers should assign to abortion when voting.
I thought that was pretty clear from what I said. Maybe it's still the case that abortion gets more press than is due, and maybe it's also pretty generally the case that people shouldn't be single issue voters. But your arguments for these claims have involved irrelevancies.
On September 08 2012 15:18 farvacola wrote: ^I don't know who you are or where you came from, but hot damn do I agree with everything you've written. Well done
I agree! The one thing I don't understand is why both him and xdaunt are talking about abortions when it comes to this line...
"Allowing health care providers to deny birth control if it conflicts with their religious/moral convictions"
So what do you want to do? Violate a constitutional right just to allow a woman to get an abortion where she chooses?
------------------------------------
What does birth control have to do with abortions in the context of this discussion, both of your responses to that quote touched on abortion and not on birth control. (other than the fact having more access to birth control and more knowledge about how to use it decreases unwanted pregnancies)? I know some religions are against birth control but there are valid reasons for getting hormonal birth control without the purpose of having sex. I don't know why abortion is being brought up in reference to birth control, these are two different things.
It is basically the same issue. Catholic hospitals and institutions don't want to be forced to provide/do/fund abortions and birth control because it is against Catholic doctrine. This is why Sandra Fluke attracted the conservative ire that she did. It wasn't just that she wanted her birth control paid for, she wanted to force a Catholic institution (Georgetown) to do it.
You're being extremely slippery on this issue, xdaunt. You've repeatedly claimed that abortion isn't an issue even pro choice people should care about because the Republicans can't do anything about it. But what matters for whether or not it's in the interest of pro choice people to vote based on abortion doesn't depend on what you think the proper role of government is, it depends on what they think it is. You might as well say it's absurd for anyone to vote based on one party being less hawkish than the other because clearly the government is supposed to be hawkish.
Most pro choice people have a far more expansive conception of governmental function than you, and this conception often includes the government providing things like health care and contraception and abortions. Since you admit that there is a real possibility of Republicans threatening funding for these types of things, of course it is in the typical pro choice person's interest to in part base their vote on the Republican stance toward them.
How am I being slippery? I've made it incredibly clear that the only meaningful action in the abortion debate lies in funding. With this in mind, I then argued that if you are still a single issue voter on the issue of abortion (regardless of whether you are for it or against it), then you should reexamine your priorities. All that I am really saying is that the issue gets far more press than is due.
You're being slippery because you've repeatedly downplayed the importance of funding based on your own views about what government should fund. Those views are irrelevant to the voting interests of most actual pro choice people, making your arguments a complete non sequitur in so far as they are meant to address how much weight pro choicers should assign to abortion when voting.
I thought that was pretty clear from what I said. Maybe it's still the case that abortion gets more press than is due, and maybe it's also pretty generally the case that people shouldn't be single issue voters. But your arguments for these claims have involved irrelevancies.
You are reading way more into my posts than what is there. I'll just leave it at that.
On September 08 2012 05:55 jdsowa wrote: Peggy Noonan is a moderate Republican. That's why she's allowed to write for the NYT. She's been critical of the Tea Party folks. Romney's more her speed.
Paul Krugman is a liberal liberal. You'll never catch him criticizing any liberals, because he's an unthinking loyal team player.
He also made a name for himself criticizing common leftish stances like opposition to free trade, support for minimum wage (although he has also moderated here in recent years and claimed that minimum wage does not have particularly large economic consequences, at the present level anyway), or skepticism about improvements in productivity helping the common worker.
I'd put him in the same category as somebody like Tyler Cowen on the right -- has a definite viewpoint, but I can learn stuff from the data and arguments they present.
On September 07 2012 23:09 xDaunt wrote: I agree with Peggy Noonan's take on the convention.
On Obama:
Barack Obama is deeply overexposed and often boring. He never seems to be saying what he's thinking. His speech Thursday was weirdly anticlimactic. There's too much buildup, the crowd was tired, it all felt flat. He was somber, and his message was essentially banal: We've done better than you think. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?
There were many straw men. There were phrases like "the shadow of a shuttered steel mill," which he considers writerly. But they sound empty and practiced now, like something you've heard in a commercial or an advertising campaign.
It was stale and empty. He's out of juice.
On the tone of the convention and the delegates:
Beneath the funny hats, the sweet-faced delegates, the handsome speakers and the babies waving flags there was something disquieting. All three days were marked by a kind of soft, distracted extremism. It was unshowy and unobnoxious but also unsettling.
There was the relentless emphasis on Government as Community, as the thing that gives us spirit and makes us whole. But government isn't what you love if you're American, America is what you love. Government is what you have, need and hire. Its most essential duties—especially when it is bankrupt—involve defending rights and safety, not imposing views and values. We already have values. Democrats and Republicans don't see all this the same way, and that's fine—that's what national politics is, the working out of this dispute in one direction or another every few years. But the Democrats convened in Charlotte seemed more extreme on the point, more accepting of the idea of government as the center of national life, than ever, at least to me.
The fight over including a single mention of God in the platform—that was extreme. The original removal of the single mention by the platform committee—extreme. The huge "No!" vote on restoring the mention of God, and including the administration's own stand on Jerusalem—that wasn't liberal, it was extreme. Comparing the Republicans to Nazis—extreme. The almost complete absence of a call to help education by facing down the powers that throw our least defended children under the school bus—this was extreme, not mainstream.
On Fluke (just because I don't think this woman can ever get enough scorn):
The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception. I am old enough to know a wedge issue when I see one, but I've never seen a great party build its entire public persona around one. Big speeches from the heads of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, HHS Secretary and abortion enthusiast Kathleen Sebelius and, of course, Sandra Fluke.
"Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception," Ms. Fluke said. But why would anyone have included a Georgetown law student who never worked her way onto the national stage until she was plucked, by the left, as a personable victim? What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they're not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That's not a stand, it's a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.
And she was one of the great faces of the party in Charlotte. That is extreme. Childish, too.
Here's the most important part that dovetails with the "poisoning the well" conversation that we have had on and off in this thread:
Something else, and it had to do with tone. I remember the Republicans in Tampa bashing the president, hard, but not the entire Democratic Party. In Charlotte they bashed Mitt Romney, but they bashed the Republican Party harder. If this doesn't strike you as somewhat unsettling, then you must want another four years of all war all the time between the parties. I don't think the American people want that. Because, actually, they're not extreme.
And finally, on Slick Willy:
Bill Clinton is The Master. That is stipulated. Almost everyone in the media was over the moon about his speech. It was a shrewd and superb moment of political generosity, his hauling into town to make the case, but it was a hack speech. It was the speech of a highly gifted apparatchik. All great partisan speeches include some hard and uncomfortable truths, but Mr. Clinton offered none. He knows better than so much of what he said. In real life he makes insightful statements on the debt, the deficit and the real threat they pose. He knows more about the need for and impediments to public-school reform than half the reformers do. He knows exactly why both parties can't reach agreement in Washington, and what each has done wrong along the way. But Wednesday night he stuck to fluid fictions and clever cases. It was smaller than Bill Clinton is.
Still, he gave the president one great political gift: He put Medicaid on the table. He put it right there next to the pepper shaker and said Look at that! People talk Medicare and Social Security, but, as Mr. Clinton noted, more than half of Medicaid is spent on nursing-home care for seniors and on those with disabilities such as Down syndrome and autism. Will it be cut? .... Romney-Ryan take note: this will arrive as an issue.
Ultimately, she predicts a dead-cat bounce for Obama just like the one that Romney got. Most of the article is above, but you can read the rest here.
The fact that she considers anything in the Democratic party "extreme" or "extremism" questions the validity of anything she writes. There is nothing extreme about the Democratic party or anything they're doing or saying.
Except for the platform's stance on abortion:
The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay
Which means government funded abortion with no restrictions. A departure from previous DNC platforms that stated that abortion should be, "Legal, safe, and rare".
Now let's look at the polling. 20% say abortion should be illegal under any circumstance, 25% legal under any circumstance and 52% legal under only certain circumstances (Source).
By definition, among the American electorate, BOTH parties platform stance on abortion is extreme.
Am I missing something? Where does it say 'no restrictions'?
I thought the Roe v Wade decision set these ground rules:
First trimester - decision to abort is between mother and doctor. Second trimester - decision to abort is between mother and doctor, but states may intervene in the interest of the mother's health.
Once the fetus is capable of surviving the outside world (dunno when this is), the state can choose to regulate abortion.
So it's not without restrictions...
Indeed. As the DNC stated, they "unequivocally support Roe v. Wade."
The Court later rejected Roe's trimester framework, while affirming Roe's central holding that a person has a right to abortion until viability.[1] The Roe decision defined "viable" as being "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid", adding that viability "is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks."[2]
As for partial-birth abortion there was a debate about that earlier... I suppose you can say the abortion stance is more extreme now but not without valid reason.
For the record, I'm fine with how we currently stand with abortion legally. I'm just tired of the RNC being labeled extreme by the media while the DNC gets a pass. Noonan was right, abortion is being used as a wedge issue and frankly if Noonan is the "conservative" columnist that people want to go after then the country is never moving back to the center.
It's because the DNC platform isn't extreme. Democrats are very moderate on just about everything; there's not even a hint of socializing anything coming from the entire party, and access to birth control and early abortions is very moderate. Basically every issue is handled half-assedly by the party because they don't want to alienate anyone who is even remotely conservative by suggesting socializing anything, seriously tackling climate change, overhauling education/healthcare/the tax code, actually separating church and state, etc. Republicans, on the other hand, are one of the most right-wing, extremist political parties in any developed, first world nation.
For someone looking at this from the outside i agree. Democrats are more right leaning than anything we have in sweden. Our two most right leaning parties would place to the left of the scale in the US, and i think this goes for almost all of europe.
What americans call socialist/communist is what people here consider quite moderate stuff. Our left leaning parties want controlled pharmacies, alcohol only sold at government run stores, no profit for businesses running private schools, even stronger unions and worker rights (which are already way stronger than those in the US), increased and forced split of parent leave, and much more.
It's just really weird when people talk about the "threat" of socialism when most right wing europe is more left leaning than democrats in the US.
So they want an outright ban on private schools so they can control education, but they know that that position is too radical, so they pussy foot around and try to make it an issue of private enterprise and evil capitalists making money off the education of our children. Makes perfect sense.
On September 08 2012 15:18 farvacola wrote: ^I don't know who you are or where you came from, but hot damn do I agree with everything you've written. Well done
I agree! The one thing I don't understand is why both him and xdaunt are talking about abortions when it comes to this line...
"Allowing health care providers to deny birth control if it conflicts with their religious/moral convictions"
So what do you want to do? Violate a constitutional right just to allow a woman to get an abortion where she chooses?
------------------------------------
What does birth control have to do with abortions in the context of this discussion, both of your responses to that quote touched on abortion and not on birth control. (other than the fact having more access to birth control and more knowledge about how to use it decreases unwanted pregnancies)? I know some religions are against birth control but there are valid reasons for getting hormonal birth control without the purpose of having sex. I don't know why abortion is being brought up in reference to birth control, these are two different things.
It is basically the same issue. Catholic hospitals and institutions don't want to be forced to provide/do/fund abortions and birth control because it is against Catholic doctrine. This is why Sandra Fluke attracted the conservative ire that she did. It wasn't just that she wanted her birth control paid for, she wanted to force a Catholic institution (Georgetown) to do it.
You're being extremely slippery on this issue, xdaunt. You've repeatedly claimed that abortion isn't an issue even pro choice people should care about because the Republicans can't do anything about it. But what matters for whether or not it's in the interest of pro choice people to vote based on abortion doesn't depend on what you think the proper role of government is, it depends on what they think it is. You might as well say it's absurd for anyone to vote based on one party being less hawkish than the other because clearly the government is supposed to be hawkish.
Most pro choice people have a far more expansive conception of governmental function than you, and this conception often includes the government providing things like health care and contraception and abortions. Since you admit that there is a real possibility of Republicans threatening funding for these types of things, of course it is in the typical pro choice person's interest to in part base their vote on the Republican stance toward them.
How am I being slippery? I've made it incredibly clear that the only meaningful action in the abortion debate lies in funding. With this in mind, I then argued that if you are still a single issue voter on the issue of abortion (regardless of whether you are for it or against it), then you should reexamine your priorities. All that I am really saying is that the issue gets far more press than is due.
You're being slippery because you've repeatedly downplayed the importance of funding based on your own views about what government should fund. Those views are irrelevant to the voting interests of most actual pro choice people, making your arguments a complete non sequitur in so far as they are meant to address how much weight pro choicers should assign to abortion when voting.
I thought that was pretty clear from what I said. Maybe it's still the case that abortion gets more press than is due, and maybe it's also pretty generally the case that people shouldn't be single issue voters. But your arguments for these claims have involved irrelevancies.
You are reading way more into my posts than what is there. I'll just leave it at that.
You don't have to go very far back in this thread to see you doing exactly what I describe you as doing.
On September 07 2012 23:09 xDaunt wrote: I agree with Peggy Noonan's take on the convention.
On Obama:
Barack Obama is deeply overexposed and often boring. He never seems to be saying what he's thinking. His speech Thursday was weirdly anticlimactic. There's too much buildup, the crowd was tired, it all felt flat. He was somber, and his message was essentially banal: We've done better than you think. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?
There were many straw men. There were phrases like "the shadow of a shuttered steel mill," which he considers writerly. But they sound empty and practiced now, like something you've heard in a commercial or an advertising campaign.
It was stale and empty. He's out of juice.
On the tone of the convention and the delegates:
Beneath the funny hats, the sweet-faced delegates, the handsome speakers and the babies waving flags there was something disquieting. All three days were marked by a kind of soft, distracted extremism. It was unshowy and unobnoxious but also unsettling.
There was the relentless emphasis on Government as Community, as the thing that gives us spirit and makes us whole. But government isn't what you love if you're American, America is what you love. Government is what you have, need and hire. Its most essential duties—especially when it is bankrupt—involve defending rights and safety, not imposing views and values. We already have values. Democrats and Republicans don't see all this the same way, and that's fine—that's what national politics is, the working out of this dispute in one direction or another every few years. But the Democrats convened in Charlotte seemed more extreme on the point, more accepting of the idea of government as the center of national life, than ever, at least to me.
The fight over including a single mention of God in the platform—that was extreme. The original removal of the single mention by the platform committee—extreme. The huge "No!" vote on restoring the mention of God, and including the administration's own stand on Jerusalem—that wasn't liberal, it was extreme. Comparing the Republicans to Nazis—extreme. The almost complete absence of a call to help education by facing down the powers that throw our least defended children under the school bus—this was extreme, not mainstream.
On Fluke (just because I don't think this woman can ever get enough scorn):
The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception. I am old enough to know a wedge issue when I see one, but I've never seen a great party build its entire public persona around one. Big speeches from the heads of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, HHS Secretary and abortion enthusiast Kathleen Sebelius and, of course, Sandra Fluke.
"Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception," Ms. Fluke said. But why would anyone have included a Georgetown law student who never worked her way onto the national stage until she was plucked, by the left, as a personable victim? What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they're not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That's not a stand, it's a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.
And she was one of the great faces of the party in Charlotte. That is extreme. Childish, too.
Here's the most important part that dovetails with the "poisoning the well" conversation that we have had on and off in this thread:
Something else, and it had to do with tone. I remember the Republicans in Tampa bashing the president, hard, but not the entire Democratic Party. In Charlotte they bashed Mitt Romney, but they bashed the Republican Party harder. If this doesn't strike you as somewhat unsettling, then you must want another four years of all war all the time between the parties. I don't think the American people want that. Because, actually, they're not extreme.
And finally, on Slick Willy:
Bill Clinton is The Master. That is stipulated. Almost everyone in the media was over the moon about his speech. It was a shrewd and superb moment of political generosity, his hauling into town to make the case, but it was a hack speech. It was the speech of a highly gifted apparatchik. All great partisan speeches include some hard and uncomfortable truths, but Mr. Clinton offered none. He knows better than so much of what he said. In real life he makes insightful statements on the debt, the deficit and the real threat they pose. He knows more about the need for and impediments to public-school reform than half the reformers do. He knows exactly why both parties can't reach agreement in Washington, and what each has done wrong along the way. But Wednesday night he stuck to fluid fictions and clever cases. It was smaller than Bill Clinton is.
Still, he gave the president one great political gift: He put Medicaid on the table. He put it right there next to the pepper shaker and said Look at that! People talk Medicare and Social Security, but, as Mr. Clinton noted, more than half of Medicaid is spent on nursing-home care for seniors and on those with disabilities such as Down syndrome and autism. Will it be cut? .... Romney-Ryan take note: this will arrive as an issue.
Ultimately, she predicts a dead-cat bounce for Obama just like the one that Romney got. Most of the article is above, but you can read the rest here.
The fact that she considers anything in the Democratic party "extreme" or "extremism" questions the validity of anything she writes. There is nothing extreme about the Democratic party or anything they're doing or saying.
Except for the platform's stance on abortion:
The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay
Which means government funded abortion with no restrictions. A departure from previous DNC platforms that stated that abortion should be, "Legal, safe, and rare".
Now let's look at the polling. 20% say abortion should be illegal under any circumstance, 25% legal under any circumstance and 52% legal under only certain circumstances (Source).
By definition, among the American electorate, BOTH parties platform stance on abortion is extreme.
Am I missing something? Where does it say 'no restrictions'?
I thought the Roe v Wade decision set these ground rules:
First trimester - decision to abort is between mother and doctor. Second trimester - decision to abort is between mother and doctor, but states may intervene in the interest of the mother's health.
Once the fetus is capable of surviving the outside world (dunno when this is), the state can choose to regulate abortion.
So it's not without restrictions...
Indeed. As the DNC stated, they "unequivocally support Roe v. Wade."
The Court later rejected Roe's trimester framework, while affirming Roe's central holding that a person has a right to abortion until viability.[1] The Roe decision defined "viable" as being "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid", adding that viability "is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks."[2]
As for partial-birth abortion there was a debate about that earlier... I suppose you can say the abortion stance is more extreme now but not without valid reason.
For the record, I'm fine with how we currently stand with abortion legally. I'm just tired of the RNC being labeled extreme by the media while the DNC gets a pass. Noonan was right, abortion is being used as a wedge issue and frankly if Noonan is the "conservative" columnist that people want to go after then the country is never moving back to the center.
The big joke (and what really makes the democrat rhetoric a big lie) is that republicans can't really do much to obstruct the right to an abortion anyway.
Democratic rhetoric on abortion would only be a "big lie" if Republicans weren't trying to do an absurd number of abortion-related things that pro choice voters care about, the funding related ones being things that Republicans could very realistically accomplish. When sunprince gave a litany of examples of Republicans threatening things pro choice voters care about, your response to half of them appealed to your own views of the proper role of government in funding services. A complete non sequitur.
EPT
